It is striking to what degree Hindu concepts of holiness and allied religious salutations have permeated India’s socio-political interactions. And how, by now, English is meaningless, in fact counter-productive, for mass communication, especially during the long and dusty electioneering across India.
In the very first week of April, the PM chose to launch his nationwide election campaign from dev bhumi Uttarakhand. At a public meeting in Rudrapur, being the shrewd orator that he is, he began his speech by invoking and saluting not the sanatani triad of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva but the local deities: jai Gollu jue, jai Nanda Debi, jai Rajrajeshwari, he thundered!
The astute reader of his audiences’ mind that he is, he asked after their welfare in the local language as a pater familias would.
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty
And then – and only then – he began a harsh critique of his arch rival, the Gandhi family-led Congress, followed immediately by a blitz of promises for integrated crop projects, liberal loans for the poor and many other public welfare schemes he would be launching as soon as his party wins the general elections a third time.
As an independent state, Uttarakhand has existed only for twenty-odd years. But it has always been a catchment area for a mind boggling mish-mash of cultures, gods and demigods that successive tribal clans as well as Brahminical, wandering Buddhist, Nath and Siddha monks and jogis have brought in for the past five centuries.
From Adi Shankaracharya to Guru Gorakhnath and Guru Nanak, the heretical founder of the Gorakpanthi sect and the founder of Sikhism respectively, have all come to the Himalayas as spiritual pilgrims. And the countless shrines and mutts to various gurus, gods and goddesses that arose do not belong to what is today the mainstream sanatan Hindu dharma.
These are deities the locals will turn to when things turn bad: when there are floods in the valleys, a tunnel capsizes or a pandemic hits, the presiding deities of the area – Gollu, Chandrabadani Debi, Nanda Debi, Kalu Bisht or some Nag Baba – are invoked ritualistically.
But politics and economic backwardness have taken a heavy demographic toll. The original tribal inhabitants of Uttarakhand are today a mere 3% of the state’s total population of one crore.
Upper-caste migrants arriving in waves over the past five centuries now dominate the scene socially, economically and politically.
Today, 83% of the population in Uttarakhand is Hindu. Dalits are listed at 19%, STs at 3% and Muslims and Sikhs are 14% and 2.34% of the whole.
The sanatan Hindu dharma of the masses in the plains entered the area with Adi Shankaracharya’s establishment of the Badrinath Dham. And the heavy use of sanatan Hindu religion for vote banks in Hindutva politics truly began after Yogi, a native of Garhwal and a Nath jogi himself, took the reins in UP.
Soon, the new branding began for Uttarakhand along the UP template. The new state was christened dev bhumi and the Char Dham Yatra – the visit to four of the holiest shrines in sanatan dharma – became almost a symbol for one’s patriotism and true faith.
A systematic embellishment of the area’s temples, including humble stone huts dedicated to ancient anthropomorphic deities, began, funded by BJP MLAs and also some rich donors, including forest contractors and manufacturers of alcoholic drinks.
The more artificial the genesis, the more precarious and hysterical its regional manifestations. This shows in most pilgrimage sites and electoral rallies.
Given the harsh terrain and lack of agricultural land, the area has a long history of its (mostly able-bodied and young) males migrating to the plains.
Today, almost three quarters of the land is the property of the government’s forest department.
Earlier, farming and cattle-rearing were jobs performed by young wives, boys left behind to care for the land, and elders.
With a rise in literacy levels for both men and women, the average now stands at 78.82%. And the educated girls want an assurance that they will not be forced to gather fuel wood, cow dung, fodder and/or help till the fallow fields. If their man migrates, they would like to go with them.
Mass family migrations from Uttarakhand in the hilly regions and overcrowded non-hill districts have created a lopsided demography. Old, local gods are now fast being merged into the mainstream as avatars of sanatan gods or goddesses; the peaks and rivers worshipped over centuries as debis are now all uniformly promoted as mata ranis.
Geography, as Will Durant once said, is the matrix of history, its nourishing mother and disciplining home. Uttarakhand, like Himachal and our northeastern states, is a gift of the Himalayas. But in Amrit Kaal, you realise freedom has created fast-multiplying inequalities of legal justice and educational opportunity in the area.
Everything from the benches of the high court to hospitals are flourishing only in the plains, like in Haldwani and Haridwar, or in Dehradun, the capital. Not caste or creed, but this mix is creating the dominant culture, political biases and religious identities.
Like Shamash giving a code to Hammurabi for Babylonia and Yahweh the Ten Commandments for the Jews, there is growing acceptance in the land of the ruler being the infallible and authorised spokesperson of God and His laws.
Here, we see how religion has many lives. Atheism got a boost in the Buddha’s time, but after a few centuries of secular polity and dhamma-led ideologies of peace and non-violence, a complex theology began sprouting from spores buried deep under.
By the 11th century, Buddhists were borrowing ideas of heaven and hell, demigods and tantric sadhana from the new concept of sanatana.
As the globe gets warmer, sea levels rise and tornadoes rage, East is no longer East, nor West will long be West. Soon, the twain might find themselves locked in the same struggle against the apocalypse unleashed by human greed and global warming.
At this point, one is reminded of a tiny folk tale from Uttarakhand.
Once upon a time, there were no humans here, only rats who came in holding paddy seeds in their mouths. Once there, the Father rat tilled the soil and his wife sowed the seeds. Soon, they were growing lots of rice and producing many children.
One night, a bull entered the field as they slept, ate all the standing crops and then fell asleep in the middle of their paddy fields.
In the morning, when the rat and his wife saw him sleeping in their wrecked field, they cursed him, “You fat beast, may you be castrated by those that are to come. We, the rats will hereafter live off the rice in our holes, but those who own the ploughs will then whip your fat ass while you meekly pull the plough for them!”
Thus the ploughs and furrows of history!
Saakhi is a Sunday column from Mrinal Pande, in which she writes of what she sees and also participates in. That has been her burden to bear ever since she embarked on a life as a journalist, writer, editor, author and as chairperson of Prasar Bharti. Her journey of being a witness-participant continues.
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