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| From fieldwork |
I woke up the morning of Mahalaya 2022 with a WhatsApp
message, playing the video of sunrise on a sea beach, new age music in the
background, and a couple performing salutation to the Sun god সূর্য নমস্কার (“Surjo
nomoshkar”), their poses stretched to perfection. The message that went with
the video invited the recipient of the video to open their Mahalaya mornings
with “Surjo nomoshkar” (spelled as “Surya namaskar” in Hindi text in the video).
A casual glimpse into the video interrupted my much-anticipated
Mahalaya morning, replete with the anticipation of waking up to the sound of
Birendra Krishna Bhadra’s “Rupang dehi” playing in the background.
It took me a few minutes to rework myself into the
Mahalaya mood as I turned to waking up the children so they can join in the
experience of listening to the age-old Mahalaya performance, (Mahishashur
Mardini).
Now you might ask, what does receiving a WhatsApp
invitation to a sun salutation have to do with interrupted feelings of
anticipation on a Mahalaya morning?
The voice of Birendra Krishna Bhadra on the radio on
this morning of Mahalaya marks universally the aural registers of Bengali taste
across the globe.
In Bengal, as the weather turns cooler and one can palpably
feel the nip in the air in the mornings, waking up early as a family, wrapped up
in shared blankets as the Mahalaya performance plays on the radio is the
opening to the coming days of celebrating the Goddess. In the years of growing
up in my large joint family, a large cluster of us siblings, anywhere between eight
and twelve, would be cuddled up with my grandmother under her blanket, as we
listened to the story of the rise of the Goddess.
The air filled with the aroma of ধুনো (dhuno,
plant resin of Sal tree, an Indian frankincense that is integral to Bengali
auspicious celebrations) as the morning rolled in, announced the beginning of
the celebrations of the victory of good over evil.
Almost two decades ago, this unfettered narrative of Mahalaya
announcing the victory of good over evil I held so closely had been debunked.
While doing fieldwork among Santalis in Bengal, I had
come to learn of the story of Hudur Durga, the great adivasi leader who fought
against land occupation and was killed by deception. Hudur Durga becomes Mahishashur
in dominant caste Hindu narrative of Durga puja. Santalis sing through their
songs the story of their land Chaichampa from which they were deceptively
alienated by the invading Aryans. In the Santali narratives, this period marked
the celebration of pain, a reminder of the loss of land.
For the Indigenous community of Asurs, seeing Hudur Durga as a courageous
ancestor who was deceived and defeated by the Aryan invaders. The song shared below sung by Asurs offers a
powerful register that inverts the dominant narrative:
“Raij
tura tulam am Mahesha re Asur raja/ Desh tura tulam Mahesha re Asur raja/ Am
lagin raij raij yamla ku/ Desh desh dhuraone naku...”
“(The land has been orphaned O King Mahesha/ The world weeps
for you/ Land after land moans for you...)”
Now let’s juxtapose the two interruptions I experienced
around the celebration of Mahalaya.
One interruption renders visible the onslaught of a
form of cultural
imperialism that imposes specific cultural forms and practices as the
monolithic markers of Hinduism. The increasing hegemony of ritual practices such
as Surya namaskar, Maha Mrityunjay havan, and om chanting during Mahalaya and Durga
Puja are reflective of the onslaught of this cultural imperialism on plural forms
of Hinduism. For Bengalis, this hegemonic threat of cultural
imperialism is most viscerally felt in the imposition of norms of vegetarianism
and fasting around ritual celebrations that are intimately tied to sacrificing and
eating meat (diverse types and in diverse forms).
The other interruption, the one that I experienced in
my twenties, is an invitation to re-consider and re-imagine the very meaning of
rituals and celebrations, attending to the erasures that constitute the rituals
we participate in, and prompting us to critically question the intergenerational
stories that are passed down. For me, the listening to the account of Hudur
Durga interrupted the narrative account of Bengali progressivism. By its
presence, the story broke open the carefully crafted idea of a casteless Bengali
culture. More importantly, it renders visible my own complicity in a caste
structure.
Interruptions in our everyday cultural practices offer
openings. When the usual flows of habits shaped around sounds, smells, touches,
and sights are challenged, they summon us to re-think our affinities, feelings,
and attachments.
As a parent, I wonder what are the stories I am going
to share with my children? As we negotiate the broader context of monolithic
cultural imperialism in the diaspora as Bengalis, connecting to Durga puja is a
way to sustain cultural pluralism. At the same time, as Tauiwi (people who are
not Māori, especially non-indigenous New Zealander) in a
settler colony, connecting with the story of “Hudur Durga” is a powerful script
for interrogating the questions of caste and Indigeneity in the diaspora, and
placing our own privileges amidst these conversations.