Hindu Festivals and Sectarian Nationalist Politics
The impact of Hindutva politics on our festivals and the way some of these are being weaponised, such as the Kumbh, is worth pondering over.
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Representational image of Kumbh Mela. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) combine’s agenda of Hindu Rashtra has been built upon narratives set in motion through multiple mechanisms. Festivals have been one such occasion for promoting its agenda. Also highlighting some deities for ‘social political messaging’ has been in the political arena in a major way.
The recently held Kumbh was a mega spectacle, which became more of a national event rather than a religious gathering. One major change in this year’s Kumbh was its heavy marketing as a cultural and developmental showcase. It was labelled as “The Greatest Show on Earth” for Hinduism.
On such occasions, organising the stay, cleanliness, and transport for devotees is a mandatory function of the State. This time what was witnessed was that the State got fully involved in the process of organising the event itself and the associates of ruling party, like Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), Dharma Sansads (Religious Parliaments) and individual saints/sadhus took the lead in propagating the components of the Hindu nationalist agenda and ‘Hate for Muslims’ at this congregation.
While the religious spiritual significance of the event is highly appreciated by the devotees, giving the Kumbh a political colour was very significant this time round. This is not the first time that Kumbh was organised. This time the occasion became the ground for enhancing the Hindutva agenda. The Uttar Pradesh government, while found inadequate in crowd management, had advertised and invited devotees in large numbers for quite some time. Crores were invested.
The event was marked by a boycott of Muslim traders from setting up shops and stalls at the venue. The reasons given were multiple, one fake one being stated by Swami Avimukteshwaranand was that Muslims spit in the food, so were kept away. Many such misleading videos were doing the rounds in the social media. It is another matter that Muslims opened their masjids and organised food for the desperate victims of the stampede.
One recalls that during the Mughal period, to make the Kumbh more comfortable for devotees, many ghats (river banks for bathing) and toilets were built. According to historian Heramb Chaturvedi, Akbar had appointed two of his officers to look after Kumbh arrangements.
This year, the whole area was full of hoardings of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. This time around a large area was reserved for VIPs, leading to stampedes in which a large number of deaths occurred. The arrangement for transport was poor and this got reflected in the death due to stampede at the New Delhi Railway station.
One upstart Swami, Dhirendra Shastri, whom Modi calls his younger brother, merrily said that those who died due to stampede has attained moksha (liberation). The water quality was at an abysmal low level with E. coli and high excreta content. To all the criticism about water quality and deaths, the Chief Minister commented that “pigs are seeing the dirt, and vultures are counting the dead!”
The VHP used the Kumbh as a golden opportunity for its Margdarshak Mandal meetings. Their speeches were full of venom for Muslims. The usual propaganda about Muslims relating to population increase, infiltrators from Bangladesh, cow protection was repeated at various meetings ad nauseam. The hate spreaders like Sadhvi Ritambhara, Praveen Togadia, and Yati Narsingnanand Saraswati had a field day with their speeches laced with hate. They had large audiences. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has successfully made use of sadhus for its political agenda and got publicity at State expense.
One such saffron-clad reiterated the demand for Kashi and Mathura and claimed that 1,860 temples had been ‘researched’, and need to be “restored”. The demand for closure of madrasas and converting English schools to gurukuls to create a Hindu Rashtra was also articulated.
In a book published in 2024, Irfan Engineer and Neha Dabhade draw our attention to the use of religious festivals as occasions to instigate violence. Our festivals have been pleasant social occasions, cutting across religious lines. Now the trend is to take out a procession during Hindu festivals, pass through Muslim areas, change the green flag on the mosques to saffron flag, and dance with swords in hand. At the same time. hateful slogans against Muslims rent the air.
In this book, the author duo points out that Ram Navami festival, in particular in 2022-2023, saw violence in Howrah and Hooghly (West Bengal - 2023), Sambahji Nagar (Maharashtra- 2023), Vadodara (Gujarat- 2023), Biharsharif and Sasaram (Bihar-2023), Khargone (Madhya Pradesh - 2022), Himmat Nagar and Khambat (Gujarat- 2022) and Lohardaga (Jharkhand- 2022).
Engineer concludes “Even a small Group of Hindu nationalists masquerading as ‘religious procession’ could insist on passing through minority inhabited areas and provoke some youth using political and abusive slogans and playing violent songs and music, hoping that in reaction, a stone would be thrown at them. The state would do the rest by arresting a large number of members of a minority and demolishing their homes and properties within days without any judicial procedure.”
At another level Right-wing politics has also brought up and promoted a goddess Shabri and Lord Hanuman in adivasi areas. As anti-Christian violence picked up in the adivasi areas during the past three decades, these areas saw an intense attempt by Vanavasi Kalyan Ashram and VHP (RSS’s progeny) promoting Shabri. Shabri Kumbh was held near Dangs in Gujarat. A Shabri Temple has been erected in these areas. That time Swami Aseemanand of VHP was working in this area. He was the one; who was later accused by Maharashtra Anti-Terror Squad for being part of the bomb blast conspiracy in Malegaon, Ajmer and Mecca Masjid.
Why were Shabri and Hanuman picked up to be promoted in these areas? Shabri (in Ramayana) was a poor woman who did not have enough food to offer to Lord Ram. She offered him berries but after first checking their taste. The contrast is clear. In urban areas we have Durga, Laxmi and Sarswati to worship, while for adivasi areas it is Shabri. Similarly, Lord Hanuman (devotee of Lord Ram) has been popularised in adivasi areas.
The impact of Hindutva politics on our festivals reflects a lot about their politics. The way some of these are being weaponised, or the way the Kumbh was made a ground for anti-Muslim rhetoric or the way Shabri and Hanuman are being popularised in adivasi areas, is worth pondering over.
The writer is a human rights activist, who taught at IIT Bombay. The views are personal.
.jpg)
Representational image of Kumbh Mela. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) combine’s agenda of Hindu Rashtra has been built upon narratives set in motion through multiple mechanisms. Festivals have been one such occasion for promoting its agenda. Also highlighting some deities for ‘social political messaging’ has been in the political arena in a major way.
The recently held Kumbh was a mega spectacle, which became more of a national event rather than a religious gathering. One major change in this year’s Kumbh was its heavy marketing as a cultural and developmental showcase. It was labelled as “The Greatest Show on Earth” for Hinduism.
On such occasions, organising the stay, cleanliness, and transport for devotees is a mandatory function of the State. This time what was witnessed was that the State got fully involved in the process of organising the event itself and the associates of ruling party, like Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), Dharma Sansads (Religious Parliaments) and individual saints/sadhus took the lead in propagating the components of the Hindu nationalist agenda and ‘Hate for Muslims’ at this congregation.
While the religious spiritual significance of the event is highly appreciated by the devotees, giving the Kumbh a political colour was very significant this time round. This is not the first time that Kumbh was organised. This time the occasion became the ground for enhancing the Hindutva agenda. The Uttar Pradesh government, while found inadequate in crowd management, had advertised and invited devotees in large numbers for quite some time. Crores were invested.
The event was marked by a boycott of Muslim traders from setting up shops and stalls at the venue. The reasons given were multiple, one fake one being stated by Swami Avimukteshwaranand was that Muslims spit in the food, so were kept away. Many such misleading videos were doing the rounds in the social media. It is another matter that Muslims opened their masjids and organised food for the desperate victims of the stampede.
One recalls that during the Mughal period, to make the Kumbh more comfortable for devotees, many ghats (river banks for bathing) and toilets were built. According to historian Heramb Chaturvedi, Akbar had appointed two of his officers to look after Kumbh arrangements.
This year, the whole area was full of hoardings of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. This time around a large area was reserved for VIPs, leading to stampedes in which a large number of deaths occurred. The arrangement for transport was poor and this got reflected in the death due to stampede at the New Delhi Railway station.
One upstart Swami, Dhirendra Shastri, whom Modi calls his younger brother, merrily said that those who died due to stampede has attained moksha (liberation). The water quality was at an abysmal low level with E. coli and high excreta content. To all the criticism about water quality and deaths, the Chief Minister commented that “pigs are seeing the dirt, and vultures are counting the dead!”
The VHP used the Kumbh as a golden opportunity for its Margdarshak Mandal meetings. Their speeches were full of venom for Muslims. The usual propaganda about Muslims relating to population increase, infiltrators from Bangladesh, cow protection was repeated at various meetings ad nauseam. The hate spreaders like Sadhvi Ritambhara, Praveen Togadia, and Yati Narsingnanand Saraswati had a field day with their speeches laced with hate. They had large audiences. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has successfully made use of sadhus for its political agenda and got publicity at State expense.
One such saffron-clad reiterated the demand for Kashi and Mathura and claimed that 1,860 temples had been ‘researched’, and need to be “restored”. The demand for closure of madrasas and converting English schools to gurukuls to create a Hindu Rashtra was also articulated.
In a book published in 2024, Irfan Engineer and Neha Dabhade draw our attention to the use of religious festivals as occasions to instigate violence. Our festivals have been pleasant social occasions, cutting across religious lines. Now the trend is to take out a procession during Hindu festivals, pass through Muslim areas, change the green flag on the mosques to saffron flag, and dance with swords in hand. At the same time. hateful slogans against Muslims rent the air.
In this book, the author duo points out that Ram Navami festival, in particular in 2022-2023, saw violence in Howrah and Hooghly (West Bengal - 2023), Sambahji Nagar (Maharashtra- 2023), Vadodara (Gujarat- 2023), Biharsharif and Sasaram (Bihar-2023), Khargone (Madhya Pradesh - 2022), Himmat Nagar and Khambat (Gujarat- 2022) and Lohardaga (Jharkhand- 2022).
Engineer concludes “Even a small Group of Hindu nationalists masquerading as ‘religious procession’ could insist on passing through minority inhabited areas and provoke some youth using political and abusive slogans and playing violent songs and music, hoping that in reaction, a stone would be thrown at them. The state would do the rest by arresting a large number of members of a minority and demolishing their homes and properties within days without any judicial procedure.”
At another level Right-wing politics has also brought up and promoted a goddess Shabri and Lord Hanuman in adivasi areas. As anti-Christian violence picked up in the adivasi areas during the past three decades, these areas saw an intense attempt by Vanavasi Kalyan Ashram and VHP (RSS’s progeny) promoting Shabri. Shabri Kumbh was held near Dangs in Gujarat. A Shabri Temple has been erected in these areas. That time Swami Aseemanand of VHP was working in this area. He was the one; who was later accused by Maharashtra Anti-Terror Squad for being part of the bomb blast conspiracy in Malegaon, Ajmer and Mecca Masjid.
Why were Shabri and Hanuman picked up to be promoted in these areas? Shabri (in Ramayana) was a poor woman who did not have enough food to offer to Lord Ram. She offered him berries but after first checking their taste. The contrast is clear. In urban areas we have Durga, Laxmi and Sarswati to worship, while for adivasi areas it is Shabri. Similarly, Lord Hanuman (devotee of Lord Ram) has been popularised in adivasi areas.
The impact of Hindutva politics on our festivals reflects a lot about their politics. The way some of these are being weaponised, or the way the Kumbh was made a ground for anti-Muslim rhetoric or the way Shabri and Hanuman are being popularised in adivasi areas, is worth pondering over.
The writer is a human rights activist, who taught at IIT Bombay. The views are personal.
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