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.

***

Ancient Indians, Neanderthals and Denisovans

Recently I was reading the wonderful book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by the Israeli writer Yuval Noah Harari (originally written in Hebrew in 2011, English translation is published by Signal books, UK, 2014). Reading this book reminded me about some of my old thoughts on ancient Indian myths and the prehistoric humans such as the Neanderthals.

Many decades ago, while reading the old Indian sacred stories, I used to wonder if some of the people described in them such as asur, danav, rakshas, and vanar, could have been references to other human species.

This post explores some of those ideas about the non-human persons in the sacred books of Hinduism including Veda, Puranic stories and epics like Ramayan and Mahabharat. I am not claiming any scientific rationale behind these ideas, they are just speculations. The images used in this post are from the north-east of India and show depictions of those persons in the temples, folk-art and folk-plays.

Different human species: Regarding the encounters between the different human species, in his book Yuval Noah Harari has written that:

There were humans long before there was history. Animals much like modern humans first appeared about 2.5 million years ago. But for countless generations they did not stand out from myriad other organisms with which they shared their habitats. …

Homo sapiens, too, belongs to a family. This banal fact used to be one of history’s most closely guarded secrets. Homo sapiens long preferred to view itself as set apart from animals, an orphan bereft of family, lacking siblings or cousins, and most importantly without parents. But that’s just not the case. Like it or not, we are members of a large and particularly noisy family called the great apes. Our closest living relatives include chimpanzees, gorillas and orang utans. The chimpanzees are the closest. Just 6 million years ago, a single female ape had two daughters. One became the ancestor of all chimpanzees, the other is our own grandmother.

Homo sapiens has kept hidden an even more disturbing secret. Not only do we possess an abundance of uncivilised cousins, once upon a time we had quite a few brothers and sisters as well. We are used to thinking about ourselves as the only humans, because for the last 10,000 years, our species has indeed been the only human species around. …

Humans in Europe and western Asia evolved into Homo neanderthalensis, popularly referred to simply as ‘Neanderthals’. .. The more eastern regions of Asia were populated by Homo erectus, ‘Upright man’, who survived there for close to 2 million years, making it the most durable human species ever. .. On the island of Java in Indonesia, lived Homo soloensis. On another Indonesian island – the small island of Flores – archaic humans underwent a process of dwarfing … This unique species, known by scientists as Homo floresiensis, reached a maximum height of only metre and weighed no more than twenty-five kilograms. .. In 2010 another lost sibling was rescued from oblivion, when scientist excavating the Denisova cave in Siberia discovered a fossilised finger bone. Genetic analysis proved that the finger belonged to a previously unknown human species, which was named Homo denisova. … from about 2 million years ago until around 10,000 years ago, the world was home, at one and the same time, to several human species. …(pp 11-20)

European theories of encounters between different people in India: European academics and indologists from 19th century had popularized the theories of Aryan invasion and proposed that people of south India (Dravidians) were pushed southwards by those Aryans coming into India from the west. They had also proposed that fair-skinned Aryans had exploited and subjugated dark skinned indigenous populations of ancient India and forced them into specific caste groups (shudra) or outside the caste system (untouchables). They had argued that groups like Asur and Rakshas described in the ancient Indian tales were actually Dravidians and other indigenous people of India.

These ideas have been widely accepted both in India and internationally. For example, many people believe that the more than three thousand years old Harappa and Mohanjodaro civilizations in the Indus valley had disappeared due to Aryan invasion.

Only during the last couple of decades there have been doubts about the invasion theories since they have not found matching archaeological or documentary evidence or the evidence is non conclusive, to support this theory. However, objective discussions on this theme are sometimes difficult because certain Hindu groups see the Aryan invasion theory as diminishing of their claim to be original inhabitants of India. At the same time, objective discussions are difficult because many leftist scholars see them as efforts to pander to conservative Hindu groups.

Alternative hypothesis of encounters between different human species in Indian myths: However, I used to think that the Puranic stories and myths of ancient Indians could have been orally transmitted stories of the prehistoric humans, who could have travelled from one continent to another over thousands of years, enriching those stories with events from their own lives and passing them on to their younger generations.

So my thought was: what if the asur, danav, pichash, rakshas and vanar of those stories were other species of humans who might have lived on earth at the same time as the Homo sapiens? What if stories like those of the vanar kingdom from which Hanuman comes, which is described in Ramayan, are based upon much older stories from the millennium-long oral traditions and refer to our humanoid ape ancestors from which the different human species took birth and who were our species-cousins?

The Puranic stories talk about the birth of deva (humans) and asur from the same father Brahma and their subsequent fights. Similarly the stories linked to rakshas like that of Ravan, mention the highly developed cultures of these people and their rich cities full of gold (Lanka). I do not think that we can take these stories as literal truths or histories. Indian traditions have looked at, analysed and understood these myths in diverse spiritual and metaphorical ways.

For example, Indian mythologist Devdutt Pattnaik in his book “My Gita” writes of deva and asura as the two children of Brahma, “Though half-brothers, these sons of Brahma do not like each other: the deva fear the asura and the asura hate the deva. … In the Veda, the deva and asura are celestian beings. But in Purana, they are clearly rivals. The Europeans identified asura first as Titans, in line with Greek mythology, and later as demons, in line with Abrahamic mythology. This causes great confusion, as the asura are neither “old gods” nor “forces of evil”. Both old gods and forces of evil are unwanted and need to be excluded, while in the Purana, both are needed …” (p. 79)

To explain the disappearance from earth of all other human species except for the Homo sapiens, wars and genocides have been proposed. However, we can also interpret the old Indian myths as stories of interactions between different human species. Yuval Noah has written about these interactions, "About 70,000 years ago, Sapiens from East Africa spread into Arabian peninsula and from there they quickly overran the entire Eurasian landmass. When Homo sapiens landed in Arabia, most of Eurasia was already settled by other humans. What happened to them? … According to the Interbreeding theory, when Sapiens spread into Neanderthal lands, Sapiens bred with Neanderthals until the two populations merged. If this is the case, then today’s Eurasians are not pure Sapiens." (p. 20)

Can we confirm these ideas?: When the human genome mapping project had come up, I had thought that genome mapping could give the answers about inter-mixing between the different human species. For example, genome studies have shown that 1 to 4 percent of Europeans and Asians have some Neanderthal genes.

Another recent report about a genome study by Sriram Sankararaman of California university and David Reich of Harvard University has shown that a higher than expected percentage of south Asians have genes of the Denisovan species of humans. People of Oceania and Pacific have even higher number of persons with these genes.

Thus, these studies suggest that at least some degree of inter-mixing between human species did take place. However this does not prove that the other people mentioned in Indian myths and ancient books were other human species like Neanderthals and Denisovans.

The continuity of the living oral traditions in India: Another questions I have asked myself is - if it is true that the Indian myths carry memories of the prehistoric encounters between the different human species, are there similar myths and old stories among other cultures and people?

We share many myths with other cultures. For example, the floods of the Genesis Narrative are a common myth in different parts of the world, from Noah in the Bible to Sumerian and Babylonian myths, and the primordial floods described in the Indian myths of Manu.

So why we have not found other myths and stories of encounters between Sapiens and other species of humans? One answer can be that the myths and ancient stories of people could have included stories of encounters between different human species, but those stories are not accessible today. Or that these stories are there but they have not been thought/understood in this way. Another answer can be that the relatively new religions like Christianity and Islam have suppressed many of  the old myths of the oral traditions of the ancient people.

On the other hand, India has had a very strong tradition of keeping alive the oral narratives and customs. For example, a group of persons in Kerala still continues and conserves the tradition of chanting of ancient vedic sounds, whose meanings have been lost with time. Thus, these are living traditions in India and not just things that are found in museums and old manuscripts. Another factor influencing the continuing presence of old stories in India is because Hinduism is composed of hundreds of different belief streams, none of which can claim to be dominant or more legitimate than others, which makes it possible for the acceptance and continuing adaptations and relevance of old myths and sacred stories.

In India the myth-recreation and re-elaboration process is active and ongoing even today. For example, in popular Indian culture public figures like Mahatma Gandhi and Ambedkar, as well as some film actors and politicians, are regularly turned into gods with building of their temples and making of new myths and stories about their exploits.

Perhaps that is how, ancient myths of encounters between different human species could have found resonance in relatively more recent stories of exploitation between different castes, and thus these continue to be woven and used in different ways in contemporary India!

Conclusions: Do ancient Indian myths tell stories about encounters between different human species from prehistorical times? May be one day the technology will be able to provide better answers to such speculative questions. More likely, these will remain speculations.

However, I like the idea that our old Indian myths and stories can remember events from the dawn of the humanity before we had our languages and identities. I like the idea that the archetype chimpanzee grandmother of Yuval Noah Harari is still remembered as the mother of Hanuman in our stories. That our Neanderthal cousins are still there with us as Ravan, Kumbhkaran and Meghnath in the Ramlila plays. That our Denisovan cousins are not lost for ever, they live in the Puranic stories of India.

I think that "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind", is a wonderful book. If Human history interests you, it will give you a lot to think about!

***

Myths of Shiva, Kali, Krishna & Radha

Before coming to Assam in the north-east of India, I had never thought of Shiva and Kali as a couple and I had also never thought of the two couples, Shiva & Kali and Krishen & Radha, as having any common stories. This post is about understanding an aspect of Hinduism - the Shiva and Kali relationship, and the myths connecting them to Krishna and Radha.

THE TRADITIONS OF GODDESS KALI

Kali belongs to the Hindu traditions of the north-eastern parts of India, especially Bengal and Assam. As a child, I had been to the Kali temples in Delhi but I had never taken a good look at the statues of this goddess, probably because I found her a little frightening and intimidating - her red tongue coated with blood, the garland of skulls around her neck and the bleeding cut head she holds in her hand, seemed to me the stuff of nightmares!

I had often wondered how Bengal and Assam can have traditions of two such contrasting goddesses - Saraswati, the peaceful goddess of learning, and Kali, the goddess of vengeance and death. I had always preferred Saraswati.

I found an article of Devdutt Pattanaik explaining the Kali tradition in Hinduism, according to which Kali was initially seen as a demonic force but who was later included in the Hindu mainstream as a "slayer of demons":

“Kali-like goddesses were worshipped by agricultural communities, who were probably matriarchal, who came to be feared by patriarchal nomadic communities… Between the 2nd century BC and 3rd century AD, Kali appears unequivocally for the first time as a goddess in the Kathaka Grihyasutra, a ritualistic text that names her in a list of Vedic deities to be invoked with offerings of perfume during the marriage ceremony. Unfortunately, the text reveals nothing more about her.

In the Mahabharata and Ramayana which were being composed around this time, goddesses, including Kali, are given more character: they are usually independent and (hence?) wild, appearing as manifestations of divine rage and embodiments of the forces of destructions. In the Mahabharata, for example, the nocturnal bloodbath by Ashwattama at the end of the 18-day war, when the innocent children of the Pandavas are slaughtered rather dastardly while they are asleep, is seen as the work of “Kali of bloody mouth and eyes, smeared with blood and adorned with garlands, her garment reddened, — holding noose in hand — binding men and horses and elephants with her terrible snares of death.”

In the Devi Mahatmya, dated roughly to 8th century AD, Kali became a defender against demonic and malevolent forces and by the 19th century, Kali was a goddess of mainstream pantheon, a symbol of divine rage, of raw power and the wild potency of nature. The one who was once feared as an outsider had made her way right to the heart of the mainstream.” 

SHIVA AND KALI STATUES IN ASSAM

During my travels in Assam over the past few weeks, I saw many statues of Kali, where the goddess is shown standing with one foot on a lying down Shiva. When I saw those statues, I was confused. I had never noticed before that Kali stands with her foot on Shiva!

During my stay in Bologna (Italy), I had seen the Durga statues during the annual Durga Puja organised by the local Bengali community, where she is shown standing on the demon king Mahishasur. So when I saw the Kali-Shiva statues, I asked myself, if  Shiva was seen like a demon, to be killed by Kali?

Searching for information about Kali and Shiva, I discovered another story on the internet. Another article of Devdutt Pattanaik, “Krishna as Kali”, explained that the foot of Kali on Shiva is part of a love game between the two, “When you dance atop me as Kali, naked with hair unbound, unafraid to be yourself, unafraid to be powerful and vulnerable and unafraid of being judged and mocked, I feel love.”

Thus, Shiva and Kali relationship was part of Shiva and Shakti relationships that explored different forms of love. As Kali, Shakti expresses herself without inhibitions or need of male approval, and Shiva loves this expression of the female power. 

After reading this article, I looked at the Kali and Shiva statues once again and this time I could see that Kali is not trying to kill Shiva. Rather, Shiva is shown awake and a little thoughtful, with his eyes open, while Kali seems to be tickling his chest with her toes.

However, this article of Pattanaik also touched on another aspect – the story of how Shiva and Kali decided to come down to earth and be born as Radha and Krishen respectively. This meant that Shiva was born in female form as Radha and Kali was born in the male form as Krishna.

Pattanaik concludes this article with the following words:

“Just as Kali had made Shiva give up his autonomy and understand the value of the not-so-autonomous other, the pining beloved, Radha helped Krishna understand the limitations of society, the struggle between faith in divinity and fidelity for the husband. Radha was demanding, as Kali once had been. Radha sat on Krishna as Kali stood on Shiva. The two thus mingled and merged in roles and thoughts and feelings. But there was one crucial difference.

Kali had made the wandering hermit, Shiva, into a rooted hermit, Shankara. Radha did the opposite. She remained a flower stuck to the branch of a tree while Krishna became the bee that moves on after getting enriched with nectar. And so fulfilled by Radha’s love, Krishna left Madhuban for Mathura. Kali had revealed love through shringara, romance, as only Krishna can. Radha revealed love through vairagya, renunciation, as only Shiva can.”

CONCLUSIONS

I am glad that my curiosity about the Shiva and Kali statues led me to these articles of Pattanaik and learning about explorations of gender relationships and human sexuality in the Indian myths. Probably most persons when they learn about these myths, even without knowing about the psychological explanations given by Pattanaik, still internalize an intuitive understanding of the complex and infinite variety of human diversity.

I think that this Shiva-Radha and Kali-Krishna myth is a good example of the traditional Indian way of thinking. These myths are complex and they seem to be telling a truth about gods and human relationships in ways that require an intuitive understanding rather than a rational understanding.

I like the way Pattanaik illustrates these myths in the Indian way of thinking and understanding the world and ourselves. This Indian way of understanding is the way of subjective truths, non linear thinking, where things can have many simultaneous meanings, often contradictory!

P.S. My friend Harjinder (Laltu) was surprised when he read that I had never seen the Shiva-Kali statues before. He had grown up in Kolkata.

He has shared another story about these statues that he had heard as a child - When whole earth was terrified of the anger of Kali who wanted to destroy everything, the gods asked Shiva for help. Shiva lied down in front of Kali and when she put her foot on him, she put out her tongue in a gesture of repentance, "Oh, look what have I done now!" These statues tell that story.

I love Harjinder's story - it makes her look less intimidating!

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