Taste of Life: Festivals are all about breaking caste barriers

Pune: Human rights are universal. Fighting against all forms of discrimination is crucial for achieving equality and justice for all.

In September 1933, during the “Sharadiya Navaratra”, a Hindu festival of nine nights and ten days dedicated to worshipping the Goddess Durga and many of her forms during autumn, “Vaidyapanchanan” Shri Krishnashastri Kavade organised a “Navachandi Anushthan”, a sacred ritual dedicated to Goddess Chandi, the most ferocious of all the forms, at his bungalow near the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute in Pune. In an interview with a journalist in the Marathi newspaper “Jnanaprakash”, Kavade mentioned that he was chanting the “saptashati” every morning for two hours. During the nine days of the ritual, he had vowed not to touch food. He had even almost given up drinking water, and only consumed little water necessary while performing the ritual.

It was believed that performing the ritual brought about changes in a person, removed all negative planetary influences, and ushered in a bountiful new future. Kavade was sure that his following the most rigorous of the norms of performing the ritual, including not eating or drinking water for nine days would eliminate the “negative energy” that had engulfed the society. The “negative energy”, according to him, was brought about by the attempts to get rid of the caste system. The society was going away from the dictums of religious scriptures that maintained a strict caste hierarchy and forbade the intermingling of different castes. He was upset that people from various castes were dining together. The ritual he was performing would make people realise their mistake, he believed.

Kavade seemed to have received generous support from several well-known personalities, most of them Ayurveda practitioners, from the city. “Jnanaprakash” reported that several men decided to follow Kavade and fast stringently to combat the evils of certain organisations that encouraged members of the so-called “lower castes” to participate in religious rituals that were the domain of the members of the so-called “higher castes”. They declared that several men not fasting according to the norms prescribed in the religious texts had contributed to the decline of the society.

Before the nineteenth century, both men and women fasted during “Navaratra”. Most women drank only water; some ate just a fruit a day, while others consumed certain foods like sweet potato and amaranth seeds. Men fasted during the day and ate at night. With more men opting for office jobs after the mid-nineteenth century, many could not find enough time to perform religious rituals at home and fast while working in offices. The sole responsibility of sticking to fasting rituals fell upon women.

However, many like Kavade, in the 1930s wanted to change this, especially after the inception of the public celebration of “Navaratra” in Maharashtra in 1927 by “Prabodhankar” Keshav Sitaram Thackeray and his associates.

Thackeray came to Mumbai from Pune in 1926. That year, he participated in the Ganeshotsav held at Dadar. He realised that non-Brahmins were not allowed to participate in the celebrations. He believed that everybody, irrespective of caste, should be able to celebrate festivals. He had always supported Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar.

The next year, when the organisers did not allow Dalit men and women to enter the pandal, Thackeray and Sitaram Keshav Bole, Ambedkar’s associate, staged an agitation. The police intervened. Ambedkar reached the venue. After some discussions, they were allowed entry.

Thackeray was unhappy. He decided to publicly celebrate the festival of “Navaratra” on a grander scale, where members of all castes could participate. “Lokahitawadi Sangh” was established and the next year “Navaratra” was celebrated with great fanfare. Men, women, and children of all castes participated in the rituals. This was the first public celebration of “Navaratra”, outside the temples, in Maharashtra.

“Lokahitawadi Sangh” soon started a public celebration of “Navaratra” in Pune too. One of the highlights of these celebrations was a feast meant solely for women, a day after Dasara, the tenth day of the festival. Initiated in 1934, such feasts were organised in Shukrawar Peth area for four consecutive years at least. It made sense to have the feast after “Navaratra” was over since women fasted during the festival.

Like Ganeshotsav and many other festivals, the public celebration of the “Navaratrotsav” was mostly attended by men. However, several liberal organisations had started calling for women to make their presence visible during “Navaratra”. It was argued that while men would celebrate Ganeshotsav, women should participate wholeheartedly in celebrating “Navaratrotsav”. Few like Lakshman Narayan Godbole organised a grand “Mahalakshmipooja” on the eighth day of “Navaratra” at his residence in Budhwar Peth every year in the 1930s. Women were invited for a feast on that day.

“Vijaya Dashami”, generally known as “Dasara”, the tenth or the last day, was one of the principal festivals in Pune during the Peshwas’ times. Goddess Durga or Bhavani being the revered object of devotion of the Bhonsle family, “Dasara” was celebrated as a state function in Satara till the death of Raja Shahu, after which Balaji Bajirao commenced to hold its annual gathering at Pune with equal grandeur and pomp.

The great feature of the ceremony which assumed a political significance was the procession and the state Durbar which is interesting.

“On the morning of the tenth day,” wrote Sir John Malcolm, the Scottish diplomat and East India Company administrator, “the Peshwa, with all his chiefs and soldiers, moves out to the camp in the vicinity of the city, each being ranged under his particular banner, mounted on his best horse, dressed in his finest clothes, and with his arms highly polished. The whole population of the capital, either as actors or spectators, joins in this grand procession, which moves towards the sacred tree, Shami, the object of adoration. After the offerings and prayers, the Peshwa plucks some leaves of the tree, on which all the cannon and musketry commence firing. The Peshwa then plucks from a field purchased for the occasion a stalk of jowar or bajra, on which the whole crowd fire off their arms, or shoot arrows, and rush in an instant, and tear up the whole”.

Malcolm mentioned the sacrificing of sheep and buffaloes, sprinkling the blood on the horses with great ceremony, and distributing the flesh of the former to all ranks, except Brahmins. The chiefs often gave money to enable their soldiers to buy sheep to perform sacrifices, which from furnishing them with a good dinner, were by many considered as the most essential ceremonies of “Dasara”.

Organisations like the “Lokahitawadi Sangh” batting for equality and the right to worship constantly faced opposition in conservative cities like Pune. Also present was the stigma attached to meat being offered to the Goddess by several non-Brahmin families on the eighth or the tenth day of the festival. Women from many non-Brahmin castes did not follow the tradition of fasting during “Navaratra”. The twentieth century saw many such women adopting largely Brahminical rituals like fasting, a couple of reasons being the desire for upward mobility and peer pressure.

The “powerful” and the “privileged” often make those without power beg and fight for equality. They decide the norms of society, which are often pernicious and hurtful to those who are in the minority. Inclusion is feeling safe about who you are while accepting others, no matter how different. Discrimination could be overt and covert, direct and indirect. But inclusion must always be overt, direct, and intentional.

Chinmay Damle is a research scientist and food enthusiast. He writes here on Pune’s food culture. He can be contacted at chinmay.damle@gmail.com