Unholy horrors

If you live in North India, it is the time of year when hordes of young men paint the town saffron. I’m referring to the devotees of Shiva who undertake the kanwar yatra, a month-long pilgrimage during shravan (mid-July to mid-August) to bring holy water from the Ganga to their local shrines.

With every passing year, their numbers have become bigger and they have earned a growing reputation of being troublemakers. It is hard to deny the sense that the kanwariyas are taking over public spaces, running riot and doing as they please, thanks to a seemingly indulgent administration.

For instance, one may find them, as I have in Delhi, parking a truck fitted with speakers in a lane next to residential colonies and blasting music (their own customised devotional songs mimicking Bollywood hits) all night long. It is a mystery how one can retain any auditory ability after being exposed to this ear-splitting noise for hours.

If this is routine, other examples might make you suspect that religious garb is but a licence for the assertion of aggressive masculinity. Last year, a group of kanwariyas vandalised a car in East Delhi. One of the main culprits was found to be an unemployed youth with a criminal background. Other similar incidents of vandalism and torching of vehicles were reported from western Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan. In the wake of violence involving kanwariyas, even the Supreme Court raised a red flag last year saying the damage of public property must stop.

The authorities, meanwhile, do precious little to rein in the rampagers. Recently, the Gautam Budh Nagar administration in Noida exempted them from the “no helmet, no fuel” rule that is applicable at gas stations. One way to look at it is that as long as the pilgrims don't damage property and allow us to keep our eardrums intact, the rest of us can grin and bear it.

On a recent visit I was considerably surprised to find that these religious folks were perfectly bearable in Varanasi. The behaviour of the pilgrims and arrangements on the part of the district spoke of themselves and the city, which according to Hindu mythology was founded by Shiva.

First, there were devotees across age groups and gender, including children, women and the elderly. In the heart of the old city, where the major ghats and shrines including the Kashi Vishwanath temple are located and where tributaries of the Ganga meet, the lanes teem with visitors round the clock. A multiplicity of languages and dialects that your ears pick up and the presence of temples representing different sects of Hinduism makes the scene diverse and inclusive. Even in this very Hindu of cities, people of different faiths reside cheek by jowl, with the majority community showing none of the seeming insecurity of recent times. It’s the way it is, or rather used to be, in the rest of the country.

kanwar yatra

A sacred city does not inspire criminal behaviour, one would think. But it doesn’t hurt that the roads and lanes, marked with wooden barricades to divert vehicular traffic, have plenty of security personnel at all times. Policemen from other districts of the state have been posted for a month in Varanasi. On a typical morning, a constable explained, around 60,000 kanwariyas flow into the city.

The kanwar yatra was a quiet affair until the 1980s, with only a few thousands of pilgrims making the journey to fetch Ganga jal from Haridwar, Gaumukh and Gangotri in Uttarakhand and Sultanganj in Bihar. Last year, 37.6 million kanwariyas walked to Haridwar; the number is expected to cross 40 million this year.

Given the business-as-usual scenario in Varanasi, arguments made by some of those who question the contempt for these “devout” young men in the city seem persuasive. The implication is that the urban middle class may view them as an inconvenience (just like protest marches) or even a physical threat, but for the kanwariyas the pilgrimage is a means to discover and assert their self-worth amid social and economic challenges.

Are kanwariyas a growing constituency for political outfits to woo with a show of competitive “Hinduness” (the Aam Aadmi Party’s Arvind Kejriwal recently supped with the yatris in Delhi) and laxity in law enforcement? Or is this a largely subaltern segment simply seeking a way out of their everyday realities?

There is no easy answer. Perhaps, it is a bit of both.

The kanwariya once tread barefoot, kanwar (a contraption with vessels carrying the holy water) slung over shoulder, quietly chanting “bol bam” in the name of The Destroyer. How much more preferable that is to “Jai Shri Ram”, a once-simple religious phrase appropriated by so-called devotees of Rama and turned into a murderous war cry to target minorities and widen the gaping communal fault lines in our society. I will continue to wish that worshippers were discouraged from unleashing violence and noise pollution on our roads and highways, for the sake of faith in the faithful and to redeem our compromised public spaces.