Revision as of 22:54, 26 July 2014

Kanwariyas travelling to Deoghar Photo: AP

The pilgrimage

Kanwariya yatra / The Times of India

Hindu devotees take part in the Kanwar Yatra, an annual pilgrimage of devotees of Shiva. They visit Hindu pilgrimage places of Haridwar, Gaumukh and Gangotri in Uttarakhand to fetch holy waters of Ganges River which is later offered at their local Shiva temples.

The Yatra takes place during the sacred month of Shravan (Saawan) (July-August), according to the Hindu calendar. Shravan is considered the holiest month in the Hindu calendar with many religious festivals and ceremonies.

Kanwariyas are young men performing a ritual pilgrimage, in which they walk, sometimes hundreds of miles, to the Ganges River to take its sacred waters back to Hindu temples in their hometowns. During the Hindu lunar month of Shravana, hundreds of thousands of pilgrims can be seen walking the roads of India, clad in saffron, and carrying ornately decorated canisters of water over their shoulders.

Kanwariyas walk on (or drive through in trucks) the roads of India, clad in saffron, and carrying ornately decorated canisters of sacred water from the Ganges River over their shoulders to take them back to Hindu temples in their hometowns.

Kanwariyas are Hindus and worshippers of Hindu God Shiva. Some carry metal canisters filled with holy water from the Ganges River in Allahabad, which they then take home.

Many Kanwariyas pilgrims travel through lucknow

Kanwariya pilgrims collect Ganges water from the river in Hardwar. They carry and store this holy water in kanwar containers and then offer water to the Shivlinga at the ancient temple.

Some Devotees participate in 51 feet Kanwar Shova [shobha?] yatra in Patna city.The shova yatra travels to Deodhar in Jharkhand to pray at the Baidyanath temple.

The kanwarias

When They Run To Deoghar

Lakhs of kanwarias make it to the temple town of Deoghar every year and the numbers continue to be on the rise, reports Sopan Joshi

Kanwariyas travelling to Deoghar Photo: Tehelka

Balancing act Kanwarias have become a countrywide phenomenon over the past three decades

History

How and when did the practice of carrying water from the Ganga to a Shiva temple become a mass phenomenon involving crores of people? In 2010 the number touched a crore in Haridwar.

The tradition traces its genesis from Deoghar, a temple town in Jharkhand. Kanwars bring water from the Ganga in Sultanganj in Bihar, 105 km north of Deoghar, and offer it to Shiva in the Baidyanath temple in Deoghar.

Former irrigation minister Krishnanand Jha who grew up in Deoghar and now runs the Hindi Vidyapeeth says the number of kanwarias rose steadily after the 1970s. Earlier, only a few thousand would undertake the yatra, that too only on Maha Shivratri. There was also a mela in bhadon, the month after saawan (shravan/ sravan), wherein farmers would celebrate after the seasonal labours had ended.

“Only rich Marwari families from Kolkata came to spend saawan in Deoghar. What the rich do usually becomes fashionable; with increasing incomes and better transport, more and more people began to throng during saawan,” says Jha.

SANSKRIT scholar Mohananand Mishra offers references from scriptures, showing the practice was specific to Deoghar. “Kanwar may well be an Adivasi custom that spread around,” he says, adding that the saffron colour was chosen because it discourages pride and desire and makes them calm. Ironic considering the kanwarias thronging Haridwar look anything but calm.

People who have watched the kanwaria phenomenon grow in Haridwar since the 1980s explain it differently. Some say it became big in reaction to the insurgency in Punjab. Some point to a Hindu [radicalisation] after the 1992 demolition of the Babri Masjid and the communal riots that ensued. Pretty much everybody agrees that devotional songs popularised by music-magnate Gulshan Kumar’s extremely low cost audio cassettes/ CDs and videos also played a role in popularising it.

The social sciences do not seem to offer anything either on the rise of the kanwaria. Suresh Kumar, a historian and sociologist at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, says the custom in Deoghar seems to have the humility of a folk tradition. In Haridwar, the same custom has acquired the trappings of a mass cultural event with its characteristic celebration and consumption.

Deoghar and the annual pilgrimage

The walk takes an average of three days and one category called Dak kanwars run the distance in 24 hours.

On the way from Sultanganj to Deoghar, the atmosphere is a lot calmer than the Delhi-Haridwar route. Unlike its macho reputation, about a half to a third of the kanwarias are women. The calmness ends when the devotees enter the temple. The prospect of a darshan makes them desperate, resulting in chaos. The temple management and police man the queue with lathis, but it isn’t easy to maintain order.

Managing lakhs of people can be a nightmare for the authorities. During saawan, The District Collector’s office shifts to the Baidyanath temple, for there is just one priority: managing the saawan mela and the hordes of kanwarias. His control room has 15-odd CCTV screens. This month-long festivity sustains the economy of this temple town of 2.5 lakh people for the rest of the year. “It’s probably one of the world’s largest annual fair of its kind,” local officials say.From hotels to curio shops, everybody plans for the fair. Street vendors book vantage spots in advance.

The temple gets 40-50 lakh kanwarias each year during saawan. An average of 90 kanwarias offer water to Baidyanath every minute. And then there are a few lakh who don’t get to worship. In 2009, the kanwar queue stretched 10 km at one point. One person takes about one foot in the queue. That is 32,000 people in the queue.

One devotee had run 105 km in 28 hours. His T-shirt had his brother’s phone number hand-printed on it ‘in case I die of exhaustion’ Even with blistered feet, his energy and excitement remains unmatched. After running 105 km in about 28 hours, this may seem strange. He sits on the stairs near the exit of the premises to offer water to goddess Parvati. He hadn’t had a meal in 36 hours, only some fruits. Despite the exhaustion, he was waiting patiently for a group to get over with their darshan.

Most people come with a wish, a prayer, and keep coming till the prayer is fulfilled but nobody tells you what it is. It’s only for the deity to hear. Some do the yatra just because they think it is the right thing to do with friends and family. The rest come to thank the deity after their wishes come true.

The zeal is shared by millions of other kanwarias most of whom hail from different backgrounds and regions. There are rich and poor, young and old, men and women, high castes and low castes. And yet, this lot does not show signs of aggression unlike the ones on the Delhi- Haridwar route who come across as arrogant.

But haughtiness or no haughtiness, their commitment remains unquestionable. As is the commitment of those who provide for them during these strenuous months. For a month, an Agrawal trader from Sultanganj, and his family shut their businesses and serve kanwarias. All this is done without causing inconvenience to the general public. The commuters do not get bullied. Muslim auto drivers ferry saffron-clad Hindus.

Violence

Journalist Sopan Joshi mentions an altercation on NH-24 in 2007. Armed with sticks, a group of saffron-clad kanwarias threatened to do unspeakable things to him if he ended up disturbing their procession. While serving him with an ultimatum, the kanwarias assaulted a motorist for getting in their way. Consequently, he changed his course.

This annual deluge of devotion claims a few lives and scores get injured due to road accidents, quarrels and altercations. And yet the number of devotees increases each year. No one has a clue why.

sopan(a)tehelka.com