A Prayer For India

If you could write just one prayer for India, which prayer would it be? Would it say something about the different religions in India?

This photo-essay is about inter-mixing and co-living of religions in India. It has twenty of my favourite images related to religions from different parts of India.

Let me start with an image - it has a Sadhu, a saffron wearing ascetic. Sadhus wander from place to place, are not bound by caste boundaries and live on alms. A sadhu represents the ancient Indic tradition of spirituality, a personal search for a deeper meaning of life. This picture was clicked at Kamakhaya temple in Guwahati (Assam) in the north-east of India.

Growing up in a multi-religious India

My religious views have been shaped by my growing up in India, where I was exposed to different religions since childhood. My second image represents the two religions which are important in my family today and it is from Kerala at the southern tip of India. It was clicked in a transport van, and has the icons of Madonna and Ganesh on the dashboard.

I grew up in a Delhi, where my mostly atheist parents had many friends of different religions. Our extended family was mainly Hindu, though it had some roots that connected to both Sikhism and Islam. I learned about the different manifestations of religions through my extended family, neighbours and friends.

When I was a child, we moved from one rented house to another. For a time, we lived in a predominantly Muslim area, right in front of a Muslim graveyard. Watching the families visiting the graveyard, dressed in all their fineries during Idd festivals, was one of my favourite past times.

It was the time when in my mind, women wearing black burkas were associated with romantic Bollywood films like ‘Chaudhawi ka Chaand’ and ‘Mere Mehboob’, where Hindu heroes thought nothing of masquerading like elderly Muslim ustaad ji and singing shero-shaiyiri, so that they could enter as teachers in the homes of their beloveds.

In another house, which we shared with our Sikh landlord’s family, our terrace overlooked a Methodist church. All the children, including the Pastor’s son, played together. We woke up early in the morning to drink Kacchi lassi on the days of Gurupurab (Sikh religious festivals) and I became familiar with recitations of their sacred book Guru Granth Saheb.

While I was a little afraid of the stern looking wife of the Pastor, I had no problems devouring her Easter cakes. The pastor’s son and the Sikh boys, they all joined me at Holi in throwing balloons full of coloured water on the unsuspecting persons walking on the road below our house.

In yet another house, our next door neighbours were Muslims. While our families were friends, we children played together and shared Idd and Diwali sweets, I never went to a mosque to do prayers with them. Muslim prayers required a complex mix of specific gestures and words which intimidated me. On the other hand, I did go once to a midnight Christmas mass with a Catholic friend.

This pattern of co-living and inter-mixing with persons of different religions has continued all through my life. It has made me understand that religions and beliefs are accidents, determined by our birth in a family and they are not superior or inferior, they are just different ways of approaching the human need for sacred.

The third image is of a roadside shop from Tezpur in Assam, selling pictures of religious icons. The shop was located close to the cathedral and a Hanuman temple, and thus had both Hindu and Christian icons, along with those of other national figures such as Mahatma Gandhi.

Indic religions

The search for the divine in India is like a tree with roots that go deep into the earth, and with branches going in different directions, pointing to different corners of the sky. Thus, an important part of the sacredness in India is about nature – about the rivers, ponds, trees, animals, birds and the earth.

My fourth image is from Bilaspur district in Chattisgarh in central part of India and has a simple Hindu temple in the middle of a pond. Through sacred ponds and rivers and through rituals like surya namaskar, Indic religions remind me all the time about sacredness of nature.

I feel that “religion” is an inadequate term to talk about Hinduism. It includes people who identify the God in the nature – in rocks, mountains, trees, rivers, ponds, animals and birds. It includes people who worship a wide variety of Gods – from human forms of Ram, Krishen, Shiv, Durga, Kali, and Brahma, to human-animal forms of Ganesh, Hanuman, Garud and Sheshnaag. It includes people who believe in a different sacred book, sometimes in many books and sometimes in none of them. It also includes people who believe in fire worship (yagna), as well as those who believe in nirankar (formless) all-pervading Paramatma. That is why I prefer to see Hinduism, not as a religion, but as a Sahasradhara, a river of thousand streams.

The next three pictures illustrate three streams of Hinduism. The first is from Karnataka, showing a procession when the deities are carried out of the temple to visit the village, accompanied by characters from the sacred epics of Ramayana, Mahabharata and Bhagwat Puran, which are widely known and even today continue to influence Indian society.

The second image about Hinduism is from the sun temple in Konark in Odisha on the eastern coast of India, where spirituality is explored through the sexual union on the temple walls. Hinduism recognises different approaches to the sacred including the path of worship, prayers and meditation but also the paths of work (Karmayoga), knowledge (Gyanyoga) and sex (Tantrism).

The third image is of Ghatotkach icons at Dushhera fair in Kullu in Himachal Pradesh, which represent mountain deities. There are thousands of such local deities in India, whose stories have been woven with the more prevalent figures of Ram, Krishan, Shiv, Durga, Lakshmi, Kali and Saraswati. Thus, the thousand streams of Hinduism keep on coming together and branching out in diverse directions through the inter-mixing of sacred stories and ancient myths in different parts of the country.

India is also home to hundreds of tribal communities. Nature worship is a central part of religious practices in the tribal communities. They also have many local deities, different from the more prevalent Hindu deities. Some of the tribal deities are part of the “enemies” in the Hindu mythological stories such as the figures of Ravan, Meghnath and Mahishasur. These stories point to a diversity in the way a wide variety of religious beliefs come under the different streams of Hinduism.

Often outsiders, when they read Indic epics and myths, think of these figures as “villains”, similar to the figures of devil or Satan. However, Indic way of thinking looks at them in more complex ways, recognising their positive attributes and often linking their stories to their different reincarnations. For example, during the enactments of Ramayan during the festival of Dusshera, people are sometimes surprised when they discover the Brahmins praying to the effigy of Ravan before it is burned.

Often while talking to friends from western countries, I feel that they look at Hinduism in a narrow way, focusing on a few figures such as those of the sacred Trimurti (Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva) and the sub-divisions of people into castes according to the Varna system. They ignore the thousand streams of Hinduism and their traditions of debate and arguments. They also tend to believe that the only social reforms and movements for greater social justice towards the marginalised Hindu caste groups in India came from the colonial powers and outsiders.

In a different way, some of the more shrill, conservative or radical Hindu groups echo similar kinds of thinking. They are afraid of the diversity of religious ideas of different streams of Hinduism. They ask repeatedly of following the examples of Abrahamic religions with one sacred book, one religious story and one religious leader.

Indic reformers and other Indic religions

Two millenniums ago, social and religious reformers like Gautam Buddha and Bhagwan Mahavir, infused new ideas in the Indic religions. Over the past centuries, other reformers like Basvanappa, Akka Mahadevi, Shrimanta Shankar Dev, Chetanya Mahaprabhu, Meerabai, Sant Gyaneshwar, Sant Ravidas, Baba Nanak and Sant Kabir, have promoted a diversity of religious ideas touching on social harmony and justice in the Indic religions. This movement of social reform continues through more recent spiritual gurus including Swami Vivekanand and Dayanand Saraswati.

Some of these Indic spiritual figures and social reformers are considered as prophets of specific religions including Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism. Western way of thinking believes in categorising and emphasising the differences between religions and sects. Indic view of religions, because of the dynamic nature of inter-mixing between them, tends to look at them as different streams flowing in the same direction.

The next six images are about these Indic spiritual and social reformers. The first image is from a street in Gangtok in Sikkim in Himalaya mountains of a Sleeping Buddha and a Buddhist monk. Buddhism continues to be an important religious force in India, especially through its adoption by Dalit caste groups, who see in it as an escape from the caste-oppression.

The second image has a giant statue of the Jain icon Bahubali from Shravan Belagola in Karnataka. Jainism is characterised by the principles of non-violence and vegetarianism.

The third image is of a giant statue of Basvanappa, a medieval social reformer and a poet-saint from Bidar district in northern Karnataka. He continues to be a revered figure to millions of persons and promoted a casteless society.

The fourth image has Gayan-Bayan singers from a Sattriya in Majuli island of Assam. The reformist movement of Namghars and Sattriyas in Assam was launched by a fifteenth century social reformer, Shrimanta Shankar Dev, who had also promoted a casteless society. Like Basvanappa in Karnataka, the ideas and teachings of Shankar Dev continue to have an enormous influence in Assam.

The fifth image of this group is from Jhira saheb Sikh Gurudwara in Karnataka, where a Sikh granthi distributes the water from a sacred spring to persons of different religions. The Sikh religion emphasises the value of Karmayoga or prayer through action.

The sixth and last image in this group is that of Swami Vivekananda, whose teachings about revitalising Hinduism had a strong impact in India of the twentieth century.

These images of spiritual and social reformers of India, are just a tiny example of the wide variety of Indic spiritual beliefs. Some like Basvanappa and Shrimanta Shankar Dev have millions of followers, though they are not considered as separate religions. Others like Buddha, Mahavir and Nanak are considered as prophets of specific religions. In many Indian homes, often you can find icons and statues of many of them.

Religious ideas from other parts of the world

From ancient times, India has been the land of mixing and assimilation of religions, beliefs and cultures.

Over the centuries persecuted people from around the world, such as Jews, Armenians, Parsi (followers of Zarathustra) and Baha’i (followers of Bahai’ullah), came to settle in India, conserving their religious identities and ideas, even while exchanging some ideas with the Indic ideas of sacred.

Wandering mystics, explorers and conquering armies have brought other religious ideas to India including those of Islam and Christianity. Like other arrivals before them, India promotes both conservation of identities and ideas, as well as their inter-mixing with Indic ideas of sacred, thus giving birth to new identities and ideas.

The first ideas of Christianity came to southern coast of India with St. Thomas, more than two thousand years ago, even before there was a Vatican. Colonialism and globalisation in the past centuries have brought different streams of Christianity to India. Thus, while Christians constitute only 2% of Indian population, they are a majority in some states of India and have a strong influence in society through their schools, hospitals and programmes of social development.

I am presenting four of my images about Christianity in India. The first image is of a church in Bidar district in Karnataka. While the priests have a saffron shawl on their shoulders (saffron is traditionally the colour of Hindu ascetics in India), and sit on the floor, the church wall carries symbols of all the different religions.

The next picture is again from Karnataka in south India, and has a statue of Mother Theresa. She is widely revered by persons of different religions in India.

The third image is from the Catholic cathedral in Guwahati, which shows two symbols of Shrimanta Shankardev behind the altar – the traditional Assamese head-gear and the cymbols, adapted as Christian symbols.

The last image about Christianity in India has a Methodist church of the Sumi tribe in Nagaland. As tribes have different languages, even if they belong to the same religion, they can have separate churches. For example, near the church shown in the picture, Chakhesang tribe has their own Methodist church.

Islam first arrived in India around one thousand years ago and since then has expanded in different parts of India. After Indonesia, India is home to largest number of Muslims in the world.

One important icon of Hindu-Muslim inter-mixing is Bhakt Rahim from 16th century India, who was a minister in the court of Mughal emperor Akbar and at the same time, a writer fluent in Turkish, Persian, Sanskrit and Braj bhasha. Thus while he translated Babarnama, the autobiography of Mughal emperor Babar, from Turkish to Persian, he is also considered a part of Indic social reformers for his devotional dohas (couplets) in Braj bhasha. In these prayers, he used Hindu religious imagery to express himself. For example, look at following doha of Rahim where is uses the word "Hari" to talk about God:

Rahiman gali hai sakri, dujo nahi thaharai
Apu aahai to Hari nahi, Hari to aapun nahin

(Rahim, the street is narrow and two persons can’t pass it together; if I will go inside God cannot, if God enters it, I cannot).

The last three images of this photo-essay are about Islam. The first image shows a group of Hindu labourers working in Char Minar, a Muslim building in Hyderabad in Andhra Pradesh. Built by Mohammed Qutb Shah in 1591 to commemorate the end of plague, the ground floor of this building hosts both a mosque and a temple. Similarly, for many Hindu festivals, traditionally the icons are made by Muslim craftsmen.

The second image of this group has a Baul singer from the north-east of India. The Baul tradition includes both Hindus and Muslims, and is about devotional music sung by wandering mistrels, who travel in the countryside ignoring the religious boundaries.

The last image of this group is from the Dargah of Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya in Delhi, that hosts the tomb of a Muslim sufi saint, widely revered by persons of different religions.

Parsi and Baha’i, the followers of Zarathustra and Bahai’ullah, who came to India from Persia/Iran, are less numerous, but equally important. For example, Delhi hosts the lotus shaped Baha’i temple, the biggest temple of the followers of Bahai’ullah in the world.

Valuing Inter-mixing of Religions in India

A closer look into religious beliefs in India, shows that often, the inter-mixing and blurred boundaries between the religions are more important than the perceived differences. By promoting inter-mixing, we promote understanding and love between people of different religions.

The world today is full of examples of religious hate and misunderstandings. To overcome these divisions, the approach chosen by many countries and persons is that of "respect and tolerance" along with political correctness. The basic idea of this approach is that the religions are different and we should avoid hurting the religious sentiments of others. Therefore, these countries propose to not to put up Christmas trees so as to not offend the non-Christians; they suggest to use words like "Seasons greetings" rather than "Idd greetings", so as to not to offend non-Muslims.

I personally feel that such an approach makes all of us poorer. I prefer the Indian way where we all celebrate all the festivals of all the religions, where we can pray in each other’s praying places, without losing our own cultural and religious identities.

People who believe in the separateness of their religions, they are afraid of such an approach of inter-mixing. India shows that you can still be a Hindu, Muslim, Christian or Sikh, even if you share the religious and sacred ideas, foods and festivals of others.

For this reason, I believe that in India we must learn to value our inter-mixing approach. One way to do it will be by recognising those of us who are mixtures of linguistic, regional, castes and religious identities. For example, I feel that the national census in India should collect information about the different ways we intermix and the number of mixed families in the country.

Religious fundamentalists oppose inter-mixing of religions, Indian approach teaches us to promote it. Children of the mixed families who will have the freedom to choose their religions, will be the ambassadors of inter-religious peace.

Another way to support inter-mixing of religions in India can be by recognising as valuable all those celebrities who are widely known and admired and who are part of inter-religious or inter-caste marriages. For example, Bollywood stars with their multi-religious families, from Sunil Dutt-Nargis and Kishore Kumar-Madhubala, to Shahrukh-Gauri and Saif-Kareena, are examples of religious inter-mixing and joyful co-living not only for India but for the whole world. In a deeply divided world, they are our icons of unity, without losing our individual religious and cultural identities.

Your prayer for India

So to come back to my original question - if you could write just one prayer for India, which kind of prayer would it be?

Will it have different Gods including Ishwar and Allah? Will it be about different prophets such as Buddha, Mohammed, Jesus, Nanak, Mahavir, Zaruthustra and Bahai’ullah? Will it be about different paths leading to one Parmeshwar?

I hope that you will answer yes. I hope you will ask for the one life-force that underlies everything organic and inorganic in the cosmos. I hope that it will be a prayer that will promote peace, love and harmony.

***

Buddham sharnam gachchami - A Buddhist Journey

Recently, during a journey in Israel and Palestine, I was reading John Power's book "A bull of a man: images of masculinity, sex and the body in Indian Buddhism". It made me reflect about Buddhism and other Eastern religions. The idea of writing this photo-essay with images from different countries linked to Buddhism, came while I was reading it.

The title of this post, "Buddham sharnam gachchami" refers to a Buddhist prayer and it means, "We refuge in Buddha".

The above image of a monk is from Ulangom in Uvs province of Mongolia. I love the strong red background of this image.

In this photo-essay, I have organised the images according to countries and let me start with India, where I had my first contacts with Buddhism when I was a child.

India

My first memories of Buddhism are linked to Boddh Vihaar on the banks of Yamuna river in Delhi. My aunt used to live on Ram Kishore road next to I.P. college in the early 1960s. During holidays at her house, we sometimes walked to the river across the Grand Trunk road. In my memories, at that time it was a small road with little traffic. Across the road was a sandy expanse leading to the river.

Boddh Vihar (literally "house of Buddhists") was a small unpretentious building at that time.

During late 1970s, when I was doing internship at Safdarjung hospital, with my friends, we often took the Mudrika bus to go to the Tibetan shacks that had come up next to the Boddh Vihaar, to eat steaming bowls of noodles.

I went back to that place a couple of years ago. It has changed completely with big roads, busy traffic, new inter-state bus terminal and buildings. The river seems far away and hidden behind the buildings. The next image of Buddha is from the Boddh Vihaar, that also has a new and bigger building now.

The next image is of Garuda, the giant bird from Hindu and Buddhist mythology. The spread of Hinduism and Buddhism in east Asia had taken Garuda to other countries. It is also the name of Indonesia's national airlines. It is usually depicted with blue horns and a humanoid body. The most famous Garuda in mythology is called Jatayu in Ramayana, who tries to stop Ravan, the demon king, from kidnapping of Sita.

Another childhood memory linked to Buddhism is from Birla temple in Delhi. My school was next door to the temple and during lunch break, often we took our lunch to the temple. One of my favourite places there for eating lunch was under the elephant statue near the Buddha shrine.

Foreign tourists often stopped to take our pictures while we ate. Sometimes, women sat near us under the elephant to get their pictures taken. I wonder if our pictures were used as examples of "those poor malnourished Indian kids"!

Often I wandered inside the Buddhist shrine to look at Buddha's life story painted on its wall. The elephant in the dream of queen Maya and prince Siddharth's encounter with the sickness, old age and death, had deep impact on me.

Recently, I was back in Birla temple to revisit those childhood memories and was shocked by the locked gate that separated the rest of the temple from the Buddha shrine. To visit the shrine, you have to come out of the temple. The wall paintings were dark and worn while the tiny golden Buddha of the shrine was closed behind a grimy glass wall. I came back saddened by this visit and so I am not presenting any image from that shrine.

Instead the next two images of Buddha are from the Cottage Industries emporium and the new airport in Delhi.

Mongolia

I had some of my more profound encounters with Buddhism in Mongolia. During one of my first visits in Mongolia in early 1990s, I remember the Gandan monastery in Ulaan Baatar as a forgotten place reduced to ruins. Mongolia had just come out of the communist rule and India had sent a Buddhist monk as its ambassador to Mongolia.

During a more recent visit, I found the place completely changed with a restored giant Buddha statue with striking blue eyes, and the courtyard full of Buddhist monks and colourful stupas. The next two images are from that visit to Gandan.

However, my most beautiful encounter with Buddhism in Mongolia was in Ulangom in the north-western aimag (province) of Uvs. A delegate of Dalai Lama had arrived and a meeting with Buddhist monks and general public was organised. The next two images are from Ulangom.

Thailand

Between 2007 to 2009 I visited Thailand a few times. These were opportunities to visit the numerous Buddhist temples and shrines in Bangkok. The next three images are from those visits.

The next image is from a shop selling Buddhist and Hindu statues in Bangkok. In Thailand, icons from these two religions are sometimes found side-by-side. I love this image because it seems to be telling a tale about the increasing pollution of our cities, so that even Buddha is forced to cover himself to avoid breathing those noxious fumes.

I also visited the ancient city of Ayutthaya once and loved its ancient temples with their evocative ruins. The next image is from this visit.

Vietnam

Like Mongolia, in the 1990s Vietnam had also come out of communist rule that had discouraged the role of religions in the society. Thus, there are not many ancient Buddhist places to visit, though some of them have been restored over the past 2 decades. Stupas in Vietnam, like the one from the ancient city of Hue in the image below, seem very different from the Mongolian stupas. Buddhism in Vietnam also has frequent references to to the phoenix, which I have not seen else where.

One of the ancient Buddhist temples in Vietnam, Ninh Phuc pagoda near Hanoi, has also been restored and peopled with monks. The next four images are from this pagoda.

I had also visited Buddhist temples in India, Nepal and China, but these visits were before I had found my passion for photography. So they are not represented in this photo-essay.

Italy

The last and the only non-Asian country in this photo-essay is Italy, with a Thangka exhibition in Bologna, showing Boddhisattva tales.

A Bull of a Man

John Power's book "A bull of a man: images of masculinity, sex and the body in Indian Buddhism", is about male gender role in Indian Buddhist writings and art.

"Gender" is about defining and building of male and female roles and norms by the society and the culture. Usually gender studies have focused on female roles and norms, and there is hardly any works on male roles and norms in Asia. Thus, Power's book is unusual in that sense. Here is a glimpse of the kind of issues the book touches on:

"In contemporary Western popular culture, the Buddha is commonly portrayed as an androgynous, asexual character, often in a seated meditation posture and wearing a beatific smile... Buddhist monks, such as the Dalai Lama, have also become images of normative Buddhism, which is assumed to valorize celibacy and is often portrayed as rejecting gender categories... In Indian Buddhist literature, however, a very different version of the Buddha and his monastic followers appears: the Buddha is described as the paragon of masculinity, the “ultimate man” (purusottama), and is referred to by a range of epithets that extol his manly qualities, his extraordinarily beautiful body, his superhuman virility and physical strength, his skill in martial arts, and the effect he has on women who see him..."

Reading the book made me think about my own attitudes to spirituality and sexuality. Even if I do accept the role played by sexuality in ancient India, as demonstrated by books like Kamasutra or temples of Khujraho and Konark, I think that my feelings about spirituality are dominated by ideas of celibacy and renunciation of worldly pleasures. Thus, reading about sexuality and Buddha made me feel vaguely uneasy.

Power touches on the reasons of this unease in his book:

"Why has the supremely masculine Buddha depicted in the Pali canon and other Indic literature been eclipsed by the androgynous figure of modern imagination and the ascetic meditation master and philosopher of scholars? Part of the reason probably lies in the backgrounds of contemporary interpreters of Buddhism and the blind spots that every culture bequeaths to its inhabitants...

... most modern scholars of Buddhism were born and raised in societies in which Judeo-Christian traditions predominate, and even those who are not overtly religious have been influenced by them. The great founders of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic traditions — Abraham, Jesus, and Muhammad — are not, as far as I am aware, portrayed as paragons of masculinity, as exceptionally beautiful, as endowed with superhuman strength, or as masters of martial arts..

If one compares the way the Buddha is portrayed in Indian literature with descriptions of Abraham, Jesus, and Muhammad, a number of striking differences appear. Abraham and Muhammad were chosen as prophets by God, but their exalted status was not a recognition of their spiritual attainments over many lifetimes, as with the Buddha; rather, Abraham and Muhammad were chosen because they were chosen. God designates some as his messengers and then provides them with missions, but a buddha becomes a buddha by consciously pursuing a path leading to liberation and cultivating a multitude of good qualities over countless incarnations in a personal discovery of truth..."

The question in my mind is, have we in India (and other countries) become estranged from our own traditional ways of thinking, which accepted human sexuality as part of life and of spirituality? Are we influenced by dominating Judeo-Christian-Islamic traditions of the Western academics? Is that why recently there was so much rage against the sexual imagery in Wendy Donninger's The Hindus?

The figures of Buddha, Boddhisattvas and Jataka stories touch unabashedly and lustfully on sexuality in Power's analysis. I found the book very refreshing and thought provoking.

Let me conclude this photo-essay with another of my favourite pictures. I found this statue of meditating Buddha draped in yellow silk in Ayutthaya (Thailand) absolutely amazing for its colours and feelings of serenity.

Usually my photo-essays are about images. This one is a little unusual because the written part is as important as the images. I hope that it will make you think!

***