Trial by ice

The upper reaches of the Himalayas did not receive their usual quota of rain and snowfall this winter. Usually, there is substantial snowfall until March. Much depends on this precipitation, from water for the rest of the country to the intensity of the summer and even next year’s climate. And, in a cave in the northern Himalayas, a stalagmite grows.

To worship it, every year thousands of pilgrims trek miles to get to Amarnath. This year, the stalagmite did not grow enough. Worshippers would not get the ‘lingam’ in its expected glory.

And so begins a tale of official interference, superstition and a chain of events that, in a clichéd sentiment, sounds like one of those peculiarly Indian happenings. It does not matter that the lingam is a stalagmite, a natural occurrence in such circumstances. The reasons for and complications of phallic worship are for another place. The lingam itself, in the Hindu belief, is never without the yoni in a never-ending play of the cosmic union, but that also is not necessary for this story.

Instead, the allegations. That officials messed with the sacred lingam. That the governor of Jammu and Kashmir, where the caves are located, decided that dry ice had to be imported from Punjab to bulk up the lingam, because size does matter. That a mechanised lingam had been built behind everyone’s back. What is more astounding: the fact that someone has made these allegations or indeed decided that the stalagmite was tampered with?

It can well be argued that India today is a country of religiosity rather than religion. From either perspective, though, the wonder of Amarnath was that it was a natural happening. Manmade lingams are available all over the country. An icicle that appeared to be a manifestation of the Lord Shiva’s phallus is something else all together. You cannot blame the devout for getting outraged that officials had messed about with this divine object.

Yet, the officials were only trying to protect the faithful, to shield them from the awful truth: the lingam was largely missing in action this year. The Big Brother syndrome kicked in; pilgrims must not be disappointed. The question of whether this clumsy attempt at protection fell within the tenets of Hinduism, a religion where concepts of pollution and exclusion are very important, did not even arise, probably due to ignorance.

At this juncture, India must stop and ask itself just what is going on. Does the government of India have to organise religious pilgrimages of any kind? Why do officials have to think that the people are so weak and insecure as to be devastated by a shrunken or half-formed stalagmite? And, what is worse, are Indians indeed so without substance, so needy, so irrational that they have to be protected from themselves at all times? You can almost see the size of the lingam or the snowfall patterns of Kashmir for the year being locked away in a government godown, far from the prying clauses of the Right to Information Act.

Down at the other end of India, in Kerala, another storm brews. In 1999, an actress from Karnataka visited the Ayappa shrine at Sabarimala and accidentally touched the idol. She confessed this in a letter written to the temple authorities this year and promptly found herself in the midst of a hurricane for her “sacrilege.”

Ayappa, a local deity and a relatively late entrant to the Hindu pantheon via the syncretic route, is by popular lore a brahmachari, celibate. The myths that surround him are about him as a little boy, with women largely anathema. No woman who can be sexually active or within her child-bearing years can visit Ayappa. In the worship of Hanuman, also a brahmachari and also a late recipient of divinity, interestingly, women are welcome.

The rules about Ayappa, however, are strict. Men who make the trek to Sabarimala also have to be abstemious for a period before. As Amarnath pilgrims of both sexes climb a mountain to worship a divine phallus, so the black-clad ‘Swamis’ for Ayappa, climb their hill. The idea of a woman desecrating the idol is likely to fill them with horror.
Notions of pollution of another kind are active here.

Both these stories have the capacity to bring us to a civilisational crossroad. India, on the move, with full rights to give space and credence to all faiths, must also accept the dynamics of democracy and freedom and shed antediluvian traditions. The primitive notion of a menstruating woman being unclean is distressing in the contemporary context, as is the idea of a government-made lingam. In most cases, our ideas of religion are governed by the understanding of Bronze Age man. This allows for both magic and prejudice. The 21st century might be a good time to reassess the magic and get rid of the prejudices.