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Abhijith Ravinutala

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Abhijith Ravinutala

Category Archives: Hinduism

Prohibiting Women from Sabarimala is Wrong. Here’s Why.

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Posted by Abhijith Ravinutala in Hinduism

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Hindu, Hinduism, India, protests, sabarimala, temple, women, women ban

I went to Sabarimala in December of 2009. I was a college freshman, sporting unseemly peach fuzz on my upper lip. My father and I boarded a train to Kerala. He was in māla, the term we used for men who practiced 40 days of austerity in advance of their visit to Sabarimala temple. He wore black all over, smeared ash on his forehead. He slept on the floor at home, ate blander food than the rest of us. I was supposed to call him Swami, as in saint, out of respect. I switched between doing so and calling him Papa, as in father, out of habit.

On the overnight train to Kerala, there were other Swamis. They were raucous, yelling and fighting like any boys’ high school locker room. I saw no austerity. I called them Swami only begrudgingly, as in “Swami, you’re stepping on my foot.”

The kinds of views we saw during the train ride into Kerala

My father was in dignified contrast. He sat in silence, staring out the window, answering my mother’s phone calls, praying. I respected him from a distance, as I had learned to do for most of my life. I wanted to be like him one day.

When we reached Kerala, before I woke, my father showered in the train bathroom with a mug of water. Prissy and immature, I deemed it “gross” and asked for a hotel room. The tap in the hotel bath let out black water.

We started our trek later that day from the town of Pampa to the hilltop temple of Ayyappa (40 million people made that same trek in 2015; for comparison, about 2-3 million pilgrims visit Mecca every year, and 5 million visit the Vatican). The hike was grueling. Steep climbs for 3-5 hours, rocky paths interspersed with respites of paved cement. My father’s knees grew sore. We kept climbing, shouting out the names of Ayyappa along with thousands of other pilgrims.

As with many religious experiences, the fatigue and delirium from the hike, mixed with the passion of call-and-response shouts, made the sight of the deity remarkable. I remember thinking the God was smaller than I expected, but he was beautiful, shining bright and golden, tucked away in an inner sanctorum above 18 gilded steps. The sun set, lamps lit our way to the deity. I teared up.

The deity at Sabarimala

When we finished our darshan, or view, of the God and prayed, we prepared for the hike down towards a road where we could catch a taxi. My father’s knees were still sore. He spotted an alternative.

Men hoisted us on to small cots and carried us down the hill for ten minutes. I still remember looking over at my father, both of us laughing and clutching the sides of our cots, afraid to fall. Undulating masses of pilgrims moved beneath us. Men as far as the eye could see.

Sabarimala temple is beautiful, its tradition is rich. I wouldn’t give up those memories with my father for anything. I fail to see why I should have been forbidden from those beautiful moments if I were a woman. With the recent controversy around the Indian Supreme Court’s decision to allow women aged 10 to 50 to enter Sabarimala, protests and riots have taken place in Kerala. Women who tried to enter the temple have been stoned and barred by angry mobs, until two were successful. As I’ve read and re-read articles about the events, I’ve noticed a few common arguments raised by supporters of the prohibition of women.

Here are the top 5 arguments for the ban and why they are wrong in my personal view of Hinduism:

1. The Ayyappa deity is celibate

This argument is often positioned as the entire religious basis for a ban on women. Let’s first consider the history, and then the implications of celibacy.

History

A prominent version of Ayyappa’s mythology states that he is the son of Siva and Visnu (thus, the popular name HariHara Suta, which translates to son of Siva and Visnu). How can he be the son of two men?

In a fundamental origin myth about the churning of the ocean to find ambrosia, Visnu transforms into a woman, named Mohini, to steal ambrosia from the demons and distribute it to the Gods. Siva, upon seeing Mohini, is so aroused by her (even though he knows Visnu has transformed), he embraces her and spills his semen onto the ground, creating Ayyappa. Who says religion is boring?


Mohini with two sages. Mohini is depicted nude, adorned with garlands and ornaments, holding a lotus and a parrot, leaning on a stick. The sages pray to her, as their phalluses point to her.

By Balaji Srinivasan – originally posted to Flickr as Wood carving detail2 – Vishnu Mohini, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9711645

Ayyappa himself grows up to defeat demons and answer prayers in the Kerala hillside. A woman, Maalikapurathamma, falls in love with him, but he says he will only marry her if new devotees stop coming to see him. As the story goes, that hasn’t happened yet. Interestingly: Ayyappa pilgrims today stop to visit the shrine of Maalikapurathamma, placed just a few hundred feet away from the main shrine, as if to revere her devotion.

The history claims: since Ayyappa has foregone marriage, he is celibate. People (i.e., priests), not God, decided women of menstruating age must be kept from his temple at Sabarimala to protect that celibacy.

Implications

Given the hyper-sexed origin of Ayyappa, it’s ironic that he himself is celibate. Indeed, in other Ayyappa temples, he is not depicted as celibate. He has not one, but two wives: Poorna and Pushkala. Therefore, the tradition internally has different views on his “celibacy,” and the protection of it need not be so sacred. It has been defeated already.

Note: this inconsistency is common within Hinduism because Gods are relational. Different styles of depiction represent different ways that we’re supposed to relate to God. The married Ayyappa is a householder God (a family man), while the celibate Ayyappa in the mountains is a renunciate (hence the austerity expected of devotees). That being said, it is clear that celibacy is not Ayyappa’s defining characteristic, even within the tradition.

Also, the “celibacy” ban at Sabarimala was only for women aged 10-50. That is meant to bar all menstruating women. There are two undeniable problems with this: A) some women still menstruate after 50, and B) women above 50 can still have sex, so this age limit does not “protect his celibacy” by any means. Moreover, women who enter the temple are not aiming to have sexual relations with the deity. That is plain ridiculous. They are visiting the temple to pray.

The entire mindset espoused by this argument of celibacy is one of patriarchy. It assumes that women are surreptitious, and their sexuality is a threat to men, who must be protected. Why is the onus not on men to keep it in their pants?

A final note on irony: on the façade of Sabarimala temple is an inscription that reads “Tat Tvam Asi.” This is an important Advaita (non-dualistic philosophy) phrase that asks us to realize we are one with an all-pervading God (known as Brahman). Women are being barred from entry at a temple that believes God is in all of us.

2. It’s a tradition, and we must honor it. Some women agree.

Those who recognize the poor logic of the celibacy argument, as pointed out above, still claim that the tradition should be preserved. According to this argument, if something is old enough, it is automatically a moral good.

We should know better by now: we spent a large part of the 20th century and beyond making up for the way we treated our fellow humans. Apartheid, Jim Crow, no voting rights for women. These were all “traditions” until people had the guts to say they were wrong. There is no point in keeping traditions alive if they discriminate against people for biological reasons.

What is important in the Sabarimala tradition is what I described at the outset of this blog. Austerity, the view of the deity after a tiring day, the feeling of singing and praying at the temple, memories with loved ones. None of the important traditions that define Sabarimala are dependent on gender. There are ways to honor tradition that do not demean women based on a natural process they can’t control. Moreover, as I described earlier, the men who are going to Sabarimala are not exactly keeping tradition alive as they should be. Why should they be given free reign?

Finally, there are always members of the minority or the oppressed who resist change that would benefit them. That doesn’t mean we stop progressing. Some women resisted suffrage in America – we would not say that they were correct now. The Women’s Wall proves millions of progressive women are eager for change.

The inspiring Women’s Wall

3. Menstruation has always been considered a polluting substance in Hindu texts, so menstruating women must be kept out.

Devdutt Pattanaik explains it best in this video.

Hindu texts were written at a time well before the development of sanitary products, when menstrual blood may have fallen onto the altar or temple floor. Even then, for some traditions, menstrual blood was seen as holy or powerful instead of contaminating.

There is absolutely no reason to keep believing this now that we have the benefits of science and sanitary products. We cannot continue to let men decide whether or not women are deemed “polluting.”

Moreover, many important (and surviving) Hindu texts were written by high-caste men, who wanted to consolidate and codify their power and influence into religious texts. Those who argue that resisting the ban is a “Western” idea are ignoring the long history of women and other marginalized groups in Hinduism fighting for their rights/ writing alternative religious texts (or creating new practices) against the dominant strain of Hinduism. Resistance is universal.

4. There are other temples women can go to. There are some temples that don’t even allow men.

40 million pilgrims visit Sabarimala because they have faith in the journey and the power of the deity. If other temples were just as powerful or important, then they would have the same number of devotees. But they do not. Women should not be restricted to less popular temples.

Moreover, it does not matter in the least bit that men are not allowed to some temples, because those temples in question are rarely even known, or considered to have the same devotional importance. Those who bring this up are merely citing a technicality to make themselves feel better about the prejudice they sustain. That’s like refusing to let women into Harvard because men are not allowed into Eastern Roanoke Women’s Community College. Give me a fucking break.

5. The Supreme Court should not interfere with our religion, they are not saying anything against the other religions with gender discrimination.

It is fair to question why the Court had to involve itself with religion, but I would reposition the question. Why did we Hindus take so long to realize what is right, that the Court had to step in? Why couldn’t we fix this issue ourselves? Sometimes we are blind to our issues and progressive laws must help us see. That is what happened with the Indian Supreme Court overturning Section 377 – the law paved the way for the inherent morality we should’ve practiced in the first place.

Regarding other religions: as Hindus we don’t need to look outside and compare ourselves. We should be reaching our own decisions about what is right first. If similar cases like Sabarimala are brought to the Supreme Court about other religions, I fully expect and demand that the Court rule similarly.


As people, I believe we are inherently knowledgeable about the moral good, and equally inherently capable of ignoring the moral good for the sake of power, influence, and discrimination. I do not believe any of the main arguments against the entry of women into Sabarimala are sound. I believe, instead, that 50 or 100 years from now we will wonder how we ever protested so much against giving women the basic rights to pray and chant that men have hoarded for thousands of years. Change may be scary, but it is coming, and it is better to accept it.

Modern Hinduism can be as progressive as we make it, if we ignore the voices who aim to limit it. I believe people like Devdutt Pattanaik can guide the way at times, and I aim to do my own part in the years to come. I believe there is beauty and truth and wisdom and wonder in Hindu traditions. I believe we can access that while championing modern equality. I believe all of this because I have a hope: one day I can take my daughter to Sabarimala just as my father took me.

The temple at Sabarimala

My Spirituality and Mental Health Advocacy

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mental health, religion, spirituality

These remarks were delivered for a fall seminar series at Harvard Divinity School.

All Things are Subtly Interconnected

I have spent enough time at Harvard Divinity School (HDS) now to know that there are a few general ways of beginning any set of remarks such as this. One way is to take the title of Spirituality and Mental Health Advocacy, the name of today’s meeting, and pick apart each word in order to define and ‘problematize” it. I am not intelligent enough to do that. Another way is to launch into a passionate sermon with fist-raising fervor that leaves you wondering about the words Spirituality, Mental Health, and Advocacy, without ever saying them. I am not eloquent enough to do that. Yet another way, especially common in my field of Hindu Studies, is to dig up a centuries old religious text and through the powers of my linguistic training, show ten possible definitions of a Sanskrit word, one of which would be “mental health”, and then proceed to draw conclusions about centuries of intersection between spirituality and mental health. I am not academic enough to do that. What I am, though, is a person with strong opinions (loosely held) and a storyteller. Allow me then to share three opinions, three stories, and a fact with you as a way of making the connections in my own life between spirituality and mental health advocacy. Before I do that, however, three caveats:

One: a trigger warning. Some of the material I am about to present will deal with themes of schizophrenia, suicide, stigma, and mental illness in general. If you become uncomfortable at any point please do not hesitate to leave and care for yourself as needed. The Harvard Counseling and Mental Health Center is located in the new Smith Center and is open until 6 PM today.

Two: specificity. I am not an expert in any of the topics I will bring up today. I will thus only attempt to speak to my own personal experience of tying advocacy and spirituality, and I will hope that you can apply those specific lessons to the general spiritual lives lived by all of you here today. This exercise of drawing generalizations from incredibly specific circumstances is literally the process of scholarship, so I trust you are all comfortable with it.

Three: If you have taken any classes with Dr. Hallisey before, I apologize if you hear some repetition during the course of my remarks because I will certainly be quoting him. Of all the wonderful experiences I’ve had at the Divinity School, some of my favorite have been the feeling of new avenues, replete with unpaved roads and luminous streetlamps, opening in my mind upon hearing his words.

Now that the long introduction is out of the way, let me begin with one of my three stories, and a quick one.

Story 1

I was sitting in my favorite coffee shop the other day, typing away at my keyboard towards a short story, when I just happened to look up. Across the length of the pristine white coffee bar, stained by mistakes, was a woman wearing a t-shirt. The t-shirt said, “All things are subtly interconnected.” What do we understand from the use of the word “subtly”? Why not just say, “all things are interconnected”? For me, “subtly” is about the idea that those connections are hard to see and feel. In the same vein that we say a work of modern art is “subtle”, the connections only make sense to the discerning eye. Maybe, then, both spirituality and mental health advocacy are exercises of training ourselves to see these subtle connections. In any case, it’s time for one of my strong opinions, phrased in Hallisey-ian terms.

Opinion 1: We literally do not know what we are talking about when we talk about spirituality.

I am confused about spirituality. As far as I have seen, one person’s definition or understanding of spirituality can directly contradict another’s, and they could both be right. In that way, it is a term similar to the term Hinduism, which I am also confused about, but I embrace it nonetheless because I think Hinduism or spirituality both should give me cause to question and see anew, instead of seek comfort in things that I hope to be true. Spirituality has become such a nebulous term that instead of marking a particular belief it might be more indicative of marking a particular time in history, the one we inhabit, when people define their belief systems in contradiction to what has come before through the demarcation of “spiritual” as opposed to “religious”. In other words, spirituality has to mean something different than religion because it is so desperately trying to mean something different. Mind you, we don’t know what we are talking about when we talk about religion either. To me, it has always seemed that the category of Spiritual But Not Religious (SBNR) is a bit like the person who refers to himself as Joe because his given name Joseph is not as appealing to him. Joe only exists because Joseph does, and so I think it is with SBNR.

I hope it is clear how confused I am about this term. My thinking is yet highly underdeveloped in regards to all that spirituality can or should mean, so I hope those of you with more developed understandings will forgive me. Despite this relative ignorance, I have found it necessary to define a system of spirituality that works for me. Such a system, if represented as a tree, would be deeply rooted in my Hindu upbringing, and its trunk would be the Hindu education and understanding I’ve accumulated separate from my upbringing. Of course, it draws from many other elements as well, namely early Buddhist and Zen thought among many others – these are the branches leading out of the tree trunk, grasping for what else the tree might reach, intertwine with, and ultimately become. Trees, we should remember, are living, growing things that are necessarily affected by the actions taking place around them – actions that are of nature and those that are of human intention (both good and bad). That is to say, my system is subject to changes in the rain that affect the soil, but it is simultaneously subject to being chopped down with a heavy axe.

In the traditions of Hinduism and Buddhism that I am born from, people often receive revelations whilst sitting under trees (specifically the pipal tree, or sacred fig). So it is fitting to describe my spiritual system with that metaphor because it is only under its peaceful shadow that I begin to make sense of the world around me and my place in it. Let me not give the impression that I have received anything remotely resembling a revelation, but instead that I am striving to think and question my existence thanks to the nurture and vocabulary offered by my tree. In other words, even if my grasp of spirituality is yet inchoate, I have to start somewhere. Which leads me to my second opinion.

Opinion 2: We are all part of a universal Brahman

The particular strain of Hinduism that I am closest to, for those who know their Hindu philosophy or prefer to categorize things, is Advaita Vedanta. This is otherwise known as non-dualist thinking. Nondualist thinking in this tradition says that the universe in its entirety is comprised of a formless, infinite Brahman (with a capital B, not to be confused with the priestly caste in Hindu society). The corollary is that all of us have an individual soul called an Atman, which is a piece of the overall Brahman. The Atman is a soul that is everlasting and takes bodily form again and again as we reincarnate on Earth, until we’ve reached a state of liberation. At which point, we no longer reincarnate and instead remain as one with Brahman. Of course, we were already all part of Brahman to begin with, so this can be incredibly confusing. I like to think that the sages who came up with this philosophy in the past were debating one day and realized that this opacity could occur. And instead of coming to a final resolution, they decided to let future generations figure something out from this generative tension. I wish more people thought about ancient religious thought in this way – it might save us a lot of arguments in the present.

Still, they did not leave us with a completely blank slate, and there are certain ways of understanding this spirituality that I have held dear over the years. From one of the primary textual collections of this thinking in Hinduism, the Upanisads, let us consider a small example.

A son, eager to learn more about the nature of the world, approaches his father who is spiritually learned. The son asks his father, “what is the nature of Brahman? How can I understand?” The father, instead of answering him directly, tells his son to bring him a glass of water and a chunk of salt. So the son does it, probably thinking his old man is toying with him. The father asks the son to then empty the salt into the water.

The father says, “alright! Come back in a few hours!” So the son goes off to do whatever people did in ancient times – reading, watching the monkeys swing around, etc.

The son comes back, impatient to see where this is going, and asks the father again: “what is the nature of Brahman?”

The father says, “son, can you see the salt in that glass?”

“No,” the son says. It had dissolved of course.

“Okay, taste it from the bottom left part of the glass. What do you taste?”

“Salt!” the son says.

“Hmm, okay, what about the top right part?”

“Salt!” the son says.

“What about right in the center?”

He sticks his tongue in and says, “Salt!”

“Pour out the water and come back in a few hours,” the father says. The son does that and comes back, and the father asks, “do you see anything?”

“I can see the salt,” the son says.

“Such is Brahman, my son, like the salt in the water that is this world. And such are you, as well.”

Now, even though that’s a fun example, it can still be a bit difficult to derive any spiritual feeling from it. Let me offer yet another way to understand this opinion of mine. Consider all of us, sitting here together. Reality presents itself such that we appear as entirely distinct forms with entirely distinct bodies and minds. My body is separate from yours and I can even reach out from within my body and touch your body, thus really knowing that we are two separate things. Yet, what is beneath these bodies? Beneath are organs, and organs made up of molecules. If you want to go deeper you can know that molecules are made up of atoms, atoms are made up of protons, neutrons, electrons. Subatomic particles are made up of quarks, quarks are made up of… and so on and so on until eventually, when you drill all the way down all you get is formless, indistinct energy. So even though reality presents itself as our forms being distinct, we know that the building blocks of these forms are made up of the same material all the way down. A quote from Robert Musil, in The Man Without Qualities, but which I read in Didier Fassin’s Life: A Critical User’s Manual. “Life forms a surface that acts as if it could not be otherwise, but under its skin things are pounding and pulsing.”

Finally, let me try to explain this spiritual concept of Brahman in one more manner, in one line. All things are subtly interconnected.

Now, a last opinion:

Opinion 3: If I believe what I have outlined above, regarding the interconnectedness of things, and I am provided the proper impetus, I have no other moral choice but to become a mental health advocate.

I was given that impetus, even though I wish to this day that it had come earlier, and come in a different way. My second story is next, but before continuing I must share a quote from Dr. Hallisey: “What I know about myself to be true is that I’m a danger to other people.”

Story 2:

When I was 6 years old, I flew from India to Dallas. I don’t remember much from those early days in America, but I remember being lonely. I was an only child, and I didn’t know how I was going to adjust in the new country, new school. Hey, I couldn’t even tie my own shoes yet! Luckily, I met a friend who lived in my apartment complex. His name was Ajay, he was 4 years older than me, and also an only child. Naturally, we became inseparable, and Ajay taught me how to thrive as a nerdy kid in late 90’s America.

It was Ajay who showed me Pokemon for the first time, effectively guaranteeing that my brain would think of nothing else for the next few years. We would find ourselves rushing home from elementary school, making it to his home just in time to see Ash win another battle. It was Ajay who showed me how to roller-skate, to zip through our apartment complex making friends with the other tenants. We did our best to emulate the scenes from our favorite video games, assigning each other secret agent numbers and playing advanced hide-and-seek. We’d go to the temple with our families, and Ajay would teach me the art of passing temple time. You see, temple time passes much slower than any other time you spend waiting for your parents, like Dillard’s time and Home Depot time (just to give a few particularly boring examples). We grew up together in those days, and always closer, despite him being four years older than me in age.

As the years went by and we changed schools and addresses, we always kept in touch. I would look forward to the weekends when I could sleepover at Ajay’s apartment, learning about cool video games, good movies, and bad words. My early taste in Quentin Tarantino movies and Weezer songs both came from Ajay. Of course, our favorite pastime was going to CiCi’s Pizza for any special occasion or excuse that we could think of. I guess you could say we made sure to grow chubby together, just as we grew up together.

Eventually, Ajay moved on to college at UT Austin, the same year that I started high school. And for the first time, we were cities apart. Left on our own, we made new friends and grew busy, but I still looked up to Ajay and hoped to follow in his footsteps to UT.

Until one day in my junior year of high school, Ajay first started showing signs of a condition that would come to consume him. I remember the night too vividly when his parents called my father in agony, dumbfounded by Ajay’s behavior, and desperately asked for his help. According to Ajay’s father, Ajay had come home from college for summer break and acted like a different person altogether. His grades had dropped and he suffered from the guilt and pressure that all Indian children know when it comes to academics. He was yelling at his parents and throwing food at them. I was shocked, my parents were stunned. My father and I jumped in the car to go meet Ajay and his father, and I kept thinking during the car ride that there must be some huge mistake or overreaction. When we reached the parking lot of the Target that Ajay’s father had called us from in panic, when I opened the car door, I realized he wasn’t overreacting. I saw it in Ajay’s eyes: bloodshot, wide open with a look of guilt, like he knew he’d done something wrong but he couldn’t have controlled it. My parents brought him to our house and tried to counsel him.

Eventually, Ajay did pull himself together, and his parents, who had become like a second family to me, thanked us and took him back to Austin. I would eventually join him there and restart our friendship during my freshman year at UT. It was time again to learn from Ajay – this time about the best tofu places on campus, and where to find the free t-shirts.

In my second year, just before winter break, I called Ajay to ask for a ride home for the holidays. He agreed, but fabricated stories about my roommate and caused drama that drove a rift in our friendship. I was angry at him for lying and I drove him away. Our friendship frayed and eventually tore apart, and even when I tried to sow it back together in the future, he was wary of me. When I rode with Ajay to Dallas for that 2010 winter break, it would be one of the last days I spent quality time with him.

I didn’t realize then that Ajay was exhibiting symptoms of schizophrenia. He didn’t tell me, his best friend, about what he was going through. He didn’t tell his dad, he didn’t tell his mom, he suffered in silence. For years. He passed away in the fall of 2015, and I can’t help but feel that his life could’ve taken an entirely different path if it weren’t for the stigma that silenced him and kept me ignorant.

I wonder what went through Ajay’s head in the past few years. Maybe he had forgotten our times together, the laughs we shared and all that he had taught me. If that’s what his illness could do, then I hate it. I hate that Ajay had to go through such an internal battle. I hate that he couldn’t be the jovial, brilliant kid I had always known. I hate that he died without being my friend again, without letting me share one more slice of pizza with him or lecturing me on his opinions about the latest internet meme. Because, Ajay was my best friend and he always will be.

Now, a painful fact.

Fact 1:

My friend’s story is far from an anomaly. It took a shock like that for me to have the compassion necessary, but in reality, mental health already affects us all. Some statistics can paint a broader picture: the Government’s Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) declared that nearly 20% of American adults suffer from some mental illness. Depression is the leading cause of disability worldwide according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness. And according to the Association for Suicide Prevention, there is an average of 123 suicides per day in America.

I bring up the stark numbers of this reality because it shows that any of us could deal with mental health. See, mental health exists on a spectrum, from healthy to severely ill, just like physical health. Being stressed, for example, is an instance of being mentally unwell. But stigma blinds us to this viewpoint: At the turn of the millennium, the U.S. Surgeon General said stigma was the biggest barrier to mental health care. We have been effectively socialized to hold negative attitudes toward mental illness in a vicious circle: First, we do not understand mental illness because we are unaware. Then, we fear what we do not understand. Third, we distance those who we fear, we reject them from our society. Fourth, this social rejection worsens the well-being of those with mental illness – they closet their symptoms and themselves because of stigma, sometimes leading to early mortality, like the case of Ajay. And finally, we continue to not understand as a result!

But this doesn’t merely happen on a personal level – the CDC recently reported that stigma results in a lower prioritization of public resources and worse quality of care. Research has shown that stigma and embarrassment were top reasons why those with mental illness did not engage in medication adherence or help-seeking behaviors.

Mental health has affected, does affect, and will continue to affect – all of us. So if we want to avoid stereotypes and defeat stigma, the first step is to be more aware. There’s no other way. Then we want to move from a state of being aware to a state of care. We want to replace a system of stigma with a system of support. And the thing about stigma is, the simple act of caring can solve the problem!

See, I live a blessed life. Each day, literally every day without fail, I thank the universe/ God for what I have been given. When I lost my friend, it was one of the first times I dealt with a death like that: undeserved, undiscriminating, and cold. Faced with that pain, I had a choice to make between turning it into negative or positive energy, and I chose positive. I wanted to do something so that what happened to my friend did not need to happen to others in my community. I wanted to create within others a view of compassion for those with mental health issues. Crucially, I also wanted to make myself a better person, someone who could understand, empathize with, and support those with mental illness. Because: all things are subtly interconnected.

Time for a last story.

Story 3:

As a result of all I have shared with you, I got together with friends and created an organization called MannMukti, which translates to “mental liberation” in Hindi. Our mission is to encourage healthy, open dialogue of South Asian mental health in an effort to remove stigma, improve awareness, and promote self-care. From our first meeting in July 2016, to launching our website in May 2017, to now, I have experienced incredible ups and downs in my advocacy journey. I have been fortunate enough to speak about Ajay and the need for compassion on a TEDx stage, today on the Harvard campus, and many other locales.

Most importantly, this past April MannMukti had its first annual retreat, where we welcomed members from all over to Austin, TX and spent a weekend together. We clubbed that together with an event hosted by our volunteers called Slam the Stigma, which was an evening of speeches about mental health, followed by an open mic. The stories that people shared at that open mic, still give me chills when I think about them. I saw deep, deep vulnerability and pain. But then when I got back to the retreat house (I had arrived later than most), there was literally a Bollywood dance party going on in the house. These people were actively defying the stereotypes around mental illness that declared how they were supposed to act.

At brunch the next morning, sitting outside on a patio that overlooked Lake Austin, we started to debrief about the previous night’s event. Every time someone said they wished that such a safe space/ event existed when they were in college, a profound doubt swelled up inside me: Could this have prevented Ajay from passing away? Was he proud of what we were doing down here? People went on to share how much MannMukti had meant to them. It had given someone cause to control their suicidal thoughts. Given another reason to keep going when times were tough. Given another the hope that people are out there who really will support them. Needless to say, the floodgates in our eyes had opened by this point. Against the serene backdrop of sandstone hills and trees sloping down to Lake Austin, the hot Texas sun beating down on our skin, there was a torrent of emotion inside each of us. I felt that I had enough tears to fill the lake. Long after others had left the table, I remained there crying unstoppably. Reflecting back on that experience gave me cause to write the first and only poem I’ve written:

Tears not from our eyes, taps

Direct connect to project

Hurt, with so much history

From the soul out to the sun

Rivers flow – words waiting for release

If we could only make this stigma cease

We swim through the tears

To meet with our fears

Know that on this day we are

We simply are

No designations of disorders

Nor shame from judgmental orders

When I was born, my eyes

They looked like this

My smile,

It curved like this

My heart,

That pounded like 

Know me for these or know me not at all

Either way, I just

Exist.

I can confidently say that creating this organization and keeping even one life from feeling alone or uncared for, from ending too early, is the best thing I have ever done with this life.

I was chatting with a friend of mine, Ibrahim Kamal, who graduated from here last year. Because we are Divinity School students and have nothing better to discuss, we were talking about what kind of impact we want to have on the world. Ibrahim phrased it in a way that has stuck with me: “I want to change the world by changing how people see the world.” I am on that same spiritual journey.

Still, I have limitations. As much as I want to save everyone, I cannot. Just weeks ago, someone who I’ve never met bared their life experiences to me over Facebook messenger. I offered what support I could and directed them to MannMukti’s resources, but they kept chatting me with increasingly worrisome messages. Eventually, they confided in me that they’d had a suicide attempt. I’m not a medical professional and my abilities, MannMukti’s abilities, cease at that juncture. All I can do at that point is tell them to check themselves into a hospital or call the police on their behalf so they’ll be taken to a hospital.

I’ll never know whether the existence of MannMukti could’ve kept my friend alive for longer. But I can hope that my advocacy will change the course of events of even one person’s life so they don’t experience what Ajay did. And even after knowing that my advocacy has helped people, I have to question myself, under the shade of my spiritual tree. Am I now compassionate enough? Am I a different person from everything that came before?

Compassion and awareness have no magic switches. Each day I must commit to understanding someone else’s story, I have to commit to listening, caring, and supporting. All of you listening to this today, I hope you take a step with me towards a stigma-free world. Then take a thousand more steps with me. I’ll try to support you if ever your foot falters. I’ll hug you when it seems too cold to go on. Because a friend of mine taught me how to care. Because my tree taught me to become better. Because all things are subtly interconnected.

I’d like to conclude with a poem titled November 3rd, by Kenji Miyazawa, found folded and tucked away in his pocket when he passed from this world, as if he were reading and reminding himself of it every day. It is a poem that occupies a prominent place on my wall and one that I only know, of course, through Dr. Hallisey:

Neither yielding to rain

nor yielding to wind

yielding neither to

snow nor to summer heat

with a stout body

like that

without greed

never getting angry

always smiling quietly

eating one and a half pints of brown rice

and bean paste and a bit of

vegetables a day

in everything

not taking oneself

into account

looking listening understanding well

and not forgetting

living in the shadow of pine trees in a field

in a small

hut thatched with miscanthus

if in the east there’s a

sick child

going and nursing

him

if in the west there is a tired mother

going and carrying for her

bundles of rice

if in the south

there’s someone

dying

going

and saying

you don’t have to be

afraid

if in the north

there’s a quarrel

or a lawsuit

saying it’s not worth it

stop it

in a drought

shedding tears

in a cold summer

pacing back and forth lost

called

a good-for-nothing

by everyone

neither praised

nor thought a pain

someone

like that

is what I want

to be

Religion, Faith, and Hinduism in: Black Panther

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Posted by Abhijith Ravinutala in Hinduism

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black panther, dharma, faith, Hinduism, Hollywood, India, movie, philosophy, race, religion, women

SPOILER ALERT! But really, if you haven’t seen Black Panther yet, YOU’RE WRONG!

Hopefully turning this into a series of blogs on finding the Hinduism in places you wouldn’t expect!

Black Panther, rightfully so, has been breaking box-office records all across the globe since its release in Mid-February. Yet, one country where it had a slight hiccup was India: one particular line in the movie was censored out. Immediately before his challenge fight with T’Challa, M’baku yells out “Glory to Hanuman!” in theaters across the world except in India. There he simply says “Glory to.”

Killmonger Meme

Is this the quality of your censorship?!

In the Black Panther comics, the name of M’Baku’s Ape God, the White Gorilla, is actually Gerkhe. The name in the movie was purposefully changed to Hanuman – a well-known Hindu deity (even one of Obama’s favorites!). Ironically, the largest Hindu-majority country in the world could not hear that reference because the censors felt it would offend Hindus. I, along with many other Hindus, disagree – hearing Hanuman actually gave me a small moment of pride in the theater. All this made me wonder: what other connections to Hinduism, religion, and faith, can we find in this incredibly complex (and badass) movie?

Apart from the obvious verbal reference to Hanuman by M’Baku, another deeper reference to Hanuman occurs later in the movie. After T’Challa has lost his fight to Killmonger, T’Challa’s remaining supporters, led by Nakia, make the trek to the Jabari mountain. As we know, when Nakia is walking up the mountain she is in possession of the magic herb that will eventually revive T’Challa. As she and her party walk in to meet the Jabari chief, we are greeted with a gorgeous vision of the mountain tribe’s living quarters. Lights become clear against the tranquil night sky, showing a starry collection of Jabari settlements across the surrounding mountain range. And above all these settlements, we see a gigantic sculpture cut in to the edge of the mountain: a great ape holding his arms high, supporting the rest of the mountain with his arms.

In the Hindu Ramayana story, Hanuman is a semi-divine ape who is fiercely loyal to the main character Rama. Rama, his brother Laksmana, and Hanuman are fighting a great war against the story’s villain Ravana, when Laksmana is severely injured and seems to be dead. Rama, completely distraught, begs Hanuman to leave the battlefield and fetch a magic herb that can give new life to Laksmana. The herb, called sanjeevani, is located leagues away on a far mountain. Hanuman uses his powers to quickly fly over, but is unsure how to identify the sanjeevani on the large mountain. Not wanting to disappoint Rama, Hanuman uses his strength to hoist up the entire mountain on his hands and bring it back so Laksmana can be revived. In a beautiful parallel in Black Panther, Nakia brings a life-giving herb to the Jabari mountain, where she is able to bring T’Challa back to life under the statue of Hanuman holding a mountain.

Hanuman mountain

While the Ape God is the deity of the Jabari tribe, the other three tribes of Wakanda worship the Panther God, Bast. The historical Bast is an Egyptian Goddess, generally depicted as a lioness or cat, and associated with both warfare and protection. In this sense, God is a woman in the Black Panther universe (finally!). While many early religious traditions similarly worshipped the powers of women, modern society has not come to deliver on those promises. But Black Panther purposefully bucks this trend. Like Bast, the women in Black Panther can protect and cure (Shuri), go to war (Okoye), or do both (Nakia).

In addition to Bast and Hanuman, the characters in Black Panther frequently refer to worshipping ancestors. Interestingly, communicating with ancestors in Wakanda requires crossing into an ancestral plane that mirrors the living world, except for a “cosmic” sky of purple, black, and blue hues. Both times that he crosses to the ancestral world, T’Challa is greeted by his father and several other ancestors, who effortlessly shapeshift from panthers to human forms. Similarly, in some views of Hinduism, we believe that the world we see is one of illusion (known as Maya) and seeing the Truth requires gazing past this illusion. In the True view of the world, we recognize that everything is connected by a universal soul (Brahman), and when we die on Earth we become part of that soul. By being buried, i.e. temporarily killing his worldly existence and ego, T’Challa connects with the world beyond illusion. His ancestors continue to exist in that world, and take the panther form, because they have merged with a universal soul/ energy that is the same as, and one with, Bast.

Finally, I would be remiss not to make a connection to my favorite story in Hinduism, the Mahabharata. While there are many possible connections to make due to the parallel of two sides of a family vying for a throne, I want to focus on a different type of conflict parallel. When T’Challa fights Killmonger (N’Jadaka) and is being torn apart, we see Nakia pleading to the elders and Dora Milaje to step in: “is there nothing that can be done?” To this, the audience responds with a distressed silence. An incredibly poignant and distressing conflict of personal righteousness versus the duty of tradition: which one takes precedence? A similar dharma conflict occurs in the Mahabharata when Draupadi, the wife of the main characters, has been gambled away in a dice game and is about to be violated by her captors. She appeals to the elders and generals present at the dice game, pleading “is there nothing that can be done?” There too, the elders stare back with distressed silence, unable to act on their personal morals in the face of obligations to society’s traditions. This is a parallel exploration of conflict in the two stories: when faced with a set of conflicting morals, how can you choose one? Do we choose tradition because we are scared to act on personal morals without validation? Do we let oppression continue in our societies simply because of tradition?

Draupadi salt

(Draupadi on left). Throw that salt, girl! 

Black Panther is a cool superhero movie. Beyond that, it’s a movie that represents black people in ways that are unprecedented in America. Further beyond that, it’s a movie that questions and even turns upside down our typical conventions of race, religious belonging, women’s roles, and commitments to tradition. Personally, I am proud to see my favorite Hindu God, Hanuman, included in a movie like this. I believe peoples of color could do with a little more cross-reference and cultural appreciation. Instead of the Indian censors being offended by a harmless shout-out, why not use it as a cause to examine and celebrate our similarities to African cultures? After all, Black Panther has shown that it’s a winning formula. Wakanda Forever!

Don’t Tap on the Glass

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Posted by Abhijith Ravinutala in Hinduism

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academia, education, Hindu, Hinduism, India, scholarship, university

Some recent thoughts I’ve had on the study of Hinduism in institutions of higher learning. As usual, pushing for positive changes (adding new viewpoints/ diversity) instead of negative changes (subtracting existing things). 

Think about the last time you went to an aquarium. You likely passed by at least one tank that caught your attention – maybe the fish were particularly colorful or diverse. You probably stood around for five minutes or so, looking at the different varieties, pointing them out to your friends. Now imagine those five minutes weren’t enough, and you wanted to dedicate your life to studying some of those fish. You buy a tank, keep it in your study, observe and record what the fish are doing on a regular basis. You come to understand them to some extent. You know what they eat, how they move, perhaps even whether they are in a good mood. But as badly as you want to understand them, even if you were to get inside the tank and swim around, there would just be some things you don’t understand. You will never be a fish.

Far from being an odd trip I just tried to take you on, this analogy explains the current state of Western scholarship on India and Hinduism.

Patrick

Okay, it was a weird analogy. Let me explain

Since my freshman year of undergrad, I have been learning about my religion and country of birth in books written by white, Western scholars. The majority of “renowned” scholarship on Hinduism since the 1700s has been done by European and American scholars. Certainly, some Indian scholars have been doing important and valuable work at Indian universities, but due to the unfortunate power structures of higher learning and a colonial history, Western universities and their published ideas reign supreme. This is compounded, of course, by the fact that those who have immigrated to the US or Europe rarely want their children to study humanities – such things are meant to stay hobbies. Because of the doctor-engineer-lawyer mantra, Indian students in the West are often not in a position to contribute to the academic discourse in powerful Western universities.

This has consequences. While much of the current Western scholarship on Hinduism has produced insightful work and should continue, we need more Hindus studying Hinduism to develop a full, accurate picture of the religion.

In the 1970’s, the term “Orientalism” came about. Back then, it referred to a manner of seeing or studying Eastern societies from a Western lens. Seeing through this Western lens meant having your vision of the East clouded by things like the lingering power dynamics of colonialism, racist undertones, preconceived assumptions about the nature of gender, religion, and relationships, and a desire to “exoticize” the Eastern “other”. The result? If you grow up in the U.S. and learn about Hinduism, you are learning one main message: polytheistic religion that invented caste system and worships cows. While these things are all true to some extent, this is hardly the full picture of the diversity of Hinduism. But these ideas don’t originate in a vacuum! First, scholars of Hinduism espouse certain views on Hinduism. Then these views are distilled by people who oversee textbooks, then perhaps mixed in with some ideas derived from popular culture, and eventually fed to children in Western schools. And finally these views tumble out of kids’ mouths in the form of insults and bullying of Hindu children living in the West.

Cow worship

The kinds of images I saw in textbooks growing up, which led to plenty of mean jokes about my religion. Far more than an experience of bullying, such incidents may make Hindus outside India less likely to identify with their religion or appreciate it.

In the present-day, the word Orientalism is enough to send a shiver up the spine of any white scholar of Hinduism and immediately make them defensive. There has been a concerted effort to distance themselves from that term and ideology, and to their credit, many Western scholars do an amazing job. They expose parts of Hinduism that insiders just might not see, and they make a real effort to immerse themselves and understand (to stick to the fish analogy, some people are starting to develop gills).

However, it would be silly to think we’ve completely moved past Orientalism. For example, much of today’s Western scholarship on Hinduism revolves around two topics: yoga and tantra.

Yogi
Tantra

The first seems to be largely for the (self-)interest of understanding something which has become part of Western culture. The second often seems to be a continuation of that desire to exoticize Hinduism – a notion of “let’s see all the ways Hindus could write about sex and odd rituals”. These aspects of Hinduism should not be denied, but the amount of scholarship dedicated to them obscures the truth: most Hindus are not thinking about how to incorporate downward dog into that night’s sex ritual. How about focusing scholarship instead on issues that can make a difference to modern Hindus?

Beyond the focus on certain topics, there is also the issue of lacking context. By assessing the actions of a society with the standards of another, you inevitably pass judgments. In classes, time is occasionally spent hearing the professor and some students basically say “whoa, India is crazy huh?!”. Of course, many of the religious rituals of Western Christianity may seem “crazy” to Indians, but that nuance is lost when there are not enough Hindu students in the classroom or Hindu professors in institutions of higher learning. The onus is on Hindus living in the West to get involved with the study of religion (I’m trying to do my part!). Then, if insider perspectives are given the voice they deserve, scholarship and teaching can both improve significantly: published articles and books on Hinduism will have a broader set of perspectives, and classrooms will afford different types of education to students of Hinduism.

Today is not the Orientalism of the 70’s, but a new breed. It is one that continues to exoticize the East and Hinduism, through the dominant power structures of the world, but then tries to point the finger of appropriation every which way except at itself. I’m not saying I expect people to magically be able to take the perspective of a worldview that is so fundamentally different than their own. I’m not saying the West shouldn’t study Hinduism through classrooms and scholarly articles. By all means, let’s learn about each other’s cultures, and let’s give Hinduism the attention it deserves as the third-largest religion. Let’s even expose the flaws of Hinduism and the way it’s being politicized. I’m just saying that there’s a way to do this with respect, dignity, sympathy, and consideration of what Hindus think and need. To achieve that, we need more insider perspectives, we need more attention to popular religion, and we need more sensitivity from outside perspectives. If you’re going to come and look at the fish tank, just don’t tap on the glass.

Tap on Glass

Explaining Hinduism (An Island of Religions)

28 Sunday Feb 2016

Posted by Abhijith Ravinutala in Hinduism

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Hindu, Hinduism, philosophy, religion

As a Hindu living outside of Asia, I’ve been in the uncomfortable situation of explaining Hinduism to someone who’s never met a Hindu before. The kind of situation that used to elicit a sudden rise in the temperature of my face and plenty of “umm’s“ and “uhh’s”. Over the years, I’ve been in this situation several times and my explanation of Hinduism changed and grew just as I did. It wasn’t until the latter half of college that I was able to draw a coherent picture of Hinduism in my head and make my explanation consistent.

These days, when someone asks “What is Hinduism?” I say: Hinduism is really an umbrella term for several types of religions practiced in India. There’s a few principles that most of these religions share, like a belief in reincarnation (the soul returns in another body), karma (what goes around comes around), and dharma (moral and religious duty). But in general, the religion is a very personal one, and can be practiced in many different ways. Many Hindus, for this reason, choose to think of it more as a way of life than as a strict religious doctrine.

[Good speech, right? Mic drop]

mic_drop_key_peele_obama-crop-rectangle3-large

The issue with defining Hinduism is that it’s a reflection of its homeland, India. It is confusing yet simple, diverse yet homogenous, dirty yet pristine, philosophical yet rudimentary. It can be both magnificent in scale and miniscule. If Hinduism had its origins in modern-day northwestern India, then by the time it reached the southern tip of India, it had been transformed and adapted, and those changes would have been sent back to the north as well. In short, there is no single Hinduism. We do not have a single prophet, a single text, or a single unifying vision of God. This is the probably the most unique aspect of my religion, and perhaps the most difficult.

The specific common themes and differences in Hindu practices are a topic for another day. In order to better answer the question “What is Hinduism”, the true key is to understand the open nature of the religion itself. To understand this open nature, I think of the following metaphor:


 

An Island of Religions

Imagine an island somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. We’ll use this island to represent different world religions. The island has diverse and beautiful scenery, including beaches, forests, and rolling hills with distinct boundaries. Some areas of the land are well-trodden by tourists, while other areas at the fringes are not as populated. The land is large, but surrounded on all sides by water that stretches out for miles and miles.

This island represents the Abrahamic religions – Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. Their boundaries are well-defined. If someone believes in the word of the Qu’ran, they are Muslim. If they believe Christ died for their sins, they are Christian. If you don’t believe those things, you usually can’t consider yourself part of that religion. Sure, there are different levels of belief and strictness within each of these religions, and there are people in each religion who live at the fringes, but it’s very easy to draw those lines. Land by its nature is solid and dependable, but limiting.

In contrast, Hinduism has blurred lines. If the Abrahamic religions are the island, then Hinduism is the ocean itself. When you wade into the water, you can’t see where it ends and begins. You’re not sure how far you can go before you end up in deep waters. You could move in any direction and still be in the ocean, no closer to reaching land anywhere.

The possibilities in Hinduism are nearly endless – as a Hindu it’s hard to define what should and should not be considered Hinduism (there are even philosophies in Hinduism that doesn’t believe in the existence of God!). Because of this, it’s easy to feel confused about your own spiritual progress. When you compare yourself to other Hindus, it’s often not an apples-to-apples comparison, and the religion ends up being an entirely personal one. Of course, many Hindus choose to seek community and direction in the midst of all this open-endedness. There are many sects, community groups, collectives, etc. that agree on and follow a decided set of Hindu beliefs. Some follow a particular leader, and others follow a particular book. Whilst being in the ocean, these people are swimming close to the shore.

But if you’re not sticking close to shore, your progress and direction is your own to measure. That’s what is difficult and beautiful about Hinduism. My religion provides some guidelines and examples of good morals, but there are very few hard and fast rules. A person needs to test themselves, grow and change their ideals, perhaps even cease to believe in some things, on their Hindu journey. My beliefs currently are entirely differently from my beliefs as a high school senior, and they are also entirely different from my Hindu friends and family. The only common thread is that we all consider ourselves Hindu: we choose to find ourselves in the ocean, comfortable not setting foot on shore.

life-of-pi-287

When you’re feeling a bit lost in the ocean…

In case you’re wondering, atheists fit into this metaphor as well. They’re at the island bar not giving a crap.


 

For the reasons above, it’s often hard for Abrahamic faiths to truly understand the nature of Hinduism. I’ve heard multiple times that in faith-based schools, Christian students will study the Bhagavad Gita as an introduction to Hinduism. Yet, is reading a single ”holy” book an appropriate way of trying to understand something that is not Christian? Growing up, I’ve been exposed to the Bhagavad Gita but my family and community never emphasized its role in my religion. It’s not a requirement to be a Hindu, like reading the Bible might be a requirement for being a Christian.

Perhaps a better way to understand and explain Hinduism is to understand the breadth of spiritual beliefs possible amongst Hindus. When we describe our religion, we should draw attention to what is unique about it – our boundaries are ours to define, and no two people have to practice it the same way. Instead of describing Hinduism as one belief system, perhaps we describe it as a collection of beliefs with a few common threads and an emphasis on finding your own path.

Whether you are Hindu or not, by reading this I hope to have shed some light on how to handle the question “What is Hinduism”? What are your reactions to the above?

Cleanliness is next to Godliness…?

17 Thursday Dec 2015

Posted by Abhijith Ravinutala in Hinduism

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Tags

Benares, culture, Hindu, Hinduism, India, Kasi, society, South Asia, Varanasi

Last summer, I had the privilege of visiting one of India’s holiest cities, Varanasi (AKA Benares or Kasi) with my friend Shelby and her brother Brian. Varanasi, which sits on the banks of the river Ganga, is home to countless temples and even some important historical sites of the Buddha1. Many Hindus travel to this city in their last days so they may be cremated and have their ashes thrown in to the river. At the heart of all this religious fervor is one of the most famous temples to Siva2, the Kasi Viswanath temple.

SAM_0569.JPG

Shelbs and I being touristy in nearby Sarnath outside Varanasi

Shelby, Brian, and I left for the Siva temple on a cloudy summer morning. Winding through small cobblestone alleyways still wet from last night’s rain, we held our noses long enough to get through the dirty streets and out onto the banks of the river. Here, we were able to negotiate with a boatman to ferry us out to the famed Kasi Viswanath temple. The ferry ride provided my first moment of confusion that day. While I was making conversation with the boatman in broken Hindi, he asked me to reach my hand in the Ganga and throw some water on my head. Now, sprinkling holy water on one’s head is a fairly common practice in Hinduism and even other religions. But in this particular instance, I had continuously seen cremated remains being thrown into the river over the past few days. Moreover, the Ganga is well-known for not being exactly pristine3. Needless to say, my reaction to touching the water was somewhat like this:

what-did-you-just-ask-me

Still, to appease the boatman, who started to guilt trip me about whether I was an Indian or a foreigner, I dashed some of the Ganga water on my head. After reaching the temple, I expected to get a good view of the Siva idol that so many had travelled days to see. Yet, when I reached the idol, he was buried in the offerings of the day’s pilgrims. Milk, honey, ashes, leaves, flowers, and other things kept anyone from even seeing the deity. For me and many other Hindus, the act of visually seeing an idol at the end of a pilgrimage is a calming and profound spiritual experience – often known as darsan – but this temple offered no such luck. I exited the temple feeling underwhelmed, looking around to see if anyone else wanted to shrug their shoulders and say, “huh, I guess that’s it”.

The entire experience left me feeling somewhat angry at the messiness of Hinduism. After making it through insanely dirty streets and getting ripped off by every merchant who could tell I was American, I just hoped to enjoy a view of the famous idol. I couldn’t get that because it was buried in offerings that no one bothered to clean. Why couldn’t people enjoy the idol instead of covering it in offerings? In the western culture of America that I’ve grown up in, I’ve often heard the phrase “cleanliness is next to godliness”. Whenever I’ve stepped inside a church or mosque, they’ve been pristine to a fault, regardless of how much foot traffic the holy site experienced. So, standing outside the exit of the Viswanath temple, scratching my head at my underwhelming spiritual experience, I couldn’t help but feel a bit irked.

ummm_1237346i

Bush being my spirit animal and showing my feelings about the temple experience

I realize that Varanasi doesn’t have the infrastructure of a city like Rome – I can’t expect our holy city to resemble the cleanliness of the Vatican. I realize as well that Varanasi deals with a sheer amount of bodies that many Western holy sites don’t have to contend with. So let’s remove those considerations. I’d argue that our religion is still messy in nature, because of our specific method of ritual prayer. It hardly suffices to sprinkle holy water on an idol during a ritual ceremony. Throwing flower petals in myriad colors is exceedingly common, as is offering substances like honey, butter, etc. onto an idol or into a makeshift fire pit. All of this makes for a mess of leftover petals, congealed sticky stuff, and lots of ash.

Case in point: after I went off to college, my parents converted my room to a prayer room. What was once a normal room now smells distinctly like a temple. The sink is deeply stained by ash and other powders, and at any point there’s bound to be a heap of flower petals in a corner. This has nothing to do with infrastructure or population, and in fact my parents are clean freaks themselves. So why was my room transformed in this way? Why do we feel the need to bury our idols with all these things, why are there so many colors and fires and powders involved in our ritual prayers?

My friend Dhaatri offers an insightful explanation: India’s never been a place for subtlety. From our Bollywood movies down to our food, our culture errs on the side of ornate and obnoxious. Our religious festivals involve lighting firecrackers and lamps, throwing heaps of color at each other, and flying hundreds of colorful kites in the sky. As people that give our full selves in many aspects of life, why should we settle down when it comes to prayer? If we shower our houses and clothes with decorations and colors, why don’t we do the same in our temples? If we love to feast with 20 dishes, why can’t we offer God just that many things when we’re trying to appreciate him? In short, cleanliness by definition is restraint. It means that we try our best to be controlled, to pick up after ourselves politely. What we can appreciate about Hindu prayer then, is that it is unrestrained. There’s a religious fervor here that you have to feel firsthand to understand. What other religion has as many spiritual endeavors that mix with song and dance? Hinduism is a religion where we parade for our Gods, beat the drums and dance till we’re exhausted, just so we know we’ve given all of ourselves in religious pursuit.

[Hindu festival depicted in a popular Hindi movie – the video is obviously dramatized, but the first few minutes provide a good glimpse into how religious celebrations are held in some parts of India]

So in India, maybe cleanliness doesn’t have to be Godliness: maybe there’s a certain beauty in making a mess. This is not an excuse for us to be lazy in the upkeep of our temples, but rather a perspective for understanding the way we pray. The mess that results from religious fervor is entirely different than the one that results from negligence – i.e., I can’t exactly say my room is dirty because of religious fervor. As India’s infrastructure and education improves, I still hope that cities like Varanasi will provide a more welcoming and clean front for its many visitors by cleaning up the negligent messes. But in the future, I’ll accept that my fellow pilgrims shower temple idols with their offerings because that’s just one way of showing devotion.

What are your thoughts on the phrase “Cleanliness is next to godliness”? Does it apply to Hinduism or does the religion approach “godliness” differently? Please comment!

1 – The nearby town of Sarnath is the site of Buddha’s first sermon

2 – As usual, not a reliable source, but good for basic info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiva

3- http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/india-million-litres-untreated-sewage-polluting-holy-river-ganga-says-report-1491715

Recent Posts

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