Navarātri, Navarātra and Durgāpūjā in South Asia and beyond (Concluded)

Jörg Gengnagel (Würzburg University)

I look at a sequence of rituals and ceremonies carried out on Vijayadaśamī at Jaipur. The ritual performances and textual prescriptions are analyzed in the larger context of the specific spatial setting in Jaipur that is characterized by the interrelation of the old and new residence of the Kachwaha dynasty in Amber and Jaipur and the creation of a new spatial configuration at the beginning of the 18th century. By focusing on visual sources like historical images and maps I show how spatial practices interact with ritual prescriptions. By combining a visual with a textual perspective I suggest that the annual performance of Navarātri can be seen as one element that was instrumental in creating a new power center that still exists as the capital of Rajasthan.

Brigitte Luchesi (Berlin)
The Navarātri festivals in spring and fall are highly important religious occasions in Himachal Pradesh, with devotional acts and practices performed in private homes and in temples. The domestic forms of worship, mostly organized by women, may comprise a preparatory part (e.g. setting up of the pūjā place, installing a depiction of the goddess), daily duties (regular worship, fasts, drawing of designs in the courtyard) and the worship of girls (kanyā pūjā) on the last day. Although all these activities are time-consuming, exhausting and not without costs, devotees consider them imperative. They are understood as necessary contributions on the devotees’ part to make the festival happen in an adequate and fruitful way. A less invested way to celebrate Navarātri consists of visiting a Goddess temple and to perform kanyā pūjā there instead of the laborious and time consuming rituals at home. Here the degree of “work” invested to guarantee the success of the festival is less, as the temple provide all the facilities for worship including kanyās waiting for devotees. This contribution probes into the reasons for choosing temples as the preferred location to perform kanyā pūjā. Particular attention will be given to the question whether television and other modern media and the changing living conditions in parts of Himachal Pradesh are playing a part in the decision-making.

Jennifer D. Ortegren, Ph.D., Middlebury

This project examines shifts in Navratri ritual practices among upwardly mobile Hindu women who relocated from rural areas of Rajasthan to the urban neighborhoods of Udaipur. It forms one part of a broader project analyzing the relationships between emerging religious and class identities among members of what I call the “aspirational middle classes.” In Udaipur, neighbors from different caste, geographic, and religious backgrounds celebrate Navaratri together in shared, urban spaces. They dance dandiya before large, communally-purchased murtis of Durga Mata in her pan-North Indian form. The celebrations are not just about religious devotion; they become valuable public performances of middle class religiosity, wherein individual and neighborhoods display their relative wealth and knowledge of middle class aesthetics and “morality.” Yet, Navratri is also a time when many families return to rural homes to worship local goddesses within caste-homogenous communities. Urbanized women say they feel more “comfortable” celebrating Navratri in rural areas, even though they must abide by stricter gender norms, because ritual aspects that become privatized and domesticated in the city, namely puja to local goddesses, remain public, social events in the village. Thus, while Navratri celebrations are an important means of establishing and displaying “modern” middle class identities in urban neighborhoods, they also function to reinforce the more “traditional” caste and gender values of rural communities. In analyzing differences in the narrative, aesthetic and community dynamics of Navaratri celebrations among women in their urban and rural homes, this project seeks to understand the role of religious practices in negotiating the co-existing, and sometimes competing, values of caste, class, and gender in the shifting socio-economic and cultural landscapes of contemporary India.

Hillary Rodrigues (University of Lethbridge)
Among Bengali Hindus, the term Durgā Pūjā is often used as a synonym for the autumn Navarātra celebrations. Few would disagree that it is the most important religious celebration in Bengal. In this paper, I focus less on the Durgā Pūjā as Navarātra, the great annual festival, and more on its nature as pūjā, the ritual of worshipping the Hindu Great Goddess, Durgā. I argue that its Tantric underpinnings reveal that it serves not only as an expression of devotional reverence, but as a rite of transformative empowerment. I examine how the Durgā Pūjā functions to rejuvenate and revitalize nothing less than the entire creation, at personal, communal, and cosmic levels.

Moumita Sen, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow, Oslo University
Moumita Sen’s project looks at the network of politics, popular religiosity and the ‘high’ culture of the liberal arts, exploring the strategic and creative aspects of the annual re-actualization of the relationship between political parties and the festival culture of West Bengal in the form of indirect patronage of the Durgāpūjā.

Neelima Shukla-Bhatt (Wellesley College)
The region of Gujarat is well-known in India and beyond it for its Navarātrī festivities. At the core of these festivities is garbo (plu. garbā), a dance traditionally performed in the honor of the great goddess with many forms. It is a circular dance, which, for centuries, has been performed by women during Navarātri at night in open spaces around a festival image of the goddess. The image is also called garbo, a term that is generally thought to have been derived from the word garbha (fetus /womb). It is believed that the goddess herself dances along with the women in a garbo. The songs for the dance refer to the dancing women as the friends of the goddess Ambikā and her various manifestations. The songs and the dance are upbeat and have long provided women with a beloved medium of self-expression in the sacred context. In more recent times however, this ritual dance has overflowed into secular spaces as well. While the ritual dance continues to be performed, for some decades, huge crowds of women and men in Gujarat’s cities and towns have been dancing garbā in commercially organized events. In these events, there is a courteous bow to the goddess with props emulating traditional garbā spaces and a large number of songs played on the microphone refer to her. The dancers also wear colorful traditional attires as in the ritual space. Yet the festivities have hardly the spirit of a ritual in its strict sense. They are more like big dance parties taking place during a traditional festival time. Such large dancing events with traditional garbā songs are now being duplicated in other parts of India and in diasporic communities as well. How do we understand this overflowing of a regional Navarātri ritual into broader secular spaces? My essay will explore this question looking closely at the intersection of religious belief, aesthetic expression, performance of cultural identity (especially in diasporic contexts), and business in contemporary garbā dancing in Gujarat and in the United States.

Caleb Simmons, Assistant Professor, Religious Studies Program, The University of Arizona
Caleb Simmons’ project examines the role of Dasara within the processes of king-fashioning in medieval and contemporary Mysore through textual analysis and ethnography. Of particular interest is the way that kingship and divinity were constituted through the celebration of the festival as the center of the royal ritual calendar. At the core of this practice was the implicit connection between the Woḍeyar kings of Mysore and the former rulers of Vijayanagara as the medieval Mysore court constituted themselves as the proper successors of their imperial predecessors. To do this, the Woḍeyar court mimicked the Vijayanagara empire’s military and ritual apparatus continually adapting the practices of the remembered kingdom. With the dissolution of the kingdoms and princely states, this process continued to adapt as a new vision of the goddess and the king emerged. Therefore, the final portion of this project will examine the relationship between the medieval expressions of the ritual and the celebration of Dasara in 2013—the final Dasara of the Mysore line of Śrīkaṇṭhadatta Narasiṃharāja Woḍeyar. Through this comparison, we can see the evolution of the concept of kingship and the nature of the goddess within contemporary national context.

Jishnu Shankar, Senior Lecturer, University of Texas at Austin
Navaratri celebrations have a whole range of expressions in India, culminating in joyous festivities which include food, fairs, and a sense of rejuvenation. The practices followed during these nine nights, however, can differ according to geographical location, as well as the perspective which informs what Navaratri is.  My project endeavors to look at the interpretation of Navaratri that Aghoreshwar Mahaprabhu Baba Bhagwan Ram Ji gave to his audiences in Banaras, India, and also while travelling abroad.  It sheds some light on what Navaratri means to an ascetic tradition, how the goddess is visualized during these nine nights, and how observance of Navaratri can be related to social issues.

Uwe Skoda, Associate Professor, Department of Culture and Society - The Department for Indology, Aarhus University
The project looks at two by and large simultaneously performed rituals, namely Durga Puja and Dasara, in the former princely state of Bonai (nowadays a sub-district in northwestern Odisha). It compares these two rituals on two levels: a) historically (i.e. late 1930s versus present day practices), and b) as contemporary performances in different locations (i.e. palace rituals versus market rituals). An album of photographs commissioned by the last ruling chief and subsequent interviews forms the basis of an analysis of pre-merger rituals, while observations in the palace as well as of the relatively newly introduced Durga Puja rituals performed in the market reveal a substantial change. In contrast to the 1930s palace rituals have been either abolished or considerably reduced, but the present Raja still sponsors a number of rituals for various deities and maintains links to certain Adivasi communities. However, in the wake of a recent industrialisation in Odisha the initially small Durga Puja, introduced in Bonai in 1948 by an “outsider”, increasingly overshadows palace rituals and - being generously funded by industrialists - attracts larger crowds. Thus, rituals around goddess Durga in all her manifestions encountered in Bonai may be considered a social prism to understand a local socio-cultural configuration and its transformations, yet for a comprehensive deeper understanding synchronic and diachronic approaches involving various research techniques and sources are required.

Annette Wilke, Professor, Religious Studies, Muenster University
Navaratri – also known as Durgapuja – is one of the most important yearly Hindu festivals and the longest one. It takes place every autumn for at least for nine or ten days all over India in great regional variety. It celebrates the victory of the Great Goddess over the demons who threaten the world. Besides many ritual elements and paraphernalia, it includes a large number of objects embodying the goddess – to name just a few most important ones: pots with sprouting seeds in all households and goddess temples; icons of the goddess fashioned only for the festival and newly established colourful pavilions (pandals) serving as homes for the goddess’ nine day ascent to earth (typical in Calcutta and other north Indian cities like Varanasi and Delhi.); “deity mountains” with clay figures of beings of the whole cosmos (kolu) (prevailing in South India), pilgrimages sites of the goddess and festival pilgrimage routes (e.g. of the nine Durgas in Varanasi and Bhaktapur); traditional goddess temples all over India and specific texts that are recited – particularly the Devimahatmya (in the North) and the Lalitasahasranama (in the South). Typical is also the veneration of girls before puberty (kumari) and of married women (sumangali) as forms of the goddess. In non-brahmin milieus, males and females may get possessed by her and act as media and oracles. Often, the fight of the goddess with the demon and her glorious victory is acted out, for instance, in such possession rites. In village India from high North to deep South buffalos and goats are sacrificed. On the tenth day weapons – and nowadays also cars and any working instruments – are worshiped. Navaratri has been a special festivals of kings and soldiers in the past, but it is also a festival of women and all stratas of society.  The project builds on existing research on Navaratri, which was devoted to specific places, agents and aspects (e.g. the royal nature of the festival or aspects of empowerment, fertility or fight), and intends to supplement it with new field material, for instance, on Sringeri (South India) and Hamm-Uentrop (Northrhine Westphalia) which both have varying relations – be it rival or mimetic – to Kanchipuram (well-researched presently in Oslo). The objective is, however, not only to produce additional data for regional variety and localized religion. The project’s aim is rather a more encompassing analysis. Although a number of studies exist devoted to specific places, no large-scale comparison exists between the celebration in different regions. The project attempts such a comparison by looking at the festival’s material culture and the various ”agencies” of things. 

Why do so many embodiments of the goddess exist? What “do” the different objects to different persons in different places? Is it possible to raise typologies of objects regarding space, social strata, processes of semiosis etc.? May different objects have similar functions and purposes? Or do they necessarily have each their own reach, ideology and function? Where and why do specific objects and their use enhance boundary-work, e.g. between caste-groups or gender, and where and why cross-overs? Where and why do they become the locus of shifts and breaks of tradition? – historically, for instance, by the change of sponsorship from royal milieus to neighbourhood communities and youth clubs, or by export to diaspora countries; socially, by wandering from Brahmin to non-Brahmin strata of society; semiotically, by being charged with different, possibly opposing meanings and perspectives, or witnessing loss of sense, new encoding or secularization. 

This kind of questions are going to be tackled in a comparative and multimethodical approach. Theories of material culture/aesthetics of religion shall be combined with theories of performance, agency, and imagination.

Nicole Wilson, PhD researcher, cultural anthropology, Syracuse University
Nicole Wilson is interested in the celebration of Navaratri by middle-class Hindu women in urban Tamil Nadu. She is examining the intersections of caste and class identity with respect to the festival, as well as how a regionally-specific Navaratri practice, the construction of a kolu, provides a mode for self- expression and social commentary in contemporary south India.

Xenia Zeiler, Department of World Cultures, Helsinki University
Elaborate Durgāpūjā celebrations involving complex organization have been part of the Hindu festival calendar since the c. 14th to 16th centuries. In its historical development, the Hindu festival outgrew being mainly a status marker for rich festival patronizing landlords, to become a popular mass event by the 19th century. Then initiated trends to emphasis community involvement in the yearly festival organization and participation still underwent another massive transformation in the 20th century, i.e. with emerging processes of mediatization. Today, all aspects of Durgāpūjā are highly mediatized. Not only is Durgāpūjā a common theme in modern mass media, as in Bollywood and regional cinemas, press releases, popular music and Internet blogs, forums etc., but also is the festival increasingly organized, participated and negotiated via and in a variety of media.

The project seeks to highlight transformations in Durgāpūjās’ organisational structures and the implicit identity and authority negotiations which are explicitly brought about by mediatization processes. For this, it takes a closer look at the mediatized activities of “Durgāpūjā Committees”, groups appointed by local communities (villages, city quarters etc.) to organise the festival’s most popular feature, artistic arrangements of scenarios depicting Durgā's defeat of Mahiṣa, in so-called paṇḑals). Durgāpūjā committees today strongly compete and massively communicate, organize and negotiate via cell phones, emails, Facebook groups etc., in order to create outstanding paṇḑals, which then serve as identity markers for their respective communities and support both, the committees’ and community’s religious authority.

Astrid Zotter, Research Fellow, Heidelberg Academy of Science and Humanities
Astrid Zotter’s project concentrates on the royal Nepalese Durgāpūjā rituals, and specifically focuses on those elements and related narratives that focus on the sword, a highly charged ritual implement - representing the king and at the same time embodying the Goddess. By doing so, one focus will be to sketch how in Navarātra rituals the relationship of the king and his śakti was conceived, reshaped, and celebrated, especially at times of political change.