Social media has recently erupted over the release of “Mou Bihu” by Srijani Bhaswa Mahanta, who is known for experimenting with new ideas in her art. The so-called “flag-bearers of morality” are calling it vulgar and accusing it of hurting the emotions and sanctity of Assamese culture.
Two main issues are being raised: first, that the video, which allegedly promotes “polyamory” and “obscenity,” has no place in a tradition as sacred as Bihu. They argue this is yet another attempt to “Westernize” or “Bollywoodize” Bihu, threatening its cultural purity. Second, many are attacking Mahanta’s familial background, questioning how someone from Assam, particularly a woman with so much intellectual and cultural capital, could release something they see as shameful. Let’s break it down to understand how people are reading the video and where the actual issue lies.
First of all, if you watch the video through a cinematic or artistic lens, it doesn’t offer much. It’s a weak attempt at representing women’s desire, which is supposed to challenge the patriarchal and capitalist imposition of monogamy. In trying to play a rural character with alternative desires, Mahanta ends up turning the rural woman into a spectacle rather than a subject. The video leans into a kind of ethnographic voyeurism, where an urban gaze reshapes rural life for attention instead of letting it speak for itself.
At the same time, Mahanta forces the subject onto the song without building any coherence between the scenes. Take the one where a police officer is dragged from an accident site, covered in blood, while someone is rushed into an ambulance, what even is that? It raises serious questions. How does one express desire in such a grim scene? It gives the impression that desire supersedes humanity, which is deeply problematic.
Let’s assume, for argument’s sake, that Mou Bihu is an abstract art, not supposed to follow any logical sequence, and rooted in personal interpretation, as Mahanta mentioned in a recent panel discussion at Pratidin Times’ Abhimat. That’s fine. The cinematic medium, or art in general, is full of that. We have Chantal Akerman using personal memory and a feminist lens, Maya Deren playing with movement and dreams, Resnais moving through memory and time, and David Lynch makes you sit with discomfort without giving anything away neatly. But even in their chaos, there’s an emotional rhythm, something that holds. You might not “get” it all, but you feel it.
Here, though, even within that interpretive frame, a particular scene that I mentioned just sticks out, not in a way that makes you think, but in a way that makes you squint. It feels confusing for the sake of it. This confusion also shows in Mahanta’s interview, though she claims clarity, she comes off as scattered, at times even self-contradictory. And that’s not what abstraction, or in her words, “personal interpretation,” of art is about. It’s not just about breaking narrative, it’s about what you do with the brokenness. When you break form, you better have something to say through the cracks. Otherwise, it’s just noise that you have dressed up like a thought.
Mahanta didn’t just stop at a few insensitive scenes, she chose to use blood as a prominent symbol. At first, I thought it was a counter-narrative to society’s disgust toward blood, especially menstrual blood, and that she was trying to associate it with fertility, something abstract that connects the four narratives.
In the panel discussion, she said society’s view of blood is shaped by capitalism and patriarchy (though she didn’t explain how) and in contrast to that she used blood in her video as a “life-giving force,” something “beautiful,” something that runs through us. Fair enough, artists can interpret symbols differently. But in cinematic language, blood has long symbolized terror, violence, and injury. So when someone tries to reinterpret it, the shift needs to be nuanced and clear.
But here, Mahanta contradicts herself. In the video, the way she shows blood is entirely different. In the butcher shop scene, a space already understood as violent, blood is shown gushing from a chicken as it’s torn apart. How is that beautiful? How does that evoke life? It’s just killing. Even in the ambulance or college scene, blood doesn’t come across as something pleasant. That’s where her art fails and her progressive, even radical, ideas fall flat in execution. If she had used blood to represent feminine power or sexuality, that would have made much more sense than showing it in a butcher shop.
However, what happened after that video’s release on YouTube needs to be looked at more carefully. Personally, I didn’t link the content with Bihu’s sanctity. But once it was out for the masses, people did, and they misunderstood it entirely. But can we blame the public alone? Or is Mahanta also at fault?
If you follow the trajectory of this video, you would notice how Mahanta manipulated the original poster, which was socially decent or acceptable, and then uploaded a different one on Facebook showing explicit “obscenity” that had the potential to trigger public outrage. In the few hours after the video was uploaded, it didn’t get much attention. So, she decided to post the so-called “obscene” photo with the caption “Mou Bihu salene?” (Have you watched Mou Bihu?), which ultimately caught people’s eyes and triggered them. Doesn’t it sound too convenient and deliberate? It does.
But the way people reacted to the video also says a lot about our performative morality. It reminded me of how silent these same moralists were in the past. Now that the public is collectively triggered, it’s easy for them to attack a woman trying to talk about sex through a feminist lens (though she failed at it). The same society had no issue when, in almost every Assamese film released in 2024, whether it’s Jai Hanuman, Sikaar, or Abhimanyu, there were explicit rape scenes instead of symbolic representation. But here, Mahanta uses honey to depict sexual desire, and that’s what crosses the line?
In Achinta Shankar’s Abhimanyu (2024), there’s a scene where the villain is shown raping and penetrating the female lead, with clearly suggestive facial expressions and yet, no outrage. In Himangshu Prasad Das’s Jai Hanuman (2024), a graphic rape scene inside a van plays out, something that could easily trigger real-life survivors, but no one said a single word. Instead, these so-called flag-bearers of morality posted selfies from the premieres, praising the films and asking others to watch them. It seems sexual scenes are fine when they show women being oppressed. But when a woman expresses desire? That’s suddenly a cultural shame.
Harsh truth, but let me put it straight: this isn’t about Assamese culture or Bihu. People are upset because a woman spoke openly about sexual desire and polyamory. Sex scares people because it’s when they lose control, when the mask of civility slips, and something raw comes out. That fear turns into shame, and that sexual shame needs a scapegoat. So anyone who steps outside the script, people with same-sex desire, or those who practice or promote anything other than monogamy, gets attacked.
I have nothing against obscenity, and I appreciate how Pranab Bharali (with Supa Supi, 2024) and Himangshu Prasad Das (with Bulu Film, 2023) opened the door for breaking the stereotypical presumption and blurring the line between obscene and moral with titles of their works. But those, which openly suggest something “less moral,” weren’t questioned the way this 6-minute video, with barely any sexual content, has been. Male filmmakers in Assam have long sexualized rape on screen, and no one said a word. I only wish they had the sensitivity to portray such sexual violence without graphic visuals, like Ritesh Sharma did in Jhini Bini Chadariya.
In these times, we must ask: Is the harsh criticism of Mou Bihu because it was made by a woman? Or is it the convenient moral facade that only targets women, while male filmmakers’ intentions go unchallenged? Srijani Bhaswa Mahanta also craved this attention; she planned everything for that, and look, she grabbed it. Now what we need is a conversation on morality and obscenity among the people of this region, and a self-introspection on how they are also part and parcel of this politics of convenience.