Exploring the Iconography of "Retelling"

The works that one encounters in Retelling, the exhibition of the recent productions of Karishma D’Souza, should be seen as more than works of art. They are in fact icons from a contemporary mystic, and could be put to good use not only by other mystics but by a wider population. Contrary to popular understanding, icons are more than objects of ritual adoration and worship. They are in fact bridges that span the gap between a textual tradition and practice. One can look at Christian practice, for example. The image of a saint is linked not only to the hagiography of the saint but to the Biblical narrative. The use of iconography encodes a complex story into a single image for the viewer. Subsequent to contemplation of the image, the viewer can hope to imitate the life of the saint, who attempted to imitate the life of Christ. The iconographer is often familiar with this wider textual tradition, and through the use of charged symbols, communicates meaning to a practicant of a tradition. They offer crunched lessons for contemplation with the idea that these will then be put into practice.

In many ways, Karishma D’Souza is an iconographer for our times. Unlike conventional iconographers, however, Karishma does not stick within a single tradition. She is rather like the mystic, who is never conventional but always transcends boundaries to plumb unexpected depths and return with powerful insights for contemplation. Thus, Karishma draws inspiration from the mystical poems of such figures as Sant Kabirdas, and the Kashmiri poet Lal Dedh. Her references range from the Jataka tales and the lives of the Bodhisatvas and the Buddha, the brahmanical Puranas, to more contemporary issues of violence of the Indian state against the populations of Kashmir, Dalits and tribals.

Karishma also works in the tradition of the iconographers through the symbolic charge that she presses onto the colours on the canvas. Take, for example, the use of gold for the ears of the sleeping Buddha in the work titled “Burma Buddha”. Karishma would have the golden ears bear three meanings. The first refers to the most common understanding of gold, as precious; thus, the gold ears designate that to hear or listen is what is most important. The second offers a more anti-materialist, and perhaps iconoclastic, suggestion, that gold is an inert metal, and the golden ears are dead objects incapable of hearing the pleas and prayers of supplicants. The third reading that she offers is where the similarity of gold with yellow is played on to suggest that the city in the background painted in yellow appears golden only in the distance; closer inspection reveals that the yellow emerges from sand, not gold, and hence is liable to disintegrate at any moment.

Blue is another colour that runs through the works in Retelling. Once again, we could commence with the signification of blue through reference to its location in “Burma Buddha”. Blue is used in this canvas to represent what the artist calls “peaceful, expanding space”. Karishma is also aware, however, that blue is the colour associated with the Ambedkarite movement and hence with Dalit pride. Given the manner in which the caste-critical poet Kabir is taken up by some Ambedkarite groups, it is no wonder that “Sand Castles” is marked by a plethora of blue circles. Each of these circles is a reference to a couplet of Kabir

from the Bijak of Kabir (compiled and translated by Linda Hess and Sukhdev Singh).

Take, for instance, the circle on the top left of the canvas that refers to the following:

A raft of tied together snakes

In the world-ocean.

Let go, and you’ll drown.

Grasp, and they’ll bite your arm.

Or the second circle in the bottom row that features a tear within a millstone that illustrates the following:

seeing the mill turn

brings tears to the eyes.

No one who falls between the stones

Comes out unbroken.

If blue is symbolically charged in Karishma’s works, then so is water, once again signified, as is common, by blue. Water bodies, and especially rivers, are present in almost every image on display. Unsurprisingly inspired by the verses of Kabir, who seems to be critical in this phase of her work, the river is linked with the idea of overcoming:

Use the strength of your own arm,

Stop putting hope in others.

When the river flows through your own yard,

How can you die of thirst?

The river is present not only in “Wastelands: dead pasts”, but also in “Chembur”. The foreground of “Chembur”, alive with indoor plants, references the home of her grandparents in the suburb of Bombay that Karishma remembers as one of the first “very nurturing” spaces she encountered. Outside the home lies an empty and terrifying landscape snaked through by a river that represents the limits that must be overcome on the journey towards adulthood. Given the title of this canvas one can’t help but imagine that despite the emptiness the view outside her grandparent’s house is actually suggestive of an urban landscape. Urban landscapes in Karishma’s earlier works are often either empty of people suggesting the anomie and isolation that marks contemporary cities.

The water bodies in “Guarded city: unseeing” reference a poem from the Kashmiri poet Lal Ded, from the compilations in the book I Lalla (selected and translated by Ranjit Hoskote):

Three times I saw a lake overflowing a lake.

Once I saw a lake mirrored in the sky.

Once I saw a lake that bridged

north and south. Mount Haramukh and Lake Kausar.

Seven times I saw a lake shaping itself into emptiness.

Emptiness is also the theme of “Guarded city: unseeing”. While gated communities represent security from the population outside the grounds of expensive residential colonies, Karishma inquires whether this shutting off does not create an anomic sense of isolation. With curtains drawn over windows, represented here by the thick black lines in the centre of the canvas, no one looks in, and no one looks out either. The choice of exclusive surroundings ensures that the very environs become frightening. This image also makes reference to the political situation in Kashmir with the island in the top background represented by an island with chinar. Reading deeper into the canvas, the gated community could also refer to the Kashmiri people forced into house arrest. The chinar of Kashmir stand mute in testimony to the violence forced on these people, who are encircled by orange red-hued hills on all sides.

Similar hues are also present in “Himalayan landscape: unseeing”, where the orange tents represent Hindutva and the red on the horizon, blood. 

As if in response to the violence represented by walls is the image “Lal Ded”. In this case, the wall, a symbol of violence, is also marked by the hues of orange and red, but it is split apart by the ever present river and calls to mind the verses from Robert Frost’s poem, “Mending Wall”:

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,

And spills the upper boulders in the sun;

And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

Perhaps this splitting of the metaphoric wall through persistence, in this case of aquatic force, is the resilience that is referred to in the poem from Lal Ded that has influenced many of the works in this collection:

 

Resilience: to stand in the path of lightening.

Resilience: to walk when darkness falls at noon.

Resilience: to grind yourself fine in the turning mill.

Resilience will come to you.

While many of these canvases make visible reference to places that Karishma has visited, the image that relates most to the Goan context is “Wastelands: dead pasts”. In this image, the blue neck of the figure emerging from the water is a reference to the Puranic myth of Shiva Neelakanta. In this myth, Shiva’s neck turned blue when he consumed the poison that emerged from the fabled churning of the ocean of milk. In this image, the neck is part of a larger feminine figure that could be construed as a reference to the idol of Gauri, worshipped in some traditions a day before her son Ganesh. The present day Gauri is, of course, the brahmanical usurpation of the vernacular mother goddess Santeri, who is worshipped by the marginalized communities of Goa in her self-embodied form of the anthill. In this case, Santeri emerges from a wasteland that has been created thanks to the effects of the mining industry.

The state of affairs that Karishma depicts in this canvas need not necessarily be read as an impotent lament for our future. Rather, there is a peculiar Christian imagery that can also be read into this image through a reference to the vision of the Prophet Ezekiel. The Old Testament records the Prophet Ezekiel as having a vision of a valley filled with very dry bones. In this vision, Ezekiel is commanded by God to prophesy and put flesh on the bones and subsequently restore the bones to life. The vision, therefore, is one that promises hope – that even in the darkest of hours, a return to values can in fact bring redemption. This, I believe, is one of the messages that one can take away from this icon. 

In The Death of the Author (1967), French literary critic and theorist Roland Barthes argued against the need to incorporate the biographical context of the author or the meanings intended into the reading of the text. Instead, he argued in favour of the independence of the artistic production of the author. The moment the work was produced and subject to the gaze of the audience, the author was dead, and the work had a life of its own, gaining multiple readings based on the gazes of infinite numbers of individual readers. A great liberation is made possible through such a position, allowing for the proverbial thousand flowers to bloom. Given that each person is now enabled to bring their own experiences to the reading of the text or image, this diversity allows for an expansion of formal political democracy into the realm of the social. 

To adopt Barthes’ method while viewing the works of Karishma D’Souza, however, would leave us that much poorer. For Karishma’s works have the potential to be more than just objects of art. Even though many of Karishma’s offerings in this exhibition focus on what could be seen as hopeless situations, I believe that these icons are in fact tools through which we can refocus our attention on issues of concern, issues that scream out for justice to be done, and work towards resolving them. They have the potential to shake off the illusion that we are captive and focus on what really matters.

To understand these icons, though, requires that we enter into the textual world that Karishma has created. The possible problem that we encounter, however, is that this textual world is rather dense, given that each canvas is often inspired by more than one text. While this makes for a particularly rich canvas, it also points to the flip side – to the liberation that Barthes inaugurated. That is, with the absolute liberty to bring one’s own reading to a text, there is often a cacophony of voices and little space for understanding. If everyone’s personal reading is valid, and there is no fundamental base, how does one make conversation and move forward towards building a space of consensus? Perhaps the answer lies in the manner in which we twine engagement with the images and the producer of the images. It is towards this end that I urge that the works be seen as icons to be appreciated alongside the many texts that inspired them.

(Essay for the exhibition of Karishma D'Souza's works in Retelling,  hosted by the Fundação Oriente, Goa from 13 Oct -9 Nov 2016)

Of wolves, sheep and wolves in sheep's clothing: The secular liberal in the emerging Hindu Raj

I was, apparently, not the only one to be perplexed by Jagdish Bhagwati’s denouncement of the insecurity expressed by Christians in India. This widespread bemusement should not come as a surprise; after all, Bhagwati did expend three of the eleven paragraphs of his article protesting his fides. He assures us that despite the crude manner in which he dismisses the concerns of a community that has faced not merely arson attacks against its religious structures and institutions, but rape, desecration, and belligerent rhetoric, his arguments are not antagonistic, or communal, but secular, and rational. This is because he comes from a “from a family that is impressively pro-Indian-minorities”, some of his dearest friends are non-Hindu, and he himself earned his basic degrees from a Christian institution.

Many who read his offensive dismissal, and call for strict action, wondered if Bhagwati had lost his marbles. After all, did not the argument “I have many left handed friends, hence I speak for left-handed people”, or “I’m not Islamophobic! Some of my best friends are Muslim!” run out of credibility in the 70s? I would argue, however, that Bhagwati’s protestations are not the sign of a feeble mind, nor of a man out of step with contemporary reality, but rather a strikingly clear indication of a variety of political equations in contemporary India. In this response, I would like to highlight and protest against Bhagwati’s callous attitude, as well as point to the manner in which his position is in fact indicative of the manner in which Nehurvian secularism is being bridged with Modi’s Hindtuva regime.

What is striking about the first of Bhagwati’s reasons for his secular location is the fact that he has placed his familial connections up front and centre. However, this is not an average family; Bhagwati has gone through some pain to demonstrate that his friends and family are all either extremely powerful, highly qualified professionals, or come from dominant caste groups. While Bhagwati would prefer that we focus on the fact that all of these individuals hail from different religions I would rather point to the fact of their location within networks of privilege. Marriage between people from elite backgrounds, no matter what their caste, or confessional backgrounds is not necessarily a mark of secularism in contemporary India. It is primarily a mark of the desire to maintain privilege. Marital liaisons across sectarian differences are the hallmark of dynastic marriages across the world, whether ancien régime Europe, pre or early modern India.

The fact that he chooses to highlight these marital connections demonstrates facts about how power was wielded, as well as how secularism was understood, in Nehruvian India. Power was structured dynastically. This meant that while the Nehru-Gandhi presided at the top, the pyramid of power was structured by a variety of families in alliance and allegiance to this family, while these families maintained the structure of power downwards, from Delhi toward every federating region in India. As Bhagwati demonstrates, it was not necessary that these alliances be rooted in marriage alone. On the contrary, one could also establish familial friendships. These friendships were often engendered through education in Christian institutions which introduced these native elites to a more universal language of privilege embodied in Euro-American, i.e. ‘Western’, forms. To enter into the structures of power of Nehruvian India, one had to belong either via blood, or through participation in culture. The sad truth, however, is that access to this culture, was possible largely through belonging to existing structures of privilege, most often belonging to a dominant caste.

Bhagwati’s articulation also demonstrates that the locus of secularism in Nehruvian India was these educated and ‘cultured’ elites. It was their practices that were assumed to embody secularism. The question was not of the fact of the entire gamut of their practices, but a selective reading of some of their practices. These practices included the fact of their marriages across caste and religion, their gustatory practices where they ate food at the home of privileged friends from other confessional groups, but especially Ashraf Muslims, and the affective links with Christian institutions that gave them the veneer of being Christianised.

On reading earlier opinions on the state of secularism and fascist violence in India, many have inquired of me, why instead of making strident condemnations of Prime Minister Modi I choose to “attack” secular liberals, and Nehruvian secularism. The logic for this critique is revealed in Bhagwati’s article given how his statements demonstrate the continuum between the apparently secular liberal, and the outright Hindu nationalist. Reflecting on the practice of Indian secularism, Paul Brass observed that there were many similarities in the way secular nationalists and Hindu nationalists crafted an Indian history: “first, that Indian history has displayed a striving for unity of the subcontinent and its peoples that has persisted through time; second, that unity must never again be compromised; third, that unity is essential to achieve India's rightful place in the world as a great power; fourth, that any threat to that unity must be squashed by the utmost force, should any group be recalcitrant enough to resist. In all these respects, secular and Hindu nationalists agree, as they do on the great goal that inspires it, namely, that of transforming India into a great, modern state.” So many of the elements outlined by Brass are so obviously present in Bhagwati’s text, not least in his assertion that there is a need to “forcefully” expose the apparently false claims made by Julio Ribeiro, as well as his plea to the latter to “join those of us who would like to see religious harmony, not the religious discord that can only subtract from our humanity.” This “humanity”, if of course best captured in the slogan so dear to Nehruvian secularism “unity in diversity”.

Underneath its façade of unity in diversity practiced by groups of elite families, Nehruvian secularism hid the fact that upper-caste Hindu culture was the de facto logic of Indian-ness. As long as things were hunky dory the façade remained in place. No sooner was non-Hindu difference asserted than the fangs were bared, the assertions dismissed and Hindu supremacy asserted. In his interesting study of the Doon School, Sanjay Srivastava calls this politics “Hindu contextualism”. Srivastava explains that Indian nationalism resolved the religious question—at least at the Doon School— through “the establishment of a supra-context which was Hindu” i.e. upper-caste Hindu. It was only within this context of “hierarchised encompassment” that religious pluralism was allowed. This hierarchy is evidenced in the manner in which Bhagwati references non-Hindu religious groups in India, in the condescending terms of “another minority much loved in India”. Condescension, it must be remembered, is only capable from a location of privilege and power. What Bhagwati seems to not realise is that majorities and minorities do not exist normally, but are actively constituted.

This distinction of citizens into majority and minorities is the legacy of the anti-colonial nationalist movement, but the condescension that allows Bhagwati to reference Christians and Sikhs as much loved minorities is a legacy of Nehruvian secularism. This patronising position also enables Bhagwati’s dismissal of Christian concerns when he says “So, if there was anything to the Christian fears today, I should be the first to join the protests. But the truth is that these fears are totally groundless and are, at best, a product of a fevered imagination.” Not only does Bhagwati dismiss the concerns raised by Christian groups, he also displaces their right to air their concerns by claiming that they need not speak at all, since given his location, he can speak just as effectively for them. His statements are a demonstration of the practices of Nehruvian secularism that continue, though in more frightening proportions, into Modi Hindutva.

Bhagwati’s text goes on to demonstrate that problems that both secular nationalists and Hindu nationalists have with Christians in India, namely conversion. One icon for this problematic relation with Christians in India is Mother Theresa who is celebrated as long as she offers service to the Republic of Dominant Caste Indians, and reviled if she asserts her desire to attract people to Christianity. It must be underlined that conversion is a problem largely because Hinduism is imagined as the defining marker of Indian-ness, and conversion to a religion deemed foreign is seen as the colonization of consciousness and the route to denationalisation. But Bhagwati’s fear goes beyond an apparently harmless ideological desire to maintain Hindu culture as dominant. His is also a fear of numbers indicated so clearly when he says, “In fact, [Hinduism] being a religion that does not normally convert, only a minuscule number of Hindus will do this [convert] whereas a far higher proportion of Christians and Muslims will.” In other words, not only are we back to the poppycock of a non-aggressive Hinduism, but also the majoritarian fears that Hindus will be reduced to a minority if Muslim and Christian groups are allowed to persist with their right to conversion.

It needs to be emphasized that fear is not restricted to Bhagwati and the largely upper-caste members of the Hindu Right alone, but was shared by Gandhi as well. It was to ensure that a Hindu majority was produced that he insisted against the provisions of the Ramsay Macdonald Award in August 1932 that granted separate electorates to minorities in the dominion of India. To impose his will, Gandhi went on a hunger strike that forced Dr. Ambedkar to agree that Untouchables abandon the demand for a separate electorate and be included as Hindus. In other words, Gandhi was responsible for producing India as a Hindu majority state, against the wishes of the untouchables.

Bhagwati imagines his trump card is the argument that if conversion is allowed for Christians and Muslims it must be allowed to Hindus as well. No person committed to an egalitarian legal regime would have any disagreement with such a proposition. What he does not seem to recognise, is that the Indian state, does not provide, and indeed, has almost never provided, a level playing ground for the freedom of religion. Where Hindu nationalism and its associated form of Hinduism are the privileged ideology and religion one must recognise that if there is any coercion involved with conversion, it comes into play when persons are forced to convert to Hinduism. Failing any state support, it is difficult to imagine coercion when persons choose to align with Christianity, Islam or Buddhism. Indeed, conversions to these latter faith practices are signs of protest against the brahmanical order that the Indian state upholds. Any shift away from Hinduism is filled with the threat of statal and extra-statal violence.

Bhagwati’s article may demonstrate the problems with Nehurvian secularism, but his assertion at this point in time also highlights the continuing, and growing, problems with the Indian republic. Additionally it also focuses attention on the manner in which these groups and families who formerly pledged allegiance to the Nehru-Gandhi family are now coalescing around the Sangh Parivar. This shift of elite groups towards the BJP should be read as a matter of great concern, given that it demonstrates how consent is being manufactured for the deeply troubling acts of the BJP regime both at the Centre, as well as in states where they hold sway.

This response to Bhagwati would not be complete without one final argument. It would be wrong and irresponsible to suggest that there is no difference between Nehruvian secularism and Modi’s Hindutva regime. The former allowed for a modicum of participation to dominant caste elites among minority groups, and the exercise of power was veiled. In the case of the Modi led state all pretence has been dropped, and the space for non-Hindu elites is also shrinking. This was perhaps abundantly clear with Julio Ribeiro’s recent cry of anguish. While Ribeiro’s cry does capture the sense many Christians in India feel, as was recently pointed out, it should also be seen as a cry from the tribe of elite Christians who had pledged their life in service to the Indian state. That Bhagwati fails to read this demand for continued inclusion but brushes it off as mischievous says a lot about the climate in the country.

(A version of this post was first published in DNA India on 1 April 2015)

Interrogating the bhakti movement: The Sant Sohirobanath Project

Some months ago, the State government honoured the memory of Sant Sohirobanath by organising a book exhibition in tandem with a festival of devotional music. What a clever sleight of hand! Along with this column, there were other voices that protested the manner in which the state government is shamelessly promoting caste Hindu hegemony in Goa.

There were a number of arguments raised to defend the commemoration of the Sant when the government’s decision was revealed to the public. Of these, two were significant. The first suggested that the Sant was part of the bhakti tradition of the subcontinent and this was a good thing. The second suggested that it represented the validation of the spiritual in the face of the materialism that contemporary society seems to be mired in. This column will deal primarily with the suggestion that the bhakti tradition is an undeniably positive tradition.

The bhakti tradition has been much celebrated largely because it is seen as having challenged the hegemony of the brahmin and vedic priesthood over access to the deities. The bhakti movement is credited with enabling the common person, and especially lower caste persons, to have direct access to the deity and the salvation that this access promised.

There is indeed a robust anti-caste critique in the visions of those who are seen as a part of the bhakti movement. Gail Omvedt, a significant authority on dalit-bahujan assertion in the subcontinent, has penned a book titled Seeking Begumpura (2008) that references the utopia that animated the works of many dalit-bahujan sants and poets.

And yet, this is not sufficient reason for us to uncritically accept the bhakti movement as an unmitigated good. In her book Language, Politics, Elites and the Public Sphere (2001), Veena Naregal points out that the relations between the emerging dissenting devotional practices and the ruling elites is still not very well understood. She refers to the case of the celebrated bhakti poet Eknath to make her point. Naregal highlights that when castigated by his brahmin peers for writing in the vernacular languages, Eknath “claiming not to be a deviant, [he] justified his writing in the vernacular as a popularisation of the high religious texts” (p.15). Indeed, Naregal goes on to quote the celebrated scholar Sheldon Pollock, who argued that, “the work of vernacularisation was not necessarily a subaltern process, but actually represented attempts by political elites to re-articulate their authority in localised idioms” (p.15).

This insight can be further buttressed by the recognition of the fact that Eknath may not have been the only person of the period who was seeking to popularise brahmanical texts and create a political culture defined by Brahmanism. Naregal places Eknath within the period c. 1533-99. In her work on the politics around the Telugu language, Language, Emotion, Politics in South India: The Making of a Mother Tongue (2010), Lisa Mitchel makes a similar point about the eleventh century composition of the Mahabharata in Telugu by the poet Nannaya. Challenging the idea that fired with the love for his mother-tongue Nannaya was articulating a Telugu identity, Mitchell in fact argues that this composition of the Mahabharata can be seen “as an attempt to prevent the spread and expansion of already existing anti-brahmanical heterodox identity by expanding orthodox meanings and practices” (p. 50). By composing the Mahabharata in Telugu, Nannaya was actively countering an already established heterodox Jain identity that used Telugu as a medium for spreading itself. Looking at this history, she points out that the Telugu language was in fact a weapon, a medium and a tool for accomplishing a specific purpose, the expansion of elite culture and identity into new realms.

From his fieldwork in Karnataka, the eminent sociologist M. N. Srinivas also noted that the practice of Harikatha served to popularise a sanskritic theology among the non-brahmanical groups. Such Sanskritic practices exposed the populace to new ideas and values and hitherto unknown terms such Karma, dharma, papa, punya, maya, samsara and moksa which found frequent expression in the vast body of Sanskrit literature, sacred as well as secular.

Seen in this light the Bhakti tradition is not necessarily the innocent, liberating project that defenders of the Sohirobanath project make it out to be.

There is a strain of rhetoric in this country that resorts to challenging unpalatable research by claiming foreign bias. However, no less a person that the renowned Dalit-bahujan activist, Mahatma Phule was sceptical of the texts produced by the bhakti poets of Maharashtra. In his polemical tract Shetkarayacha Aasud (Cultivator's Whipcord, [1881] 2002) Phule suggests that the bhakti tradition emerged as an ideological response to the liberation that Islam was providing. “From amongst the bhat brahmans, Mukundaraja and Dnyanoba lifted some imaginary parts from the Bhagavat-bakhar, and wrote tactical books in Prakrit called Viveksindhu and Dnyaneshwari and crazed the ignorant farmer to such an extent that the farmers started to think of the Mohammedans as low, along with the Quran, and started hating them instead.” Bhakti, then, rather than uplifting the marginalised, befuddled their minds, made them hate their liberators and pushed them deeper into the hands of their brahmanical oppressors. We know enough about the nature of the Hindu Right’s vigorous assertions, both in Goa and India, to be aware that the sudden celebration of Sant Sohirobanath probably has nothing to do with any love for promoting universal brotherhood. On the contrary, it has probably more to do with snipping bahujan-dalit assertion in Goa, and casting non-Hindus as enemies.

Phule was in fact categorical on this point. In Ghulamgiri (Slavery, [1872] 2002), he asserts that “There were several brahman authors like Mukundaraj, Dnyaneshwar and Ramdasa, among the plenty that mushroomed all over, who wasted their talents in composing silly books. None of them dared to even touch the rope of bondage tied around the necks of the shudras. Obviously, they lacked the courage to renounce such wicked practices and deeds openly. So they made a distinction between ‘Karma Marga’ (the Path of Action) and ‘Dnyana Marga’ (the Path of Knowledge), assigning every wicked practice to the former and atheist opinion to the latter. Then they wrote heaps of hollow books like these and allowed their selfish brahman brothers to continue robbing the shudras.”

We would do well to learn from Phule that just as some of the bhakti poets were using vernacular languages to extend the reach of brahmanical power, contemporary Hindu nationalist associations, and the state itself, are using bhakti to sanskritise Dalit-Bahujan groups and convert them into brahmanised Hindus. This strategy would not have been problematic had it led to genuine empowerment of the Dalit-Bahujan groups. As noted by Ronki Ram, the problem with Sanskritisation is that this process reinforces the structural logic of Hinduism by asking Dalits to internalize the very same social system that they ought to contest in the first place. Sanskritisation forces Dalit-bahujans to imbibe outmoded cultural patterns of the upper castes without seeking any radical change in the hierarchical and oppressive structures of the brahmanical social order.

Dr. B.R. Ambedkar minced no words about the regressive impact of a narrowly defined Bhakti. In his final speech to the Constituent Assembly on 25 November, 1949, he pointed out that “in India, Bhakti or what may be called the path of devotion or hero-worship, plays a part in its politics unequalled in magnitude by the part it plays in the politics of any other country in the world. Bhakti in religion may be the road to the salvation of the soul. But in politics, Bhakti or hero-worship is a sure road to degradation and to eventual dictatorship.”

Seen in the light of scholarship and enlightened activism, the uncritical celebration of the Bhakti tradition through the symbol of Sant Sohirobanath does not bode well. It only presages the continued brahmanisation of Hindus of Goa, and worsens the shackling of the dalit-bahujan groups who are being directed to expend their energy on religion, rather than the assertion of the rights that are being denied them.

(A version of this post was first published in the O Heraldo dated  6 March 2014)