Naraka Shoora: Turning Traditions on their head

Some weeks ago, sometime around the eve of Diwali, a friend of mine posed a question that would have made proud the masters who crafted the Agamas and Dharmashastras. ‘At what time is it’, he asked, ‘that the Narakasura, whom we consign to flames on the eve of Diwali, becomes a Narakasura?  Is it when the head-mask is put on? Or when the lights are put on? Or is it when the music starts? Or the moment the frame is made? Is there a specific moment?’ Continuing in this Agamic tradition, a friend of his opined that the real moment should actually start, when the effigy of the Narkasur is burnt down and the Diwali lamps are lit up. At the same time however, this respondent lamented that nowadays, we concentrate more upon creating Narkasur (the symbol of evil) than that quintessential mark of the Goan Diwali, the Akashdivo.

Kancha Ilaiah

When lamenting this inversion of the ‘traditional’ rules of the Diwali celebrations however, this contemporary Agamist may have grabbed the wrong end of the stick. Take the example of the public Ganesh festival, which has come a long way from the time of its invention by Lokmanya Tilak, and is today marked by loud film-music and often by drunken young men dancing to these popular tracks. While the poor Lokmanya must be turning in his grave, the contemporary intellectual Kancha Ilaiah has suggested that these trends, rather than being lamented should be seen as the Dalitisation of the Ganesh festival. Ilaiah’s argument would be that while Tilak’s public festival was intended to consolidate the population along nationalist, brahmanical, and thus elitist lines, the trend otherwise so lamented, should be seen as a populist correction of this trend.

In other parts of the country, the Dalitisation, or de-brahmanisation, of popular Hindu festivals has proceeded apace along rather different patterns.  This trend has been led by Dalit student organisations who have argued that the myths surrounding Hindu gods and goddess and their festivals are in fact symbolic representations of the history of 'upper' castes’ domination over the indigenous population of the country – SC, ST and OBCs.  To correct this history, they therefore re-interpret these events from a Bahujan perspective. Thus for example, the members of the All India Backward Students Forum (AIBSF) in the JNU campus in Delhi suggested that Dussehra was in fact a celebration of the killing of the Sudra king Mahishasa by the upper-caste woman Durga.  Similarly on the campus of the Osmania University, on the eve of Diwali, some students cast Naraka Chathurdashi as “Narakasura Vardhanti,” the death anniversary of Naraka. They reinterpreted the event as commemoration of the killing of the Dalit hero Naraka by the brahmanical figure Krishna, who killed Naraka to suppress the revolt by Dalits against upper castes.  Arguing that the Asura was appended to a name to demonise the character, Narakasura was now called “Naraka Shura”. In this reworking of the name, Naraka remains the name of entity, while the Asura is cast away to make Naraka a Shur-Vir, or brave warrior.

The event at the JNU campus not surprisingly, did not go down well. Upper-caste students taking offense to this inversion and demonization of brahmanical deities assaulted the students of the AIBSF. This sort of confrontational violence has not been universal however, and the modern history of Kerala and the Onam festival is perhaps an interesting example.

Mahabali returns to Kerala

Most people today, both within Kerala and without, see the festival of Onam as the moment when the mythical king Mahabali returns to his former realm, thanks to a final boon by the Vishnu’s Vaman avatar, to check on the well-being of his subjects. It is to welcome him and reassure him that all continues to be well, that Onam is celebrated with pomp and style. Writing on the historical evolution of this festival however, J. Devika argues that ‘Onam used to be, in many parts of Kerala, … more a celebration of Vishnu, rather than Maveli — Mahabali — and domestic rituals associated with Onam celebrated not Mahabali but Vamanamurty.’ She points out that a different interpretation of Onam was forged ‘in the decades in which the movement for uniting Malayalam-speaking regions into Kerala gathered force, one in which the left was certainly a hegemonic presence. Brahmanical mythology according to which Kerala was founded by Parasurama the warrior sage was insistently attacked by left-leaning and anti-caste intellectuals …who launched a scathing attack against the setting up of a depiction of Parasurama outside the venue of the Aikya Kerala Conference in the 1940s.’ As in the case of Goa, Puranic legends cast Parashurama as the mythical creator of Kerala, and clearly, the Aikya Kerala movement, set up to consolidate the Kerala state was seeking to draw on this origin myth to create a  popular history for the nascent Kerala sub-nation. As a result of this attack, Onam was converted from a festival focused on the Vaman avatar, to a celebration of the benevolent asura king Mahabali, an idea that was spread in school text books, and through them into popular imagination.

Mahatma Jotiba Phule

This overturning of the Mahabali- Vaman avatar relationship however, has a much longer tradition than that involved in the consolidation of Malayalam speaking territories into the State of Kerala. This tradition can be said to date back to the efforts of the 19^th century philosopher and social reformer Mahatma Jotiba Phule. In a recent book,  The World of Ideas in Modern Marathi: Phule,Vinoba, Savarkar, G. P. Deshpande points out that Phule con­trasted Baliraja, the shudratishudra king, with Vamana, the brahmanical avatara, to make a point about the nature of power relations between caste  groups in the sub-continent.  Deshpande argues that the extent to which Phule returned to this myth in his work would allow us to see Phule as possibly constructing all recorded history as the history of the Vamana-Baliraja struggle. Not surprisingly, Phule is an important figure in the political pantheon of Dalit political groups.

The exploring of the social relations and social history encoded within the myths that form the basis of Hindu festivals may not be as simple a task as a merely intellectual discussion however. The attempt of the AIBSF on the JNU campus ended up with upper-caste students assaulting the members of the AIBSF. Given the sensitivity with which we in India take our religious figures, one can see that suggesting that it is not the Asura, but the Vishnu avatar who is the bad guy, may fall nothing short of asking for the cataclysmic to break down on us. The Dalit activist on the other hand, would argue that the un-deifying of the Vishnu avatar is central to undoing the brahmanical violence, perpetuated on Dalit communities on a daily basis, and in allowing Dalit communities to construct a history that explains the conditions that they find themselves in.

The options are admittedly not easy, and we don’t have to necessarily take a call now. We need to merely recognize that this social process is on, and watch for what happens. The Agamas were/are scriptures that lay out the ritual guidelines for the appropriate construction of an image that will subsequently be infused with the spirit of the deity. Given the attempts that are on to re-evaluate popular myths and interrogate belief-systems, it appears that the almost Agamic questions that were referred at the start of this column, are not entirely out of place?

(A version of this post was first published in the Gomantak Times 25 Nov 2011)

Separate States and Self-determination: Learning from the Telangana struggle

A week ago the Deccan Chronicle published a statement by the famed activist Kacha Iliah. The statement was a response to a demonstration that had been held outside Illiah’s house by students who are pro-Telangana. These students opposed Illiah’s support of the demand of tribal activists in current Andhra Pradesh for Manya Seema, a separate State of their own. Iliah reports that ‘Most of the upper caste Telangana leaders were of the view that those who live in the region should support Telangana and no other issue of caste, tribe, gender or exploitation should figure in the debate in any form’. The Telangana agitators, he argues ‘seem to think that whatever their position, the tribals should not raise their problems now. If they raise such issues now, the separate Telangana process would be hindered. Similarly, if the minorities or exploited castes raise the question of their status in Telangana state, the process would be hindered’.

This debate is an interesting one for a number of reasons, not least because there is an echo here from the observations of activists demanding the recognition of the Roman script for Konkani. In my conversations with them, they too recollected that at the height of the Konkani language agitation, the details of script was never discussed, but left for another time. The activists recollect that they were told not to worry, that their interests (i.e. that of Roman script users) would be taken care of. Subsequently when they raise the issue, the old fear of merger into Maharashtra is raised. This column is not about the Romi–script demand however.

Reading the text of Iliah’s response, it occurred to me, that for reasons that will become evident, we should perhaps see the demands for Telangana and Manya Seema as self-determination movements. These movements may use sub-nationalist languages, and continue within the framework of the Indian nation-state, but they are in fact demands the recognition of their difference from the larger group within which they find themselves lumped. We should not be surprised to realize that there is an overlap between the contours of the demand for Telangana and of the boundaries of the Nizam’s provinces. There is a similar mulki movement, in the portion of the Nizam’s domains that are now subsumed within Karnataka. Similarly, as was the case with Jharkhand, Manya Seema seems to draw from cries of non-representation of tribal interests and their persecution within the non-tribal polity. Anti-colonial self-determination movements made similar demands; for democratic representation within political formations that undermined local (i.e. national interests) for the interests of the metropolitan centre. Nationalist self-determination movements assert cultural differences that cannot be sustained in the current political arrangement. We should bear in mind that most successful nationalist self-determination movements began within the framework of the colonial legal system, and were radicalized only when rebuffed by the colonial State. Why should we therefore, see Telangana and Manya Seema differently?

Allow me to confess support for the Telangana movement. From within the alleyways of my twisted imagination I see it as the right, and perhaps natural response, of the former Nizam’s provinces to articulate their difference from coastal Andhra. Merely speaking the same language does not guarantee a similarity of interests. There is such a thing as a different political history that counts as well. Clearly there is a subtext to my expression of support. As Goan, I speak from a similar context where a subject population was dragged willy-nilly into the Indian Union. And yet, despite this support, one can have no sympathy for the Telangana activists’ opposition to the tribal demand.

It is typical of self-determination movements, to deny or delay the demands of the weaker. This has been the standard ploy of most citizenship movements, starting with the French Revolution. This column referred a couple of weeks ago to the Haitian revolution that sprung from a refusal of the French metropolitans to recognize that the Rights of Man applied to slaves as well. For a long time, women too were not deemed to be able to benefit from these Rights of ‘Man’. In the light of the colonial empires’ careful distinctions between citizens and subject populations; nationalist freedom struggles for self-determination were a part of this demand to extend citizenship rights to the elites of the colonial world. Thus the demands that we see popping up in various parts of India, are not aberrations, but continuations of the logic of citizenship. As they continue this logic, they continue also the exclusions of the original understanding of citizenship, where the demand is made in the name of all, but restricted to but a few.

In light of the playing out of this logic therefore, there seems to be matter here for us to realize that while the demand is something we can sympathize with, the real solution to the problem does not lie with self-determination movements.

And yet, as a friend pointed out however, are there ‘real solutions’ anywhere? We invariably have to settle for ‘precarious consensus’ in the sphere of the political. The fact is that eventually, these ‘precarious consensus’ will break down, as any such consensus does. The resulting chaos (or fitna if you will) will result in new articulations of suffering, victimhood and disadvantage, leading to a deepening of democracy. Indeed, one can thus see the Indian ‘police action’ in Hyderabad as necessary to get rid of the feudal rule of the Nizam, and the subsequent Telangana movement as necessary to get rid of Andhra dominance, and the tribal demand as necessary to a broader realization of democracy in the region.

The above is a pragmatic response and I am not saying that we (especially those of us who see merit in the tribal demand) should abandon the route of demand for a separate state. As long as independent nation-states are the basis of the articulation of the international order, such a route is inevitable, and indeed necessary. However, if we hold some cynicism as regards the success of the separate State solution, even as we fight for it, we might be better served.

Thus we can continue to support the separate state of Telangana, and articulate a demand of Manya Seema, hopefully resulting in an amelioration of the lives of the tribals in this process. But we should disabuse ourselves of any hope of a final solution in a separate state.

(A version of the article was first published in the Gomantak Times, 7 April 2010)