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My Mahalaya morning and an interrupted thought

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.

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