Pilgrim's India

by ARUNDHATHI SUBRAMANIAM

  But the moral question cannot be evaded, and neither can the cultural or political one. Who is a Muslim and can you be one even if you are unable to fully claim spaces like Ajmer? Is the Bangalore landlord right in assuming that religion presupposes cultural practices, that one’s being Muslim necessarily implies not just private thoughts but also public actions? If push comes to shove, like it did in Hitler’s Europe, and one is pigeonholed in one’s inherited religion, how would one then sustain a fluid relationship to religion such as the one I am proposing?

  There is an argument to be made for the inevitability and the necessity of understanding the parts we have privately played—actively or passively—with regard to religion. If communalism and its opposite were both not such terribly vital issues in contemporary India, I would never need to think about my relationship to religion. Given that they are, I must. A pilgrimage is a good place to begin because pilgrimages, even ones undertaken half-unwittingly, inevitably give you a predetermined public role to play but they don’t regiment you. If journeys are allegories for a movement towards self-knowledge, I am glad I made my somewhat farcical pilgrimage to Ajmer. The images of Ajmer are images that I cannot completely internalize and yet cannot dismiss. Their relevance to me is part of a way of being an Indian Muslim—pockmarked with ignorance and doubt, but which is still a way of being an Indian Muslim.

  9.

  The pot is a god

  Basavanna (12 century ce)

  Translated by A.K. Ramanujan

  The pot is a god. The winnowing

  fan is a god. The stone in the

  street is a god. The comb is a

  god. The bowstring is also a

  god. The bushel is a god and the

  spouted cup is a god.

  Gods, gods, there are so many

  there’s no place left

  for a foot.

  There is only

  one god. He is our Lord

  of the Meeting Rivers.

  _______________________________________

  This poem is from Speaking of Siva.

  10.

  Well of Fate

  (1896)

  Mark Twain

  For certain reasons you will next go and do homage at this well. You will find it in the Dandpan Temple, in the city [Benares]. The sunlight falls into it from a square hole in the masonry above. You will approach it with awe, for your life is now at stake. You will bend over and look. If the fates are propitious, you will see your face pictured in the water far down in the well. If matters have been otherwise ordered, a sudden cloud will mask the sun and you will see nothing. This means that you have not six months to live. If you are already at the point of death, your circumstances are now serious. There is no time to lose. Let this world go, arrange for the next one. Handily situated, at your very elbow, is opportunity for this. You turn and worship the image of Maha Kal, the Great Fate, and happiness in the life to come is secured. If there is breath in your body yet, you should now make an effort to get a further lease of the present life. You have a chance. There is a chance for everything in this admirably stocked and wonderfully systematized Spiritual and Temporal Army and Navy Store.

  _______________________________________

  This is an extract from Travellers’ India.

  11.

  The Alchemy of Places of Pilgrimage

  Osho

  A tirtha, a sacred place of pilgrimage, is a unique invention, very deep and symbolic, created by an ancient civilization. But our present civilization has lost all knowledge of the significance of such places. Today visiting a place of pilgrimage is just a dead ritual for us. We simply tolerate them, without knowing why places of pilgrimage were established, what their use was and who made them.

  What can be seen on the surface is not everything; there are hidden meanings which are not visible from the outside.

  Firstly we need to realize that the purpose and meaning of the sacred place of pilgrimage has become lost to our civilization, and so today people who go on a pilgrimage are wasting their time. Those who oppose the idea are also wasting their time, however right they seem to be, because they know nothing about such places. Neither the people who visit the places of pilgrimage, nor those who oppose the idea, know their purpose. So let us try to understand a few things about them …

  There is a famous place of pilgrimage for Jainas known as Samved Shikhar. Twenty-two out of the twenty-four tirthankaras of the Jainas have died there, have left their bodies there. It all seems to have been prearranged; otherwise it is impossible that out of twenty-four, twenty-two should have happened to die in the same place, with long periods of time in between them. If we believe the Jainas, there is a gap of 100,000 years between the first and the twenty-fourth tirthankara. That twenty-two of them died in the same place is worth thinking about …

  A very deep and intense experiment on Samved Shikhar was made by the twenty-two tirthankaras, just as they were leaving their bodies. On that mountain they tried to intensify and multiply the vibrations of their developed consciousness so that it would be easier for us to communicate with them. It was thought that if so many souls of such consciousness left their body from the same place, a path between that place and another plane could be laid. And such a path has existed.

  The rainfall is not the same everywhere on Earth: there are some areas of heavy rain, where it rains as much as 500 inches a year, and desert areas where there is no rain or it is very scarce. Similarly, there are places which are very cold, where there is nothing but snow everywhere; and there are areas so hot that it is difficult to make ice. In the same way on the earth there are places with high-density consciousness and low-density consciousness. Conscious attempts have been made to create areas of high consciousness, fields charged with human consciousness. They do not happen automatically, but are a result of the consciousnesses of powerful individuals.

  Twenty-two tirthankaras travelling to that one mountain, entering samadhi and leaving their bodies there, created a highly charged field of consciousness, in some special sense, at Samved Shikhar. It was intended that if someone sits there, chanting the special mantras given by those twenty-two tirthankaras, his journey into out-of-the-body experiences would immediately begin. This is as scientific an experiment as any which take place in a laboratory.

  The only reason for creating the places of pilgrimage was to experiment with creating powerfully charged fields of conscious energies, so that anyone could easily begin his inner journey.

  There are two methods of making a boat move. One method is to open the sails at the right time, in the direction of the wind, and not to use the oars; the other method is not to open the sails, but to help the boat move with the use of the oars. The places of pilgrimage are places where the stream of consciousness is flowing automatically: you just have to stand in the middle of the stream with the sails of your consciousness open, and you begin your journey onwards. You will be able to travel far more easily and faster in such places than anywhere else—and alone. Elsewhere, you may unknowingly reach some negative place, and open up your sails in the wrong direction: you may move further away from your destination and become lost …

  But in a tirtha, a sacred place of pilgrimage, … you require a technique that helps you to drop all resistance and to open your doors and windows from all sides. There, positive energy is flowing in abundance. Hundreds of people have travelled into the unknown from there and have created a path. Yes, it should be called a path … it is as if they have made a path by cutting down trees and removing the bushes blocking the way, so that those walking behind them find it easier to travel. On the religious path, efforts are made by the higher, stronger consciousnesses to help weaker people in every way. The place of pilgrimage was one such great experiment.

  A place of pilgrimage is where currents flow from the body towards the soul, where the whole atmosphere is charged; where people have achieved samadhi, where for centuries people have been realizing their enlightenment. Such pla
ces have become especially charged. In such a place, if you just open your sails, without doing anything else, your journey will begin.

  So all religions have established their places of pilgrimage. Even those religions which were against temples have done it. It is surprising that religions that were against idol worship and temples established places of pilgrimage. It was easy to do without statues, but places of pilgrimage could not be done away with because they have a value so vast that no religion could oppose or deny …

  The word tirtha means a sort of diving board from where one can jump into the infinite ocean. The Jaina word tirthankara means a creator of such a tirtha, such a place of pilgrimage. A person can only be called a tirthankara if he has charged an area into which ordinary people can enter, open themselves up and begin their inner search. Jainas do not call them divine incarnations, but tirthankaras. A tirthankara is a greater phenomenon than a divine incarnation, because if the divine enters a human form that is good, but if a man makes a place for others to enter the divine, it is a far higher event.

  Jainism does not believe in a God, it believes in man’s potential. That is why Jainas could benefit more deeply from the tirtha and the tirthankaras than the followers of any other religion. In the Jaina religion there is no concept of ‘God’s grace’ or ‘God’s compassion’. Jainas do not think that God can give any help; the seeker is alone and has to travel by his own effort and energy.

  But then there are two ways in which he can travel. On the first path, every man has to travel in his own boat, with the strength of his own hands, using the oars. One out of many may succeed. But on the second path, you can take the help of the winds and open up your sails, so that you can travel faster and more easily.

  But do such spiritual winds really exist? Yes, this is just what places of pilgrimage depend on. Is it possible when a person like Mahavir is there, that a flow of energy towards some unknown dimension begins all around him? Can he create an energy flow towards a particular dimension, so that if someone enters this current he will just be carried along by it, and will reach his ultimate destiny? In fact, a sacred place of pilgrimage is a place with just this very flow.

  _______________________________________

  These are selected excerpts from Hidden Mysteries.

  12.

  Is there some way I can reach you?

  Annamayya (15 century ce)

  Translated by Velcheru Narayana Rao and David Shulman

  Is there some way I can reach you?

  You have no end and no beginning.

  I want to praise your good qualities,

  but you have no qualities.

  I try to think of you in my mind.

  You sit behind every thought.

  Is there some way I can reach you?

  I want to worship you with my hands,

  but you are huge, you fill all space.

  I would bring you a gift, but you have everything

  in the world.

  Is there some way I can reach you?

  I want to see you with my eyes.

  You have no visible form.

  God on the hill, you are in all these things.

  All I can say is, I am yours.

  Is there some way I can reach you?

  _______________________________________

  This poem is from God on the Hill: Temple Poems from Tirupati.

  13.

  A Climatic Condition Called Tukaram

  Ranjit Hoskote

  For the devout, a pilgrimage begins in a statement of faith and culminates in an affirmation of faith. For those of us who are not blessed with uncritical devotion, it begins in conversation and curiosity, in the need to test the limits of our strength and our scepticism. We could persuade ourselves that the outer journey is only an analogue of that more important journey through strange psychological realms which we must make, to come to terms with ourselves. But that inner journey is not so easily embarked upon. We continue to be constrained by our accustomed circuits of work, play, strain and rest; and by the need to break with these. The urge to walk out of ourselves remains strong. Whether as experimenters ready to enter the event horizon of a saint-poet’s rapture and take the consequences, or as athletes of long-distance meditation prepared to endure the wages of epiphany, many of us are, at some stage in our lives, impelled to undertake a pilgrimage.

  It was in a spirit receptive both to experiment and epiphany that we set out for Dehu on an unusually rainy April morning in 1994, following the trail of Tukaram, the celebrated saint-poet of the bhagvat sampradaya. Tukaram was born in a village near Pune to a family of cultivators and small traders in 1608. He lived chiefly in his native village, although he travelled to the Konkan coast while briefly engaged in the family trade in salt and other necessities. It was in Dehu, when he was in his early twenties, that the future saint-poet was devastated by the deaths of his parents and his first wife in a series of famines and epidemics. His elder brother renounced the worldly life to become a sanyasi, but Tukaram married a second time, assuming the responsibility of providing, in strained times, for his six children and a younger brother. A recurrent note of horror at the caprice of fate sounds in his verses:

  God paints himself in a bizarre variety

  Of colours. He is like an ascetic

  Who has ceased to care about his own form.*

  These reverses prompted Tukaram to withdraw into seclusion. Brooding, melancholy, cut off from the community and yet unable in good faith to pull free of his family responsibilities, he found his gaze reverting to the form of Vishnu that his family had worshipped for several generations: Vithoba, or Pandurang. Drawn to religious experience and poetic utterance yet unsure of his own worth, he swung between self-doubt and conviction. Increasingly, he kept to himself immersed in his devotions. So unworldly did he become, eventually, that he was reduced to the humiliation of penury and bankruptcy. The community expelled him from his post as the village accountant, and he became the butt of mockery and spite.

  But Tukaram did not conceal himself in shame. Instead, he wandered around Dehu and its surrounding landscape in a state of exaltation, celebrating the glory of the Divine. Tuka, as he signed himself in his hymns, was transported into ecstasies of surrender and illumination in the presence of Vithoba–Pandurang. Gradually, as they recognized the aura that surrounded the man they had taken for a drifter and a layabout, people flocked to seek the blessing of his company. He began to gather a following: votaries, attracted by the stories they heard about him, came from distant regions to Dehu.

  It was in Dehu, too, that the saint-poet suffered the slights and reprisals of the envious and the powerful; and it was here, eventually, that he vanished from human sight in 1649. Conspiracy theorists have suggested that Tukaram was murdered, but little evidence can be found to support this view; towards the end of his life, the once-reviled Tuka had become the centre of an extremely popular devotional movement; had he been martyred, the event would have been enshrined in a memorial narrative by his followers and commemorated by his spiritual descendants. Ask the varkaris, the pilgrims who have sustained the bhagvat tradition of popular Vaishnavite devotionalism in western India for nearly 800 years; they will tell you that Tukaram Maharaj, as they reverently describe him, was removed to heaven by his sublime Protector in a chariot of light.

  Appropriately enough to our purpose, we began the expedition with rain, wind and lightning. It was not until we were well on our way to Dehu that the sky cleared, and the outlines of the day emerged dry and clear only as we drove into the village. Our little party, which consisted of the painter Jayant Joshi, the essayist and translator Jayant Deshpande, and me, was led by Dilip Chitre. We could not have wished for a more authoritative guide: poet, fiction writer, translator and film-maker, Chitre (1938–2009) had been bringing Tukaram’s abhangas over from Marathi into English since 1956, and was a frequent visitor to Dehu. Despite having had to wrestle for many years with a complicated medical history, he negotiated steep h
illsides and muddy river meadows with practised skill and inexhaustible delight. Recalling his magical surges of energy, I cannot believe that he no longer shares this planet with us.

  II.

  Like many other villages that have grown into small towns, without quite meaning to, Dehu is afflicted by the cacophony of Hindi film music, the raw seductions of the video parlour and the superficial contemporaneity ushered in by the dish antenna. Tukaram’s world may have exploded like a supernova, but its light still reaches us faintly across the traffic of three-wheelers and trucks, the stench of the sewer-poisoned river, the ripeness of sugarcane fields that suck the residual water from the earth.

  Tukaram is everywhere in Dehu. In 1994 we found him on posters and billboards, on signposts indicating the way to the Vithoba temple or other, smaller sanctuaries, and in the form of fading portraits framed in shops selling the customary offerings of flowers, coconuts and incense. Today you will also find him incarnate in garish plaster figurines, doubtless set up in one of those bouts of ‘beautification’ that periodically seize many Indian municipal governments. And in the cheaply made hologram medallions that roadside hawkers sell, not only to the traditional pilgrims, but also to the growing traffic of spiritual tourists: that expanding army of born-again urban devotees whose anxieties push them towards belief and who cannot have enough of the high-decibel religiosity that they carry around with them.

  Hurrying from Kashmir to Kanyakumari, in the traditional formula that embraces India’s sacred geography, they touch every shrine and temple that they can, reducing it to the same farrago of saffron pennants, off-key bhajans and brightly painted icons. The sacred mystery of the sanctum veiled in shadow must be uncovered for them, since entry tickets have been bought and digital cameras brought along to record the occasion. The half-glimpsed vision and the half-heard melody are too slow-moving for this crowd; they surf from one channel of grace to another, impatient for enlightenment.