The excellent casting in the movie Bombay

 Arvind Swamy and Manisha Koirala might have been well cast as the leads in Bombay, but the absolute winners there were Kitty and Nassar. I mean, those two are the ones who come to mind when thinking about this movie, though their combined screen time would hardly be one third of the movie. And to think about all these people protesting that movies these days are having plenty of Muslim men characters romancing Hindu women characters( Laxmii, Toofaan, Kalank, etc. My theory is that Bollywood is trying to show its attitude about inter-faith marriage in films as it happens in Metros- it's happening, it's nothing major, love triumphs above all, just chill and can't everyone else chill out about it too, please?) as a trend, long ago in the movie Bombay, not only was it was the other way around, but the sheer faith-blind casting was a treat to watch. 

Nasser, a Muslim by faith, was great as an upper caste Tamil Shaivaite character and Kitty, an upper caste Tamil Hindu was cast as a economically-weaker section Muslim character. And wow, did they deliver as they were cast!!!! And what superior acting, that it doesn't strike you at all till much later the diabolical mind that must have known, acknowledged and thrown out on its nose, the reality of these men, just so movie magic can happen. Of course I'm talking about Mani Ratnam and his diabolical mind. He must also have known the fact they, Nasser and Kitty, were basically acting out the other's future when it came time for their real life children to marry. Lol.

The controversy of Religion and the controversy of Race- II - Evolution

 

Hinduism- or parts of it that has travelled to the east from our land....and when you see the rituals practised towards clearly identifiable Shiva, Vishnu, Ganesh idols, you can see that while they have influences from India, they are largely local...from the flowers in the decoration, to the songs sung, to the meat  - goats, chicken, pig etc that is offered in the temple itself. (Clearly the effect that was started by Jainism that has rid most of our Indian Hindu temples off animal offerings has not gone there. That some of our temples are holding on to the practise of animal offering is another subject for another day.) Btw, the most recent cool thing is to offer bubble tea for Ganesh in Thailand. Diabetes fear anyone? No worse than our jaggery and sugar laden modaks you say? Fair enough.

This kind of Hinduism varietal between India and the far east countries that still practise some form of Hinduism shows us how insular we are being when we try to codify our religion....and try to limit it from all it can be when we say - only this practise can be called Hinduism and that practise should not. Only this god is Hindu and that god is not. Where do we limit it and where do we not? Gods prayed to before 1947 are Hindu gods and those that came after are not? Gods or their embodiments within the sub-continent are Hindu Gods and the versions/avatars prayed to in Burma-Thailand-Indonesia etc are not?

This last question is specifically related to the local gods that are ubiquitous to every nook and cranny in our country. A small diety/shrine that was a anthill- turned snakehill which was on the way to my school where local women worshipped and offered milk, was suddenly painted with turmeric and vermillion one day, then a few years later, became a 'Amman' (Metal face mask of a generic Goddess was installed in front of the crumbling snake-hill) with a shed built over her when I was a teenager. A single-roomed 'Temple' was built around it by the time I had started working. Somewhere along the way, a proper "Amman" idol made of black stone was installed where the original anthill had been located. A priest started working there. When I recently visited Chennai, I saw that the Amman Temple was now larger, and the outer wall painted with white and red and with a proper "praharam" made of metal grillwork around the Central "Amman". This has happened in the last 35-40 years, within my lifetime. (Do I hear encroachment? Misuse of Porramboke land? Yup, all of it is true and more). But this is a microcosm of the evolution of one part of Hinduism happening right in front of our eyes. Just try to apply that over the past several thousand years in widely ranging people and societies across the four directions in our country and then you might get the larger picture of why we are as we are- with diverse practices and equally diverse thoughts about our religion.

(Have you heard of the Bodyguard Muneeswaran Temple in Chennai? This is a story of how some labourers brought their village diety with them to Chennai and set it up near their new place of work, near the Barracks in Park Town. A British Commander who had some objections and asked it to be removed met with an accident. Believing that his accident was a result of his "objections" to the newly arrived god, he let the idol stay where it had been planted. This idol now has a proper temple with regular sevai. This Muni"Easwaran" / a form of Shiva - is believed to protect one from accidents. People buying new vehicles come there for a poojai in the mornings where a line of autos and cars are parked right in front of the temple. I don't know about the vehicles parked there for the poojai, but the traffic in already congested Park Town gets worse for wear for sure on some days due to the temple crowds, leading to scrapes and dents for others) 

Now to house-gods. This is a practise relevant in Thanjavur area among some saivaite castes and maybe in other areas as well. Every house in my father's village has a god. Really. They are called Veettu-Deivams. It usually looked similar in most houses' poojai rooms I had seen during my holidays. It was a rectangular portion of the wall, about 2 ft* 1ft, painted in Kaavi (Reddish Brown). And inside it was painted many pattais (three white horizontal stripes with a red dot in the centre - symbol of Shiva) and a few namams (Three vertical stripes -centre one is usually red - symbol of Vishnu). Whenever the oldest male member of a house died, the pattern inside the painting had to be re-painted. Whenever the house underwent painting also, the Veettu Deivam was repainted. And on every Pongal Day? (No, that's not it.) But that patch of the wall was regularly repainted on a yearly basis. And any male member who went to live elsewhere had to paint the same pattern in their Poojai rooms and pray to it on a regular basis. The Pattais and Namams represented their forefathers. These days it has evolved into rectangular wooden tray-like thing that can be hung up anywhere given that mostly people don't live where their grandparents lived  -given the large move of the Indian population from rural-farming lives to urban -office going lives. And who can repaint their Pooja rooms on a regular basis anyway? My mother and aunts now repaint their "hang-able" Veettu-Deivams easily from time to time. (Search about this on Google and you wouldn't get a single correct hit for the image. Maybe this practise is totally dying out or is more highly guarded that I would have thought.)

Forgive the rambling. My point is that, we are ever evolving as a species. Let our religion itself evolve just like our religious practises do. Because if we stop to codify and limit Hinduism from absorbing, assimilating, and spreading in different directions (not geographical!!! In thought, in philosophy, in practise, in rituals etc....) we stop evolving. And from history the one thing we can learn is that when something stopped evolving, it dwindled and then died. So for those die-hard right wingers and self-appointed protectors of Hinduism out there, if you want several more generations of your descendants to  enjoy this beautiful religion of Hinduism (provided the earth is not destroyed by a meteor...global warming...yada yada), be accepting of adaptations we must do in order to keep our religion evolving and thereby relevant through the glorious ages yet to come. 

The controversy of Religion and the controversy of Race- I

I am a Hindu by birth. What does that mean? I pray to certain gods and perform certain rituals? Certainly. But while these gods are prayed to by many Hindus, the rituals I perform are informed by my geography and the social and cultural groups that I was born into. 

Simply : For Eg: Varalakshmi Pooja in Tamil Nadu is celebrated by certain castes (Praying for their husband's longevity to Goddess Lakshmi) while my family does not. Kaaradaiyan Nonbu, is a similar festival (praying for husband's longevity to Goddess Gowri/Parvathi) that my family observes. I haven't heard of the practise of fasting for Kaaradaiyan Nonbu by other caste groups. North India (some parts) observe the Karva Chauth fast for a similar purpose. People in the East may observe/perform a ritual and fast for the same purpose as well. All are celebrated on different days of the year. 

We Hindus are an amalgam of many practises and various rituals. The South Indians have embraced gods from the north and North Indians have taken up gods from the South. There will of course be controversy when you talk about invading people (Aryans) and how South Indians should not accept their gods. The Aryan Invasion Theory is being hotly debated everyday with new genome studies of various population groups. (By the Way : Can we comfortably identify solely as descended from one group in this day and age? Are we claiming that our genetic pool is solely from Ancestral South Indians? There is no ancestor from the east? No ancestor from the North? Are we claiming that our ancestors who arrived in India "out of Africa " about 65000-50000 years ago did not intermingle with anyone else? ) There are people talking about the Tamil God Seyyon has been metamorphosed into Murugan/Karthikeyan the son of Shiva on many online platforms. Talking about Shiva - some are claiming that the God from the Himalayas  is just one Shiva - and his form has taken over the identity of the local worship of the "Linga", which means so many things in so many places that even the wikipedia entry for it is confusing. 

Now, coming to the recent controversy that began when one movie director said that - The Chola King Rajaraja I (originally named : Arulmozhi Varman) wasn't Hindu, he was talking about politics and the current saffronisation or maybe Hindutva-sation of Tamil historical figures. (He was a Saivaite obviously given that he spent vast amount of resources on building the biggest Shiva Temple in TN and during his time many Shiva Temples were stone -worked over from bricks and hence making them long lasting.) But the controversy evolved super fast from history - Was Rajaraja Hindu? into one of current religion- primarily - one of - "Are we Hindus?" in Tamil Nadu. Then further into : "Who are Hindus?" 

I have heard so many discussions about this : for in every house , every street-corner tea-shop, this topic has raged in various intensities. And the conclusions are many. But most people agree on a few things: 

1. There was no "Hindu" religion before the advent of the Britishers. "Hindustan" or "Indoostan" was a term in common use to denote the people who lived south the Indus River. "Hindu" was a convenient common name to give to people who lived south of the Himalayas for the Britishers who were in colonial consolidation mode and they did it to make life easy for themselves - for administering this widely varied people they found - in the peninsula south of the Indus. 

2. Many agree that the people who live in "Modern India" as we know it now and identify as Hindu, have a largely common way of life. ( Which by the way also has space for the "non-believers". That is, those who self-identify as atheists have always been a part of our culture, because as many elder people keep telling me - Hinduism is not really a religion, it is a way of life, Hindu Dharma has space for the atheists too.)

3. People remember reading in their history books the primary religions that make up Hinduism. They are now called the primary "sects" of Hinduism.  1. Saivaites ( Shiva), 2, Vaishnavaites(Vishnu), 3. Shaktism (Shakti - various forms of the Goddess) 4. Gaumaram (Karthikeya/Murugan worship) 5. Ganapathyam (Ganesh worship) .....there are many isms- for people who worship as their primary god : Surya, Indra, Varuna etc....And there is the Smartha tradition ....and the various aithas came: dwaithas, advaitha, vishishwadwaitha....basically, different ways to reach God, surrender to God, or claim that we are the gods? ...or whatever....I have a long way to go before I begin to truly understand what those 8th, 9th and10th century philosophers were preaching.

What all these arguments and discussions have brought back for me, along with a dose of regional/language pride (I blame the movie PS-I for all this btw, and Mani Rathnam) is the question of : 1. What does my race (Primarily ASI) say about my religion? 2. Am I praying to the right Gods? (Who are the Right Gods btw? :-) 3. If Ram, Krishna and even Shiva are imports from Gangetic Plains, then who were the local gods then, let us say 2000 years ago ? (See, the whole village deity doesn't compute in these days of city living. Where will my local guardian deity be if I live in Bangalore? In Hebbal? or Whitefield? or Adugodi? lol) 4. Am I supposed to be praying to the pre-north infusion/consolidated version of Murugan/Karthikeya - that is: Seyyon? If he is the warrior God - and my modern life has no part of war - will my petty non-war concerns even matter to him? 

(I keep coming back to Muruga/Karthikeya - because though I belong to caste that claims to be Saivaite - in every relative's home I have been to , the picture/idol of Murugan is the centrepiece/biggest. Is this a Tamil thing? Or that my ancestors have been following both Saivism and Gowmaaram? Then I wonder if when the cult of Saivism took over large tracts of population, it was convenient to hook the Tamils by claiming that Shiva was the father of Murugan? Also note, there is a discrepancy between the order of children Shiva has between the north and south. Here we say that Ganesha was the older one, but in the north it is the other way around.  Also, note that most modern Indians, based on just the north-south discrepancy- over years come to some sort of understanding that Hinduism is a amalgamated religion model and hence it fundamentally differs from the Single God with prophet/prophets religion model. One, there is choice of gods (pick who you want and pray) and choice in worship form that is denied to those who believe in a monotheistic religion. Two, space for the agnostics and atheists that is not available in monotheistic religions. Three- clearly less space for fanaticism as one person/entity cannot claim to know God's Plan and dictate agenda for the believers based on religion. 

In any case, this whole controversy has given rise to one thing - people are reading more, asking more questions about their past, debating history and who wrote it and with what agendas and about the evolution of this wonderful thing called Hinduism- be it religion, dharma or way-of-life.