But the Kumbh administration remained adamant; as long as the akharas cooperated, the shankaracharyas’ move would not affect the Mela. However, the reverse situation would be a disaster—a Kumbh without the Shaiva akharas would be unimaginable. Primarily because of this, when the issue reached the state government, even the Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav decided not to intervene, by refusing to comment on the issue.27 The Mela began without any Shankaracharya Chatushpad, and the pontiffs of the four peethas stayed away in protest. Two weeks after the Kumbh had begun, following a conciliatory gesture by the Uttar Pradesh government, they ended their boycott and returned to the Mela area.28
The akharas might have temporarily overcome the challenge posed by the shankaracharyas at the Allahabad Kumbh, but that does not mean the threat is over. Even during the stand-off, Allahabad’s pandas, called Prayagwals, extended their support to the shankaracharyas. A panda is a Brahmin priest whose hereditary job is to officiate at religious ceremonies. Prayagwals are pandas specific to the Sangam at Prayag. Prayagwals, who claim that their exclusive right to serve pilgrims at the Sangam was established by Mughal emperor Akbar through a farman (charter) dated 1593,29 have their own reasons for being upset with the hegemonic and monopolistic attitude of the akharas during Kumbh Melas. For the duration of the Kumbh Mela at Allahabad, the akharas are centre stage in the spiritual market at the Sangam, relegating the Prayagwals and others to the margins. Though the Prayagwals are not a part of the Kumbh and do not have camps in the Mela area, they consider themselves as the owners of a large chunk of land near the Sangam. They have a vast network of contacts, from having been in the spiritual market for a long time. Not only did they enjoy considerable freedom under the Mughals since the time of Akbar but also were respected during the rule of the nawabs of Awadh. During the initial years of the British rule, they faced problems from time to time, but even then, their right over the Sangam area was never completely denied. Since 1860, when the Prayagwal Sabha was formed, they have continued to exert greater influence over devout Hindus as they occupy one of the most important pilgrimage sites. They found an opportunity in the Chatushpad issue to challenge the akharas’ hegemony during the Melas.
The intentions of the Prayagwals became clear about a fortnight before the Kumbh began, when Swaroopanand Saraswati announced his decision to boycott the Mela. Around that time, the president of the Prayagwal Sabha, Ajay Pande, requested the shankaracharyas not to boycott the Kumbh and offered to build the Chatushpad ‘anywhere on the 950 bighas of land owned by the Prayagwals in the Kumbha Mela area’.30 Although this did not come to fruition in the 2013 Kumbh, this option might still be open to the shankaracharyas in the subsequent Kumbhs.
Though the pontiffs of the four peethas did not respond to the Prayagwals’ offer, it seems to have shaken the akharas. In this climate, supporting someone like Achyutanand Tirth simply does not fit into the akharas’ new scheme of things.
EPILOGUE
In anticipation of the upcoming general elections, the RSS sought to make a massive political show of the Ardh Kumbh held in January–March 2019, including renaming it a Kumbh Mela. This attempt to hijack the show did not go down well with many sadhus, especially those who had so far been unable to profit from the RSS’s network of patronage. The shankaracharya of Dwarka peetha, Swaroopanand Saraswati, and the AIAP president Narendra Giri, in fact, actively damaged the reputation of the VHP’s much-hyped Dharma Sansad, where the RSS had originally strategised to rekindle the communally sensitive Ram temple issue in time for the polls.1
The VHP’s experience in the Kumbh and Ardh Kumbh Melas so far, especially since the Allahabad Kumbh of 1989, was that it was able to posit itself as the sadhus’ representative body, using the Sangh Parivar’s clout among religious leaders and their mutts, ashrams and akharas. While a section of sadhus endorsed the VHP, others did not, but the latter merely stayed away from the VHP without whipping up a public fuss.
Meanwhile, the RSS worked behind the scenes and never got directly involved. As an organisation, it remained conscious not to be seen directly propagating its ideology in Kumbh and Ardh Kumbh even though its top leaders have participated in, and have often presided over, the events organised by the VHP.
This pattern was broken in the recently concluded Ardh Kumbh when the RSS, aided by the BJP governments at the centre and in Uttar Pradesh, entered the arena rather aggressively, perhaps keeping in mind the upcoming elections. The Ardh Kumbh was arbitrarily renamed Kumbh, to make it seem grander. Massive pavilions of various RSS outfits—such as the VHP, BJP, the RSS student wing Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the RSS education wing Vidya Bharati, the cultural wing Sanskar Bharati, and the tribal wing Vanvasi Kalyan Parishad—sprang up. Images of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, the two prominent poster boys of Hindutva, loomed large on giant billboards all over the Mela area, while below, RSS workers roamed the grounds in groups, making the religious congregation seem more like a Sangh Parivar party rather than a fair of sadhus and pilgrims. They put up a whole tent city, rather than just a cluster of camps.
Initially, neither Narendra Giri nor any of the other akhara representatives in the AIAP protested the renaming of the Mela, hoping, perhaps, this would attract a Kumbh-like gathering of pilgrims and devotees. But their hopes were dashed; there was a paucity of devotees in the camps set up by individual sadhus, mutts and ashrams.
‘You can’t underestimate the traditional wisdom of devotees,’ asserted Martand Puri, mahamandaleshwar of Mahanirvani akhara.2 ‘Kumbhs and Ardh Kumbhs are calculated based on the positions of celestial bodies that can’t be changed by a government order or for the sake of helping the BJP in the elections. The masses go by the Hindu calendar and strictly follow the tithee when deciding on the date and time to embark on a pilgrimage. They know that the present Mela is not a Kumbh but an Ardh Kumbh. That is why you don’t find Kumbh-like enthusiasm this time.’
Many sadhus I spoke to felt that the religious gathering had been overshadowed by the political agenda of the Hindu Right. Others blamed the BJP for having done nothing towards the construction of a Ram temple in Ayodhya during its five-year term at the helm of the government—a promise the BJP had made at the time of the last general elections in 2014.
Though this disquiet was limited only to a section of the religious leaders, it still posed a threat to the RSS’s plans. The first jolt came on 30 January, a day before the VHP’s two-day Dharma Sansad. Swaroopanand Saraswati announced in a parallel conclave of sadhus that he would lead a march of religious leaders to Ayodhya and lay the foundation stone for the construction of the Ram temple on 21 February. The announcement put the RSS on edge. It caused a section of sadhus who had previously collaborated with Hindutva politics to stay away from the Dharma Sansad. Though later, Swaroopanand postponed this march, claiming that it was on account of the terrorist strike on the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) camp in Pulwama, Jammu and Kashmir, the Sangh Pariwar’s plans had already been thwarted.
Before the RSS could respond to Swaroopanand Saraswati’s move at the Kumbh, the AIAP announced its decision to boycott the Dharma Sansad, early on the day the conclave was to begin. Never in the past had the AIAP openly stopped sadhus from attending a VHP event. RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat immediately met with top office-bearers of the VHP and senior leaders of the BJP. Chief Minister Adityanath, himself a member of the ascetic community, had to travel from Lucknow to the Ardh Kumbh to meet Bhagwat and prominent religious leaders. But the AIAP refused to budge.
‘The VHP works for the BJP, and sadhus should stay away from politics. That’s why the Akhara Parishad decided to boycott the VHP’s Dharma Sansad,’ Narendra Giri told me.3
‘But this is hardly a secret. The VHP has always been working for the BJP. Why didn’t the Akhara Parishad take a similar decision earlier?’ I asked.
Narendra Giri flashed a ready smile so characteristic of politicians. ‘As a matter of fact, politics is
tempting, perhaps, but unrewarding in the long run,’ he said. ‘I wish I had realised this earlier.’
There was speculation that Narendra Giri’s revived equations with the leaders of the Samajwadi Party, BJP’s rival in Uttar Pradesh, had influenced his decision to boycott the Dharma Sansad. The other theory was that the akharas were not comfortable with the RSS and its various affiliates taking centre stage in the Ardh Kumbh. Whatever the reasons fuelling the AIAP’s decision, it eventually led to a large number of sadhus steering clear of the Dharma Sansad.
Out of ideas and short of sadhus, the RSS set aside the Ram temple agenda in the Ardh Kumbh and instead focused on the ‘attempts to divide’4 sadhus. Many speakers at the conclave called upon Hindus to defeat the forces behind this ‘conspiracy’.5 The Sansad passed a resolution to withhold the temple agitation till the upcoming general elections. ‘The sant samaj shall not give the pseudo-secular pack the opportunity to drag this holy and important movement into a political vortex and swamp,’ it declared. This did not match the promises that the RSS and VHP leaders had made over the past few months. Bhagwat’s speech in the concluding session was followed by sloganeering, with demands to announce the exact date for the construction of a Ram temple.6
High-profile religious leader Namdeo Das Tyagi alias Computer Baba, convened a gathering of the dissenting sadhus, on the day after the Sansad, which made things worse for the RSS. Computer Baba had led a rebellion of sadhus against the BJP government in Madhya Pradesh ahead of the state assembly polls in November 2018, in which the Congress had defeated the BJP.
He called his conclave ‘Santon Ke Mann Ki Baat’, putting a satirical twist on Modi’s radio programme ‘Mann Ki Baat’. The sadhus outraged at the setting aside of the Ram temple issue in the Dharma Sansad flocked in large numbers to the conclave, where they vowed to uproot the BJP government in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. ‘By not taking any steps for the construction of the Ram temple in Ayodhya, the BJP ditched Hindus who had voted for it in 2014. If it does not pass an ordinance on the Ram temple issue before the next election, we will throw it out of power,’ Computer Baba told me.7
This series of events does not necessarily mean that the RSS’s clout among the sadhus has decreased. But the Sangh Parivar’s plans to use the Ardh Kumbh to campaign for the 2019 elections was foiled. To dominate this volatile world of sadhus is a complex mission, and there are no long-term guarantees for the wearer of the crown.
NOTES
Introduction
1. Walter K. Andersen and Shridhar D. Damle, The Brotherhood in Saffron, Westview Press, Boulder and London, 1987, p. 133.
2. Organiser (Diwali Special, 1964), Bharat Prakashan, Delhi, p. 15.
3. Christophe Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics, Hurst & Company, London, 1993, p. 353.
4. Organiser (1 August 1982), Bharat Prakashan, Delhi, p. 1.
5. Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement, p. 353.
6. Richard H. Davis, ‘Contesting the Nation: Religion, Community and the Politics of Democracy in India’ in David Ludden (ed.), The Iconography of Rama’s Chariot, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1996, pp. 42–43.
7. Sir Jadunath Sarkar, A History of Dasnami Naga Sanyasis, Shri Panchayati Akhara Mahanirvani, Allahabad, 1958, pp. 262–286
8. Ibid., pp. 123–261. See also William R. Pinch, Warrior Ascetics and Indian Empires, Cambridge University Press, 2006.
9. Ibid., p. 158.
10. Ibid., pp. 163–166.
11. Ibid., p. 178.
12. Richard B. Barnett, North India Between Empires: Awadh, the Mughals, and the British, 1720–1801, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1980, p. 79.
13. P.N. Bhalla, ‘The Gosain Brothers’, Journal of Indian History, vol. 23, part 2, no. 68 (August 1944), pp. 128–36.
14. The Mughal Emperor’s farman granting diwani (the right of civil and revenue administration) to the Company covered the territories of present-day Bihar, West Bengal, Bangladesh, Orissa and parts of Assam.
15. J.M. Ghosh, Sannyasi and Fakir Raiders in Bengal, Bengal Secretariat Book Depot, Calcutta, 1930, p. 36.
16. A.N. Chandra, The Samnyasi Rebellion, Ratna Prakashan, Calcutta, 1977.
17. David N. Lorenzen, ‘Warrior Ascetics in Indian History’, Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 98, no. 1 (1978), p. 74.
18. Pinch, Warrior Ascetics and Indian Empires, p. 84.
19. Chandra, The Sannyasi Rebellion, pp. 84, 101–14.
20. Ibid., pp. 131–137.
21. William R. Pinch, Peasants and Monks in British India, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1996, p. 31.
22. Matthew Clark, The Dashanami-Samnyasis, Brill, London–Boston, 2006, p. 261.
23. Robert Lewis Gross, The Sadhus of India, Rawat Publications, Jaipur–New Delhi, 1992, p. 163.
24. J.N. Farquhar, ‘The Fighting Ascetics of India’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, vol. 9, no. 2 (July 1925), pp. 431–52. See also his ‘The Organization of the Sannyasis of the Vedanta’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland (July 1925), pp. 479–86.
25. Farquhar, ‘The Organization of the Sannyasis of Vedanta’, p. 483.
26. Ibid.
27. Farquhar, The Fighting Ascetics of India.
28. Lorenzen, ‘Warrior Ascetics in Indian History’, pp. 68–69.
29. Pinch, Warrior Ascetics and Indian Empires, pp. 28–29.
30. W.G. Orr, ‘Armed Religious Ascetics in North India’, The Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, vol. 24, no. 1 (1940), pp. 88–90.
1. Murder in a Holy City
1. Author’s interview with Ram Asare Das conducted on 16 and 21 November 2012 in Ayodhya.
2. Author’s interview with Brijmohan Das conducted on 20 November 2012 in Ayodhya.
3. For details, see Krishna Jha and Dhirendra K. Jha, Ayodhya: The Dark Night, HarperCollins Publishers India, New Delhi, 2012.
4. Organiser (22 April 1984), Bharat Prakashan, Delhi, pp. 1–2.
5. Christophe Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics, Hurst & Company, London, 1993, p. 363.
6. Peter van der Veer, ‘God must be Liberated!’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 21. no. 2 (1987), 283–301.
7. Ibid., p. 298.
8. Ibid., pp. 298–299.
9. Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement, p. 372.
10. van der Veer, ‘God must be Liberated!’, p. 300.
11. Author’s interview with Nandini Dasi conducted on 19 January 2013 in Ayodhya.
12. Author’s interview with Ramlakhan Das conducted on 12 November 2012 and 20 January 2013 in Ayodhya.
13. Peter van der Veer, Gods on Earth: The Management of Religious Experiences and Identity in a North Indian Pilgrimage Centre, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1989, p. 180.
14. Sondra L. Housner, Wandering with Sadhus, Foundation Books, New Delhi, 2012, p. 74.
15. Robert Lewis Gross, The Sadhus of India, Rawat Publications, Jaipur and New Delhi, 1992, p. 318.
16. J.C. Nesfield, Brief View of the Caste System of the N.W. Provinces and Oudh, Government Press, Allahabad, 1885, p. 60.
2. The Thugs of Ayodhya
1. Author’s interview with Ajit Das conducted on 19 January 2013 in Ayodhya.
2. Author’s interview with Dharam Das conducted on 20 November 2012 in Ayodhya, on 6 February 2013 and 10 May 2013 in Allahabad.
3. Christophe Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics, Hurst & Company, London, 1993, p. 469.
4. Statesman, 21 April 1993.
5. Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement, p. 470.
6. India Today, 30 June 1993.
7. Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement, p. 470.
8. Frontline, 16 July 1993.
9. Times of India, 29 October 1993.
10. G.S. Ghurye, Indian Sadhus, Popular Prakashan, Bombay, 1964, p. 165.
11. Ibid., p. 177.
12. Ibid., p. 1
77–178.
13. Ibid., pp. 178–179.
14. Mathew Clark, The Dashnami Sanyasis, Brill, Lieden–Boston, 2006, pp. 57–59.
15. Peter Van der Veer, Gods on Earth: The Management of Religious Experiences and Identity in a North Indian Pilgrimage Centre, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1989, p. 146.
16. Ibid., pp. 149–150.
17. Ibid., pp. 143–144.
18. Niyamavali Hanumangarhi, Varma Printing Press, Ayodhya, 1963, pp. 1–10.
19. Robert Lewis Gross, The Sadhus of India, Rawat Publications, Jaipur–New Delhi, 1992, p. 318.
20. For details, see Niyamavali Hanumangarhi.
21. For details, see Krishna Jha and Dhirendra K. Jha, Ayodhya: The Dark Night, HaperCollins Publishers India, New Delhi, 2012.
Ascetic Games Page 19