Ascetic Games

by Dhirendra K Jha

  I met them two more times over the next two months and discussed this phenomenon in detail. Then, to check the veracity of their claims, I reached Allahabad a day before the first shahi snan. In the Hindu lunar calendar, it is the day of Makar Sankranti, which falls on the winter solstice in mid-January. Early morning on that day, armed with the Uttar Pradesh government’s special media pass issued for the occasion, I found a suitable spot well inside the barricaded track through which the shahi julus was to proceed towards Sangam, the confluence of rivers Ganga, Yamuna and the mythical Saraswati.

  One by one, the contingent of naked naga armies of the akharas passed by me, each led by a naked sadhu mounted on a pony, who frenetically beat a dhol placed in front of him, followed by others playing martial tunes on turahis of different shapes and sizes. As chants of ‘Har Har Mahadev’ rent the air, I started becoming impatient as none of the four alms-seekers I had met at Har-ki-Pauri could be found. I felt foolish for having believed them.

  Then, my eyes found a familiar face—it was indeed Kanhaiya, waving his hands at me, wearing nothing, as he walked at the end of the last contingent of naked sadhus. I did not immediately recognise him even though he was at a distance of merely three or four metres. He looked quite different in his avatar as a naga. I had assumed he would appear worried and nervous, but he looked confident, and seemed to belong among the nagas. He was walking swiftly along with the shahi julus, and I had to run a few steps to catch up with him. Now it was easy to recognise his friends, too. Gopal, Ilam and Ballu were marching alongside Kanhaiya, also naked, waving their hands frantically at me and smiling. Before they could move away, I shouted: ‘Namo Narayan, Maharaj. Where are you staying?’

  Gopal, who was the closest to me, yelled back: ‘Come outside Juna.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Four o’clock [in the evening].’

  Kanhaiya and his friends had been right—not all the naked men who took part in the shahi julus were naga sadhus. The main attraction of the Kumbh was no longer what it might have been in the past.

  That evening, when I reached the camp of Juna akhara a little before four, Kanhaiya and his friends had already gathered outside the gate awaiting my arrival. We went to a relatively deserted area along the Yamuna and spoke until it was late in the evening.

  ‘How do you feel about what you did today?’ I asked in course of our conversation. ‘You’re not a naga, and yet you were confidently marching with the nagas in the morning as if you were one of them?’

  ‘How do you know all the others in the julus were nagas?’ Kanhaiya replied.

  What did Kanhaiya and his friends get for impersonating nagas?

  ‘For every shahi snan, each of us gets Rs 501 as dakshina,’ he said.

  That, however, was not the only attraction for them. In Haridwar, they survive on alms. With no permanent place to stay, they live mostly on the ghats near Har-ki-Pauri. During the Kumbh, for five to six weeks—the average duration of a Kumbh Mela—they do not have to beg. ‘We came here on 13 January and will rest here for the whole of the Kumbh,’ Kanhaiya explained.

  Gopal, Ilam and Ballu were also living in the same camp, lounging around, eating meals served at bhandaras meant for nagas and earning dakshina for the few hours of exertion required of them on one day.

  According to Gopal, ‘temporary nagas’ could be found in the camps of most Dasanami akharas. ‘You won’t find anybody at Har-ki-Pauri now. All of them must have come to Prayag to live like nagas for the next few weeks,’ Ilam said.

  IV

  Around ten that night, as calm started to return following the frenzy of the first shahi snan, and the crowd began to thin rapidly, I hurried towards my guest house, wondering how the actual naga sanyasis—not the pretenders but the real ones, those who might have come here not to participate in the show, but out of sheer devotion—would feel about this. As I was passing through a pontoon bridge on one of the streams of the Ganga, I noticed three naga sanyasis getting ready for a quick ganja session on the river bank. I walked closer to them and sat down uttering, ‘Om Namo Narayan.’

  I did not get a response. The group seemed focused on the chillum that had started passing around.

  ‘From the smell I can tell, Maharaj, it’s pure stuff,’ I tried again.

  Silence continued, but this time one of them smiled, and after his hit, passed the chillum to me. The chillum went around twice, and as one of them paused to refill it, I asked, ‘Maharaj, I would like to understand something.’

  The one who had subtly welcomed me into the group with his smile looked up but said nothing.

  ‘Are all who were part of the shahi julus real nagas like you?’ I shot my question straight at him.

  ‘Maharaj,’ he said, holding the earthen chillum in his hand. ‘You want to know who fake nagas are? What do you expect a naga of Juna akhara to tell you? You noticed them today, I noticed them three years back,’ he said, passing the chillum to the sadhu sitting next to him. He was lost in thought for a while, and then said, ‘In the very first shahi julus at Haridwar, I noticed that the murti [as ordinary nagas call each other] by my side was so aroused that he was not able to walk properly. I was shocked. A sanyasi who has been initiated as a naga can not get an erection.’

  This was a rather strange way of identifying fake nagas and certainly the most powerful statement I had heard about the phenomenon. Secret Dasanami rules prescribe a set of mandatory esoteric initiation rituals to become a naga. The last of these, held in complete secrecy, is notable for the mark it leaves on the man.5

  At a later point, I asked a Haridwar-based naga sanyasi of Awahan akhara, called Shivraj Giri, about this ritual. He seemed shaken by the mere memory of it. ‘It was so painful that I almost fainted. It took me hours to regain my feet, and only after that could the remaining rites be completed. Had I known about this part of the ritual, I might not have gone for it.’

  ‘But you could have refused when you felt the pain or you could have simply run away in the midst of those rites, couldn’t you have?’ I probed.

  ‘When they grab your penis, your mind stops functioning,’ he said, his eyes reddish from cannabis. ‘When I got up and the initiation rites resumed, I told myself I would pretend to be an observer rather than a participant. That helped me brave those painful hours.’

  There is nothing extraordinary about the first two stages of initiation that prepares a novice to enter nagahood. It begins with the candidate’s formal initiation into the life of a Shaiva akhara, with the kaarbaari, or keeper of records, noting his name, his guru, the date on which the initiation begins as well as acknowledging that he has paid his dues to a marhi, which functions as a sub-lineage within Dasanami akharas. On the appointed day, the candidate, already shaven except for the top knot, presents himself along with a group of other initiates. A pandit, the guru and the initiate sit in a triangle in front of the sacred dhooni and offer water and flower petals to God. Besides the initiating guru, who is called mantra guru, four other gurus from the same akhara present the candidate with vibhuti, langoti, rudrakshamala and janeu, and are, accordingly, called vibhuti guru, langoti guru, rudraksha guru and janeu guru. Together they constitute the panch guru, the five preceptors. The initiate’s top knot is shaved off and the guru mantra is whispered three times in his ear by the mantra guru. The initiate is then given a new name, with a suffix denoting one of the ten Dasanami names. He is now called a mahapurush, the great one, or vastradhari, the clothed one.

  ‘The second initiation is more elaborate,’ explained Shivraj Giri. ‘It involves severing the link with your past as well as the cycle of birth and death.’

  Central to this phase of initiation, which turns a mahapurush into a sanyasi, is a yajna planned well in advance. The virajaa havan, the rite of the hero, or vidya sanskar, as this yajna is called, is nearly always performed at the time of a Kumbh Mela. While the major rituals of this rite are performed by a Brahmin pandit, some are also performed by the acharya guru or the mahamandaleshw
ar. As part of the preparation on the day of the yajna, the acharya guru informs the candidates that this is their last opportunity to return to their homes and families should they wish to do so. The candidates briefly discard their clothes and walk a few steps towards the north before being called back by the acharya guru. These steps symbolise ‘the Great Journey to the Himalayas’, undertaken, theoretically, without food and water until the traveller dies. These symbolic rituals are performed at the bank of the river early in the morning. At sunset, the candidates return to the akhara, which has four funeral fires burning at each corner. It is around these fires that the main sanyas sacrifice, virajaa havan, or homa, is conducted. While the candidates offer oblations and perform the yajna, the Purush-sukta—sixteen verses from the Rig Veda, which in the Hindu tradition are recited during funeral rites—is chanted by the sanyasis of the akhara. The candidates then perform, elaborately, their own funeral rites, which are said to free them from the cycle of birth and death. It is believed that having performed his own shradha, a sanyas will be united immediately with the ancestral spirits and not roam the afterworld as a ghost, as ordinary Hindus might. The next morning before sunrise, renunciates, along with the acharya guru, go to the river, where they perform another set of rituals, calling on the sun and moon, wind and fire, earth and sky, heart and mind, morning and evening twilights, and all the gods to witness the candidate’s resolution to become a sanyasi. This is followed by the recitation of a series of mantras, particularly Gayatri and Praisa mantras, the latter chanted in three different pitches, and the taking of a series of vows, usually performed in waist-deep water. Thereafter, a mahapurush becomes a sanyasi, who must now live as if he is dead to the world.

  Then comes the third and last stage of initiation for those sanyasis who wish to become nagas. ‘Earlier, there used to be a gap of several years between the second and the third initiation, but nowadays, naga initiation usually takes place barely a day or two after the virajaa havan,’ Shivraj Giri said. ‘It is conducted in the dead of the night, when the sanyasi stands next to the kirti-stambha, a tall column in the middle of the akhara, accompanied by four shri mahants, who represent four sets of marhis, and the acharya guru, who gives him a mantra. Then his mantra guru pours water on his head and pulls the sanyasi’s genitals thrice with all his force. You can’t imagine what it takes away. Only a man with great will can withstand it.’

  This ritual—called tang tode, meaning ‘broken leg’—is said to break the membrane beneath the skin of the sanyasi’s penis and it is believed that this emasculates him before he becomes a naga. The authenticity of a true naga is determined by the status of his penis, which is what the Juna akhara naga I met that night in Allahabad had referred to.

  V

  Dasanami akharas, particularly the bigger ones, are aware of the devotees’ expectations during a Kumbh Mela and that they can retain their status as spiritual centres only by meeting these. This is an ordeal for the managers of akharas. Office-bearers are selected only from those class of nagas who have gone through the tang tode ritual; as such, the organisation of the show—both the Kumbh Mela as well as its central spectacle, the shahi julus—rests on fully initiated nagas. These nagas feel the constant heat of the competition in the market, and of the need to live up to the image of the mysterious yogi.

  Religion matters. So do those who reinforce people’s faith in religion. Perhaps, the akharas would not feel the need to perpetuate the stereotype if they had continued to get enough new entrants and if Kumbh Melas were just a straightforward religious fair for ascetics and devotees. But during the last few decades, there has been a paucity of naga aspirants and there has been a powerful effort to convert the Kumbh into a political theatre. All this seems to have pushed the Dasanami akharas to the edge, forcing them to deploy desperate measures to make the show look grand. Most sadhus have had to adjust to a new way of life, one in which spirituality has been replaced by manufactured acts to keep up appearances.

  But there are also nagas who are unwilling to join the game. They come in three varieties. The first set are those who can’t find an entry point into this new world. The second set are so upset at being rejected by those running the show that they grow bitter and blame the akharas for everything under the sun. Nagas belonging to the third category are the ones so distressed by the turn of events that they start wandering in search of the ‘real truth’, having been devastated by the ‘experienced truth’ in the akharas.

  ‘Kumbh is an empty pot, and all its nectar has flown away,’ said Anand Giri, a tang tode naga of Juna akhara, who could qualify for the third category. ‘When I realised this I felt outrage and pain. But who cares nowadays? Everyone is busy in the drama, some organising it and others taking part in it. There is no idealism left there. Why should youngsters join them?’ he asked. ‘The last Kumbh I attended was in 2001 [in Allahabad]. I lost interest after that.’6

  I met Anand Giri, a wandering sanyasi who claimed to have no dwelling place, a few weeks after the 2013 Allahabad Kumbh at the outskirts of the Himalayan town of Joshimath in Uttarakhand. From our brief conversation, I gathered that the overriding concern of the ‘real’ nagas was that their population was shrinking.

  For their part, akharas remain opaque and highly secretive, preferring to divert attention away from their crisis rather than to examine it. It is true that the akharas are fighting for survival. But the harder they fight the waters closing over them, the faster they seem to be drowning. They, for example, blame Kaliyug, the dark ages, for the decline in the number of newcomers to their kind of life. ‘Kaliyug has affected both religious and material spheres,’ said Ravindra Puri, the secretary of Mahanirvani akhara. ‘The number of nagas in every akhara has been falling. Till 1925, the Mahanirvani akhara had a force of 30,000 nagas. Later, it started coming down. Now it is much less,’ he said, but was evasive when asked to give details of Mahanirvani’s present strength of nagas.7

  Yet, the fact that the Kumbh retains its allure as the largest congregation of Hindus and that the nagas are vital to it gives akharas hope that this decline can be reversed and that their contingent of nagas will rise again. Though they try to put up a brave face, in an age of all-pervasive media, their true colours show whenever there is a Kumbh Mela. A fierce competition among the larger Dasanami akharas, particularly Juna and Niranjani, to put up a show of being the most influential, the most powerful in terms of the number of nagas and the most aggressive, makes their pathetic state only more visible.

  Senior office-bearers, like Ravindra Puri, feign ignorance about the presence of fake nagas in the Kumbh Mela, even though most of them admit that there is an ever-increasing pressure to make a show of numbers. ‘I don’t know anything about fake nagas, but there is certainly competition to claim the largest contingent of nagas. This competition started only in the last two or three Kumbhs. Earlier, this was not the case,’ Ravindra Puri said. Most nagas, who don’t hold any positions of power, tend to fall silent when asked about fake nagas. It is hard to believe that they are unaware of the farce carried out in their name by the akhara authorities. Given their dependency on the akharas for sustenance, it is possible that they prefer not to risk the wrath of their benefactors by speaking out openly.

  Whatever the case, the nagas have been shrinking in numbers for quite some time.

  In the medieval ages, various princely rulers, both Hindus and Muslims, used to hire the services of organised akharas for battles, which, in turn, attracted a good number of youths, particularly those belonging to the lower strata of society in north India. A large number of ascetic warriors continued to bear arms and to rent out their fighting services even during the early years of the British rule in India. Naturally, their numbers were much larger in parts not under the East India Company’s rule.

  But the number of warrior ascetics started declining as the British rule reduced the probability of princely states fighting among themselves. Private armies could neither be kept nor assembled. It is not surpris
ing that J.N. Farquhar found many old weapons of war hanging on the walls of a deserted temple near Jaipur in 1922.8 G.S. Ghurye also refers to the presence of these rusted specimens in many akharas in 1951.9 Nevertheless, the nagas and their akharas survived, continuing to get patronage from the remnants of the medieval order—local rajas and zamindars. Thus, as noted by Robert Lewis Gross, even until the early part of the twentieth century, large contingents of sadhus used to tour the country in great processions giving blessings and receiving tributes wherever they went.10 Roderick Neill mentions instances of ‘Dashnami Naga Panch [the governing body of these akharas]’ travelling all year long with supplies and tents for thousands of naga sanyasis, and wherever they camped, the local rajas and zamindars would support the ascetics with food and gifts.11 Once the rajas were derecognised and zamindari estates were abolished after Independence, the patronage of the local ruling elite ended, and these huge annual processions completely disappeared.

  Though asceticism continued to draw newcomers, it happened at a diminished pace. It remained an alternative lifestyle and strategy for many youths from poverty-stricken parts of the Gangetic plain, particularly those incapable of dealing with modern life or those who did not wish to live within the narrow confines of the domestic setting of family, kin, caste and village. It also provided, to many, a convenient and socially recognised ‘escape’ from worldly life. Whatever rigours and deprivations an ascetic life might have represented, it also offered certain compensations. It provided, for instance, a form of financial security that was sometimes greater than the kind offered by other occupations. That asceticism also acted as an adaptive strategy for survival has been explained quite vividly by Gross12—a fact that most ascetics today will vehemently deny, choosing to instead give philosophical reasons for their choice.