Valentine’s Day, Maha Shivratri and the Perennial Problem of
Love in Patriarchal Orthodoxies
By Jawhar Sircar
(Published in The Wire on 14.2.2018)
The middle of February is when
spring travels to Europe to tell the snows that it is time to start leaving and
then rushes to India to a grand welcome. It is also the time when two
festivals, the Christian Valentine’s Day and the Hindu Maha Shivaratri also
arrive, but they take care not to meet each other, face to face.
But
this year, they have decided to break this rule and will arrive together on the
February 14. The morning is for Valentine and the night of February 13 and 14
is for Shiva. So, let us see what we can expect.
Hindus
celebrate Shiva’s wedding anniversary for it is on this day that he is said to
have married Parvati. On the other hand, the Christian Church has been rather
embarrassed with this mid-February festival of love. For several centuries, the
Church tried to suppress this basically pagan celebration called Lupercalia by
ancient Romans, which permitted a lot of sexual liberties. The Church naturally
condemned as downright immoral this open free mixing of the sexes and it
denounced the goddess Juno Februata in whose name this ‘fever of love’ went on.
It
did not succeed fully and so, according to scholars
like Barbara Walker, “The Church replaced the goddess with a mythical male
martyr, Saint Valentine.” He had conflicting origins and one of them said that
he was a pure, handsome Roman youth who gave his life for his chaste
sweetheart. One may notice how the central character changed from female to
male, as all religions have an overriding patriarchal streak, and how
relationships between lovers were sanitised to become more respectable.
That
reminds us how the Nimbarka sect of Vaishnavas and several poets of northern
India declared that Radha and Krishna were actually a married couple and how
many noted religious leaders endorsed this stand. Love has been a perennial
problem with patriarchal religious orthodoxies, especially if it dares to come
before or outside legitimate marriage or beyond caste or class. Can we forget
the tragedy that visited Shiva and Sati in Daksha’s yagna and
the cost that they had to pay for ‘love marriage’?
The
custom of Shivaratri became more pronounced mainly in the last two or three
centuries after Brahmanism was restored in Bengal following the defeat of
Muslim rulers by the British. The philosophy was that marriage is so serious
and complex that it was best left to parents to consult gods, caste rules and
horoscopes to locate husbands like Shiva for good girls who prayed and kept
fasts.
At the same time, we see glimpses
of how, throughout history and legend, societal respectability had to gulp and
accept cheeky (bearaa) characters like Kama and Rati in India and
Eros, Cupid or even Priapus in Europe. Kāmadeva, for instance, is linked not
only to Shiva, but also to Brahma who created him, according to the Shiva
Purana. He can be traced to the Rig Veda and
the Atharva Vedaand while the Vishnu Purana says
that he is a side of Narayana, the Bhagavata Purana claims
that he is an aspect of Krishna. This just reveals that his existence and
symbolism could not be denied by the high and legitimate schools of Hinduism.
If we go just by the dates of these texts, that span a period of two and a half
thousand years, we see that Kama or Madana was in considerable demand and did
not disappear from the stage like Indra or Varuna.
It
is interesting to note that, like the handsome Roman youth who was visualised
as Valentine by the Christians, Kāmadeva is represented as a good looking young
man with green skin who wields a bow made of sugarcane and has a string of
honeybees following him. His arrows are decorated with five kinds of fragrant
flowers like Mallika and Ashoka and he arrives with the symbols of spring like
cuckoos, humming bees and the gentle breeze.
More fascinating is the fact that
civilisations so distinct and distant from each other like the Hindu and the
Graeco Roman had the same bow and arrow motif for the god of love, who was
called Eros by the Greeks and Cupid by the Romans. In fact, Cupid appeared in
ancient Europe as a phallus with wings, and it was much later that Renaissance
art converted it with a new visual form: as a cherubic baby angel flying around
with a sweet little bow and arrow. The heart pierced with the arrow of love
remains the most widely understood symbol all over the world and card
manufactures make millions of dollars from it on Valentine’s Day, which is
basically a highly commercialised festival.
Coming
back to India, we now encounter aggressive fanatics policing public places to
control couples on Valentine’s Day, without realising the roots of their own
religion. Renaming it as Kama-Rati Divas may make sense to this mentally weak
tribe. It is my submission that while the powerful Vaishnava sect absorbed
various aspects of troublesome love through Radha-Krishna and Holi in the heady
spirit of spring, the rival Shaivas also tackled the issue of desire through a
very virile Shiva, who also has his tales of frolics.
But
without restraint and order, society cannot function and it is usually thought
that Shiva’s punishing of Kāmadeva was like showing the ‘red card’ to
uncontrolled players. We have heard the story of Madana-bhasma or Kama Dahana,
that appears in the Matsya Purana, where Kāmadeva is
burnt to ashes by Shiva for tempting him with lust while he was deep in
meditation.
Hinduism
is basically the management of contradictions and this is evident in this story
as well, which also says that all Kamadeva was doing was performing a sacred
duty by arousing lust in Shiva. After all, the gods had sent him on this sacred
mission so that Shiva and Parvati could mate and produce a super hero,
Kartikeya, who alone was destined to defeat the unvanquished Tarakashura, the
terror of both the worlds. In a way, therefore, it was not Kama-Dahana, but
Shivaratri with all its vratas that was supposed to bring
in an order into the matter of desire, through a religiously regulated
festival.
Further contradictions are evident
in the next part of the story, where Shiva listened to the wailing pleas of
Rati, Kama’s devastated wife, and resuscitated Madana, but in a disembodied
form. Hence Kāmadeva is called Ananga or Atanu, i.e, one who has no body. The
spirit of love embodied by Kama, however, fills the cosmos and humans remain
afflicted with lust, on and off. Incidentally, the legend of Kama was exported
with all other fascinating stories when Shaiva dharma went abroad, and the
Hindus of Java-dwipa celebrate in their 12th-century poem Smara-dahana. Kama
and his consort Rati are called Kamajaya and Kamarati in Kakawin poetry and
later Wayang narratives, that Indonesians perform with their famous shadow
puppet shows, with leather characters.
Before we end, let us observe how
an original god of fertility in Greece was represented by a phallus, like
Shiva. He was the brother of Eros and his name was Priapus, which is also a
medical term for the male organ. He was supposed to have gone from the present
day Turkey and was worshipped in the Roman Empire as well, where he became the
patron of merchants. The worship of this phallic god continued among rural
folk, even after Christianity removed all pagan gods or absorbed them as
saints.
There
were other phallic gods like Hermes in Greece and Mutunus Tutunus among Romans
whose role was to ensure satisfaction within marriage. Even earlier, the
Egyptians worshipped Isis and Min, while the Norwegians had their extra-manly
deity, Freyr. The Balkan kingdoms celebrated their phallic Kukeri and distant
Japan still has fertility shrines with this symbol.
Wallis
Budge states very clearly that in Europe, “giant phalli were adored up to the
17th century as saints” and he produces a long list as well. Sir William
Hamilton describes the rites of worship of phallic saint, Cosmo in the 18th
century. When bomb ravaged English churches were being rebuilt after the Second
World War, the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments discovered several
phallic stones buried under the floor. Therefore, the shock that Europeans
visitors to India expressed at even the civilised version of Shiva worship,
especially on Shivaratri and in the month of Sravana, appears quite uncalled
for.
As
an ancient civilisation, Hinduism has shown remarkable tolerance towards all
needs of humans, and it is tragic that this accommodative spirit is being
perverted by some. Ancient India mastered the art of accepting all facts of life
and embedded their spirit into festivals that celebrate them with maturity:
quite openly, cleanly and without any self righteous shame.
https://thewire.in/223762/valentines-day-maha-shivratri-perennial-love-patriarchy/
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