Banana Republics and V. I. Degrees: Rethinking Indian Folklore in a Postcolonial World

In the history of scholarship on folklore in India, little attention has been directed towards the relationship between folklore and social change. This paper reviews British-based folklore studies in India, identifying a paradigm of self-contained peasant authenticity that viewed references to changing social realities as adulterations that must be edited out. It then contrasts such suppressions of change with the conscious revamping of folklore materials to disseminate nationalist, Marxist, feminist, and development ideologies. Next, it turns to contemporary examples of creative change in folklore, with a focus on urban joke cycles that are largely ignored by folklorists. Finally, it ends with suggestions for theoretical reorientations breaking down the rigid distinction between "us" as metropolitan analysts, and "them" as the folk enmeshed in tradition