Banikanta Kakati

Dr. Banikanta Kakati was a versatile genius who made immense contribution to the Assamese language in terms of literature, linguistics, cultural anthropology and comparative religion.

Biography

Banikanta Kakati was born on November 15, 11894 at Baatikurihaa village in Barpeta district, Assam. His parents were Lalitram and Laahoowaalaa Kakati.

From his childhood days, Banikanta Kakati had an earnest desire to become a scholar. Sources said he he could memorize the whole of Panini in his school days and that his Sanskrit teacher awarded him 105 marks out of 100. After passing the Matriculation examination, Kakati got admitted into the Cotton College, Guwahati.

Kakati stood first in the IA examination of the Calcutta University in 1913 and proceeded to Calcutta for higher studies in the Presidency College. Kakati was a voracious reader on various subjects and that his encyclopedic range had an adverse effect on his result, for he missed first class. He passed his MA examination in English (A group) in 1918 and joined Cotton College as lecturer in English. He appeared in the MA examination in English (Group B) in 1923 and stood first in the first class. He retired from Cotton College in 1948 and joined the newly established Gauhati University as the head of the Assamese department.

Dr Kakati modelled his life on Dr Johnson, but though nonchalant about his dress, he was firm as an administrator and was capable of leading the university to great heights as its vice-chancellor, as KK Handique had hoped. He was, however, unwilling to abandon the mantle of a professor. He had already refused many lucrative offers and was about to resign from the post of the principal when told that an order was being sent from Shillong transferring him as the Director of Public Instruction.

Literary career Soon after joining Cotton College as a lecturer in 1918, Banikanta Kakati took up the study of Sankardeva and old Assamese literature. Soon, he was drawn into a controversy between two rival schools of Assam Vaishnavism. His erudite exposition of scriptural lore in the various issues of the Banhi under the pseudonym of Babananda Pathak, in defence of the values represented by the teachings of Sankardeva still makes fruitful reading.

While studying MA examination in English, he obtained his doctorate for his thesis – Assamese : Its Formation and Development in 1935. The publication of the thesis in 1941 was a god-send for the Assamese people who had been frantically struggling to establish the identity and provenance of their mother tongue. Kakati had to work far from the great centres of learning, in a place where even Leonard Bloomfields’ Language (1833) could not be made available. Yet the work was acclaimed by no lesser an authority than Dr Emeneau who found it ‘ground-breaking in many ways.’

His interest in language proliferated over the years, but meanwhile, his mind started straying into other fields and pastures new. He made an intensive study of the Kalita caste and incorporated his findings in Kalita Jatir Itibritta (1941), Mother Goddess Kamakhya (1948) deals with socio-religious issues prevalent in Ancient Kamrupa. Finally he turned his attention to Indian mythology and his Vaishnavite Myths and Legends has been acclaimed as 'one of the very few studies of the religious scene in India, produced by our scholars, that deserve reading and pondering over.'

Dr Kakati was one of the greatest critics that the country has produced. His Purani Asomiya Sahitya provides the axes for the appreciation of Vaishnavite literature of medieval Assam. He was certainly the most capable interpreter of religious mysticism in the poetry of the Nam Ghosha. He also raised the perennial issue of a possible tension between poetry and belief.

Himself a scion of the Romantic age, Kakati sketched the critical background for the Twentieth Century Assamese Romantics. The post-war decade in Assam is a decade of disenchantment. In this decade also Dr Kakati wrote on the contemporary situation which seemed to show that a great age was over and another was yet to be born. He died too early to see the achievements of the ensuing age.