The God of the Bengali
Peasant
Jawhar Sircar, April, 2017
The unprecedented
display of aggression that we witnessed in Bengal in April, all in the name of
Rama Navami, has perhaps distracted attention of Bengalis who almost forgot
their good old traditional deities of Chaitra. This month, from mid-March to
mid-April, has always belonged to Shiva, Shitala, Annapurana or Basanti and the
very indigenous Dharma-Thakur. Bengalis were very clear that Durga came home
only in Ashwin and reserved ten full holidays to rejoice in her name. What lent
most colour to this month was Gajan, which is so similar to Taai-pusam
in Tamil country. Throughout the month, several people dressed up as
Shiva-Parvati, and wandered around streets and localities: singing, dancing and
invoking Mahadev. It was the Bengali way of taking a religion to the streets,
with devotion and pantomime, not with swords and threats.
From the reports of 19th century British and
Indian ethnographers, we read a lot about Rama Navami being celebrated in north
India, and also from other pockets, but do not find any mention of it in
Bengal. There are countless mahallas or localities in the State that
proudly carry the names of so many deities, Manasa, Shasti, Chandi,
Dhrama-thakur, Shitala: all of who are fromthe pre-Brahmanised indigenous
pantheon. We even come across many named after Jagannath's Rathas, but
we hardly ever come across Hanuman-localities or too many medeival
Rama-mandirs. Exceptions do exist, like the Ramarajatala Rama Mandir of Howrah
but they are very few, and even this temple was set up by a north Indian
family.
In any case, we need to be very clear
that there is a big difference in celebrating Durga's victory and the nine days
leading to Rama's birth. The two traditions are quite distinct and they cross
each other primarily at the junction of Akal Bodhan in Ashwin.This was
when Rama is said to have prayed to Durga for her blessings: the twain do come
face to face briefly, but say goodbye to each other immediately thereafter.
While most Indians observe the Ashwin Navaratri and Dussherain the
name of Lord Rama, Bengalis do not worship it in Rama's name: they pray to
Durga, Durga and only Durga. Bengalis have this strange trait of choosing to
differ in every possible domain. In politics, for instance, they have created a
Guinness record by electing those parties to power for forty long years, who
were invariably opposed to those who assumed power at the Centre. Even, when
all Indians actually "go and fly kites" on Makar Sankranti day in
mid-January, no self respecting Bengali would ever do so, even with woollen
mufflers and caps that would do justice in the North Pole. So, the congenitally
different Bengalis fly kites in September in honour of their variant of
Vishwakarma, a post-industrial god of machinery. And they fly kites with the
full gusto of football matches, as if East Bengal and Mohun Bagan were fighting
with little flimsy coloured paper, high in the skies. We shall soon see more
such 'differences'.
At this juncture, let us remember that the Ramayana
was not the property of any particular region or language. In fact, the
Tamils were the first to celebrate it in their own style and profusion of
emotional expressions, with their Kamba-Ramayanam that was created in
the 12th century, full four hundred years before Tulsidas's Ramcharitmanas
swept the Ganga-Yamuna belt. There are other versionsthatalso precede
Tulsidas's poem, like the Telugu SriRanganathaRamayanam, the Assamese KothaRamayanaand
even a JainaRamayana in Kannada. These regional traditions underline the
beautiful plurality of India and are excellent examples of our 'unity in
diversity'. They combine, quite adroitly, local cultural preferences and
legends within a broad national framework that was initiated by the Sanskrit Ramayana:
and none of them was more 'national' than the other.Tulsidas's Ramcharitamanas
of the 16th century was not in Hindi, but in the very sweet Avadhi dialect and
it became immensely popular among the masses in the north. This created an
ambience for "Rama worship to be very widespread in north India and the
places associated with his life (became) great places of pilgrimage, while his
birthday is a day of great rejoicing". As this report of 1921 reveals, the
East and the North East may have missed out on the Rama Navami tradition
of fasting and reciting sacred texts, perhaps because Ramchandra did not pass
through their lands.
It is time now to return to our theme on
what exactly did the Bengalis worship in Chaitra. Well, it was Shiva and not
Rama who loomed larger than life here, for it was primarily his month. But this
Shiva was not the all powerful and often-fearsome Rudra of Kailash. This Shiva
who ruled Bengalwas a very peasantised mutant: a jolly, ganja-loving,
pot-bellied,playful leader of mischievous ganas. From medieval Bengali
literature, the Mangal Kavyas folk ballads, that were so popular between
the 15th and the 17th centuries, we find that the 'high god' version Shiva was
repeatedly losing out to the 'ugly' indigenous deities at the box offices of
religion in Bengal. It was only when Shiva discarded his regal demeanour and
transformed himself into a poor rice-cultivating peasant did he win the votesof
the masses in Bengal. People simply loved his mingling with the common
distressed folk, dressed in a tattered gamchha, who is chased around
with a jhaaru quite often byan exasperated Durga. It is the same Bengal
that lionised the farmers ofSingur who shooed away the mighty Tatas, and even
punished their own indulgent Communist comrades after three long decades, for
even dreaming of re-industrialisation! By the way, the Bengali Durga is
quite also different, as nowhere else in India does she appear with her full
family: even though one wonders why all her children look the other way as she
fights the terrible Mahishasura.
Let us now return to the other folk
deities that the Bengalis have worshipped for centuriesin the month of Chaitra.
From John Murdoch's well-known Hindu and Muhammedan Festivals of 1904 we
learn that Basanti was worshipped in Bengal from the 7th day of Chaitra Shukla
Paksha and that "this yellow goddess was the third of the seven
Shitala sisters invoked during dreadful diseases". She was sanskritised
later as 'Durga' and worshipped in Chaitra, but as the report says, her
celebration was "not with such pomp and universality" as the 'real
Durga' of autumn. Incidentally, people invoked another goddess, Shasthi, on the
12th of Chaitra that was known asA-shoka Shasthi, the sixth lunar day
that drives away shoka or bereavement. This poor goddess lost her
popularity quite a bit once better medical care ensured greater chances of
infants surviving that dreaded 'post-natal mortality' phase.The local goddess
of small-pox Shitala's ratings also dipped as this terrible disease has been
eradicated. And then came family planning that propagated the two-child norm
while hard economics ensured that one single child became the rule. Being
Bengalis, these poor kids are trained rigorously from birth to stand first in
everything, from studies to music, but avoid physical stress like the plague.
Unlike the south, where one Mariamman takes care of several diseases
like a 'general physician', finicky Bengalis require a whole pantheon of
choices of deities who were like mono-ailment specialists, much like the
annoying narrow expertise that modern doctors flaunt.
But the most
popular ancient folk god of westernBengal was Dharma-thakur and his name is an
obviously sanskritised one. It was he who reigned supreme during Chaitra,
before being unseated by a more
strategic Shiva. Their inter serelations are rather complex and
difficult to understand. Let us remember, Brahmanism in Bengal had really an
uphill task for several centuries as did the in most of India that lies beyond
'Aryavart'. Vedic gods were hardly known in this State except in pandit-sabhas
and the Puranic deities that Brahmans introduced could not stop Buddhism
from ruling Bengal for four centuries, at the time of the Palas. Their
repertoire was just not attractive enough to compete with the charismatic Pirs
who came up after Islam stepped in. We need to recall that ultimately
two-thirds of the Bengali-speaking people voted for Islam. As hinted, the
mighty Shiva and his wife were continuously beaten in the game of one-upmanship
by Dharma-Thakur as well as by the local snake deity, Manasa. The
medieval ballads of Kalketu and Phullara actually represented the rise of the
darker people, the hunters and herdsmen who turned to farming, blessed as they
were by another Bengali folk goddess Chondi. This autochthonous deity took care
to retain her original name through a prefix like Betai, Pagla, Shibai, Khyepa,
Olai, etc, to distinguish herself from the Brahmanical Chandi.Dharma or
Dhammaraj ensured that his devotee, the local folk hero, defeated a mighty
chieftain, who had made the mistake of choosing an 'up-country' goddess.
When learned
Brahmans could not win over the masses with their Sanskrit Puranas and
later the Upa-Puranas,it were the rural purohits took up the
challenge as it was their livlihood that was at stake. They simply switched
deities and started singing in praise of local gods and goddesses. Medieval
Bangla literature reveals that almost all kavis were from the upper
castes. As they absorbed "the gods of small men", the worship of
'crude stones' and sacred groves was considered as legitimate as praying to
Brahmanic images in temples. Incidentally, the tradition of placing terracotta hathi-ghora
under trees, as mannat, can be traced through the entire Deccan right
upto the East, which thus represents a common cultural sub-strata. It was often
retained by many who took to Islam: as their 'the horse of the Pir saheb'.
Before concluding,
we need to unravel how the 'peasant god' could make this break-through
in Bengal with a new brand of mass-level Shaivism. Before this, the Go-kshetrainspiredNaths
of the Gorakshanathculthad tried with their Yogis and mendicants, but could not
win. It is fascinating to note that the main intersection in Calcutta is still
between Chowringhee road, named after a Nath-guru, and Dharma-tala where the
ancient shrine of Dhrama-thakur stood. It was later shifted to a site a
kilometre away. The Bom-Bhola Shiva did the trick in Bengal by subsuming
large doses of the autochthonous Dharma cult. For instance, the popular folk
rituals of Dharma, including the festival of Gajan and the ritual of Charak
were associated with Dharma. Peasants carried out these rites during
blazing summer as prayers to the sun: to move on and crack the clayey earth
with so well that the plough and its accompaniments could break down the soil
with lesser effort. Ralph Nicholas of Chicago U, who spent many years on folk
gods in Medinipur, was among the earliest to notice the striking similarities
in the worship and rituals of the earlier Dharma deity and the peasant Shiva.
The main attraction for the crowds at the Charak ritualwas to see how
devotees swung high in the air with ropes that had big hooks inserted into
their backs. Though this was officially banned for a century, some of Dharma's
worshippers and Shiva's still risk the law and their lives, in the name of god.
The rites of self torture are still quite gruesome, as devotees push sharp big
needles into their tongues, cheeks and bodies or rollover thick prickly bushes
or dancing on burning flames and red-hot coals for never-ending periods.
But, all said and
done, the tradition was, and is, to inflict a lot of pain but on their own
bodies. They did not bring out weapons to intimidate others, for none will
believe that Bhagawan Ramachandra ever did so.
`
(Published in 'The Wire' on 21st April, 2017)
