Kali/ Kalika Mata, goddess

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Versions of the loving Mother Goddess

Edited from SWAPAN DASGUPTA, Her Kali? Our Kali? How perceptions of the goddess have changed

Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra assert[ed] her right to imagine Ma Kali as a ‘meat loving, alcohol accepting’ goddess…Citing the customs in Tarapeeth — a famous Kali shrine in West Bengal.

Many would tend to agree with Moitra. The traditional Navami blog [bhog?] during Durga Puja invariably involves feasting on mutton and rice. In the case of Kali Puja too, meat and alcohol are part of the revelry that follows the puja at night. About Bamakhepa, a pujari of Tarapeeth who is venerated in Bengal, it has been said: “Most of the time at Tarapeeth he wandered naked about the cremation ground. He was stoned on ganja all day and drunk wine from a human skull. The people called him Bama Mlecha because he had lost caste by eating food left by the dogs and jackals. He made no distinction between pure and impure foods, and broke caste rules with impunity. He would even take human flesh from the mouth of a dog in the cremation ground and fill his own mouth with it” (cited in ‘Pilgrimage and Politics in Colonial Bengal’ by Imma Ramos, 2017).

The celebratory aspects of Shakti worship in eastern India and the eccentricities of a devotee who had established a personal communion with the goddess are fascinating. Yet, they need to be kept in perspective. Observing the worshippers at Tarapeeth, Ramos noted: “As at Kamakhya, the temple has become a popular centre of devo- tional worship rather than a site of transgressive rites, which are largely practised on the margins. Devotees approach the Tara murti as a benign matriarch, offering her food, incense and, according to her Tantric nature, alcohol. ”

In the Dakshineshwar temple, made famous by Ramakrishna Paramhansa, there is no hint of alcohol in the offerings of devotees. And, there is no meat or alcohol at the actual worship of Durga and Kali at the thousands of community pujas in Bengal which tend to be family occasions. The bacchanalia is strictly off site and part of the larger festivities around the pujas. Undeniably, there is a focus on panchatattva or experiencing the five “forbidden” pleasures, in the Tantric tradition. But this is a fringe phenomenon …

Secondly, religious practices and even the perceptions of the goddess have changed over time. Some would claim that the Hindu faiths became increasingly sanitised.

Prior to the 18th century when she became identified as a benign mother goddess and ultimately linked to nationalist and anti-western impulses, the meaning of Kali was more stark. David Kinsley in ‘Hindu Goddesses: Visions of the Divine Feminine in the Hindu Religious Tradition’ (1986) has described the earlier Kali: “These other … ‘mother goddesses’… give life. Kali takes life, insatiably. She lives in the cremation ground, haunts the battlefield, sits upon a corpse, and adorns herself with pieces of corpses. If mother goddesses are described as ever fecund, Kali is described as ever hungry…If mother goddesses give life, Kali feeds on life. ”