Body of the Goddess
by: Nancy Vedder-Shults on September 28th, 2009 | 6 Comments »
Subject: Body Of The GoddessDear Friends,
Today is Vijaya Dashami, the Day of Victory that completes the 9-day Hindu Navaratri celebration of the Goddess in all her aspects and manifestations. In mythology, Vijaya Dashami marks the final triumph of the Goddess, after nine days of battle, over the demon Mahishasur. It also marks the start of the harvest season, and invokes the Divine Mother as all the powers of fertility and the life-giving gifts of the earth.
I stand firmly, fiercely, and unequivocally against the global rise of Hindu fundamentalism, and its appropriation of Hindu traditions for its fascist agenda. And at the same time, I reclaim my Hindu spiritual and cultural heritage as a feminist scholar, radical activist, and artist.
Here’s a poem that Shailja sent to illustrate her opposition to Hindu fundamentalism:
Today I Dismantled My Gods
Written in 2002, following the massacre of over 2,000 Muslims in my ancestral state of Gujarat, by a state-condoned, carefully orchestrated pogrom led by the right-wing Hindu nationalism movment, Hindutva. Click for more on the Gujarat massacre and Hindu Nationalism.
I sat at my altar to pray this morning.
I began as always begin, with A-UM
and it flashed on my retina, bleeding – OM
gashed into the forehead
of a dead Gujurati Muslim – OM
slashed into the pregnant belly
of a Muslim woman – OM!
Scorched into the wet white bones
of children torched on bonfires – OM!!Sound of creation
seared to evil, hum of the universe
twisted to genocide
and my tongue choked in my throat
and my throat refused to chant
Au – Au -So I tried to sing
because Ali Akbar Khan has said
music transcends all barriers; I sangShiva Shiva mahadeva, namah sivaya sadasiva
and the marching began.
Legions of men, in kakhi shorts
saffron headbands, march – march – march -
ing, howling vengeance; cylinders
of gas passed hand to hand to
gutted door of pillaged Muslim building to
SSSSSS – to lighted match to – POWWWAnd in the clouds of smoke
affluent families drove up
in Mitsubishi Lancers
to soak their arms in the torrents
of looting, cellphones spat out
names locations properties,
bloody tickmarks tramped
down spreadsheets, trishuls gleamed
three hideous prongs into the night
Fundamentalism
Fascism
GenocideTrishuls impaled babies, ripped
fetuses from wombs, tore apart
vaginas. I saw the demonic graffiti:
Andar ka baat hai
Police hamara saat hai
I heard screaming
just like the Bollywood movies
bachau bachau
and if this were a Bollywood movie
Sharukh Khan would swoop down
in a helicopter, tanks and elephants
would storm the bloodcrazed mobs
heroes would arrive.But the heroes
have turned off their cellphones,
barricaded their homes, the heroes
are on extended tours outside Gujurat
have given orders
No protection to be offered
the heroes
have renounced the godsToday I dismantled my gods.
I am no longer Hindu
until the word means dharma
not terror, no longer
will I make deevas
to light the rapes of my sisters
no longer pray in temples
built from coffers of fascists
or seek peace in ashrams
locked to terrified victims.
I will worship at no altar
where slaughter feeds the puja
I will claim no murti
hoisted over murder.Today I dismantled my gods
because they told me to. They said
Go! Meet us
in every human face,
walk our living essence
against mass hysteria: Kali, maha-Kali
who slices the heads off demons
of hatred and ignorance;
Lakshmi, Maha-lakshmi
who pours lotus-compassion
from every orifice
Saraswati who shreds
veils of delusion, dissolves
the choking saffron fog
of politicians’ lies.The gods are calling us
to shatter their images and
BE them – in the streets
the schools and senates; BE them,
love and justice, truth and courage, on platforms
and airwaves, in boardrooms
and parliaments!They are calling us
to touch them
in every human heart
that repudiates violence,
cherishes Life
andall her children,
calling us
to bow to the word
that resounds in us all, the wind
that sings in us allNamo brahmane namaste vaayu
twameva pratyaksham brahmaasi
twameva pratyaksham brahma vadishyamiI have taken down my altar
I am in the streets
chanting down that monstrous trinity
Fundamentalism
Fascism
Genocideuntil this air is sacred again with our tears.
And I shall worship justice
I shall worship truthritam vadishyami
satyam vadishyamiI have put away my gods
until I can face them
without shame
for all our blindness, for the horror
beyond naming wrought
in their names, until I can say
to their eyes:I defended you
in every living form
I welcomed you
in all that breathes and weeps
I gave my life
to makeyoulove and justice, truth and courage
make you
manifest.
Om shanti shanti shanti.
Copyright Shailja Patel 2002. All Rights Reserved.
Navaratri has been a potent and transforming festival for me as far back as I can remember. It’s a time when I reconnect with my own Goddess-hood, and celebrate all the manifestations of the Goddess in my life.The poem below, Ode To Durga, from my collection “Dreaming In Gujurati”, celebrates the Goddess in her form as “Great Mother of the universe, whose limits are not reachable, present in all beings.”
More than ever, all of us on the planet need to reconnect to the Sacred Feminine. To move in the world with the radiant consciousness born of that connection; as a collective, unstoppable momentum for reparation, restoration, justice, and equality. Whenever I doubt my own abilities or capacities, I turn to all the amazing women I know – writers, thinkers,
warriors, leaders, builders, activists, healers, dancers, teachers, dreamers, changemakers – and I draw on their potency and courage to recharge my own.Please feel free to forward this to those in your life who do the same for you. May we all continue to walk in this fragile, luminous, wounded world, honouring it as the Body of the Goddess.
In celebration, and community,
ShailjaInvocation To Durga
I.
Jaya jagadambe Ma Durga
Jaya jagadambe Ma Durga
I’m glad I can worship with all my senses,
with petals and flame, bells and incense smoke,
succulent offerings of halwa and khir,
glad this ritual rides a spectrum,
austere silence to ecstatic noise.I’m glad I can touch my gods
with intimate reverent fingers,
tangible forms to absorb my fears,
demons, longings,
to draw from me
what’s brave and joyous,
in showers of rice and water,
libations of milk and ghee.I’m glad I have the beauty
of stone and wood and brass
crafted to delight
my human hands and eyes,
unleash a thousand years
of stories in my head,
infuse me with the breath
of sacrament.II.
Durgayai durga-parayai
sarayai sarva karinyaiGoddess present in all beings
who sang me into the light of dawn,
you who are a million faces,
which one shall I be today?You whisper in my ear like a lover:
Do the thing you dread the most.
I say: I’m scared.
You say: I know.
I say: This hurts!
You say: So what?
Would you rather stay asleep?
I say: What if…
You say: Jump.Yaa devi sarve bhuteshu
Trsna rupena samstitha
Namastasye namastasye
Namastasye namo namahGoddess present in all beings
in the form of desire,
you whisper in my ear like a lover:
Seek the words of creation.Name the first hunger:
That of the belly and mouth.Name the second hunger:
That of the heart for a home.Name the third hunger:
That of the hands to shape what they touch,
that of the fingers to imprint the world.Name the final, deepest hunger:
That of the self we dare not name
to be without limitation -
inhabit all that moves and speaks,
runs and flies and breathes,
leaf and stone, sky and bone,
fruition, destruction -
a greed no smaller
than infinity.O Ma Durga O Ma Durga
O Ma Durga O Ma Durga
Jaya jagadambe Ma Durga
Jaya jagadambe Ma DurgaDurga flaming on your tiger,
Goddess present in all beings,
truth from illusion,
asato ma sat gamaya
light from darkness,
tamaso ma jyotir gamaya
ride triumphant through our monsters,
enter us as if we burned.Copyright Shailja Patel, 2002. All Rights Reserved
What a cri de coeur – and how well I understand your feelings and thinking. I applaud your desire to cleanse and purify Hinduism of genocide, fascism, fundamentalism – I think all religions have members who do this –
Jai bhagwan,
Debbie M. in California
Thank you, Debbie! This essay-in-poetry prompted some strong critiques from some colleagues in India, who believe that inequality, in the form of the caste system, and misogyny, are the fundamental bases of Hinduism, and therefore that “progressive Hinduism” is an oxymoron.
Their arguments are convincing. But as an artist, and a feminist, I’m interested in how we re-imagine even oppressive ideologies – in all cultures and traditions. How we draw on the beauty of language, image, myth, to subvert the hierarchies that gave rise to them, unpick them to re-weave transgressive visions for our liberation.
Cakes for the Queen of Heaven is grossly inaccurate. The story of Abraham and Isaac is meant to convey the message that human sacrifice is forbidden. The religions thereabouts (including the goddess religions) favored human sacrifice, and this was in opposition to them.
Because human sacrifice was not uncommon in that part of the world at that time, the Abraham & Isaac story said that such sacrifice is wrong. However, the Bible contains the views of different and conflcting authors. Later, Jephtha sacrificed his daughter to Yahweh to thank him for his military victory, reluctantly, but still he did it.
I’m making my comment here because I don’t have the author’s e-mail address. If you can forward it to her, that would be appreciated.
Thank you very much Shailja for a most insightful, bold and moving essay-in-poetry. We need to multiply such creations and not be fazed by the assurances that many well-meaning secular left and progressive people offer for any project that calls itself progressive Hinduism (I wonder if they would extend the same assurances to those Muslims who work tirelessly as progressive Muslims fighting the Taliban, or those Christians and Jews who do the same from within their religious / spiritual spaces).
While I am all-too-aware of the very deep-seated problems with this entity (is it even one entity?) called Hinduism, it seems presumptuous to guarantee the impossibility of building something good out of something as diverse, many times inchoate, definitely ambiguous and at times delightfully surprising as Hinduism. For instance, the Gay and Lesbian Vaishnava Association (GALVA) and the many writings of feminists such as Ruth Vanita have definitely shown us that androgyny and homoerotic ideas and practices of gender and sexuality have not only been part of Hinduism (not simply some marginalized element of it), but have also been narrated in potentially liberatory ways. None of this is to say that ancient India or Hinduism as some monolithic discourse was anywhere close to being liberating. Yet, this is precisely some of the things that could be used to reclaim and recraft a renewed Hinduism that could be termed as progressive. Not a salvaging of a past that never was. But a shaping of the present for a better future. I applaud you and would like to help build a network with like minded people. Do get in touch!
Peace
Murli
Hello Shailja, Murli and others,
I linked in to this from the radicaldesis listserv. Thank you for sharing your thoughts on reclaiming Hindu traditions from fundamentalist forces. Finding liberatory stories that were gender-and-sexuality-bending within the big umbrella of hindu traditions was really powerful for me, especially as an adolescent girl some time back. For a while, I had rejected all of my connections to Hindu-ism around the time of the Gujarat massacres that you write of, and struggled with what felt like complaisance and complicity on the part of my Tamil Brahmin family – with castism, classism, anti-muslim sentiment, etc. Learning stories of people who had struggled against fundamentalisms within the religion became a powerful way for me to re-engage with my family, to broaden my understanding of spirituality/religion in general, and also especially to connect with similarly radical truth-telling traditions in many other faiths. In the process, I discovered more subtle and interesting stories within the dance traditions I perform in (bharata natyam and odissi) and learned of people within my family who have faced similar internal/external tensions. It’s always important to be re-learning, rewriting, and retelling histories, so thanks for keeping that torch alive – not so much for the sake of some ill-defined idea of religion, but even simply as a reminder that the human experience is much richer and more complex than some would have us believe.
Peace,
Pavithra
Shailja has been having difficulty posting to this site, so I’m positng for her:
Murli and Pavithra, I really appreciate the nuanced and multi-textured perspectives.
As an artist, I’m also interested in how we re-imagine even oppressive ideologies – in all cultures and traditions. How do we draw on the beauty of language, image, myth, to subvert the hierarchies that gave rise to them, unpick them to re-weave transgressive visions for our liberation?
It strikes me that it would be more accurate to speak of “Hinduisms” – a spectrum of historical, religious and cultural narratives, all constantly evolving – as opposed to the singular “Hinduism” which perpetuates the fiction of a single, monolithic, fixed discourse. Asserting multiplicity, and fluidity, are to me, the vital work of “queering and radicalizing Hinduism”.
I also see a strong analogy between being Hindu and being Jewish in this moment in history. To walk away from the painful truths by “dis-identifying” would, for me, be a cop-out. We have to own our privilege, and the power that comes with it. To speak from that privilege to the desperate needs of our time.
In community, joy and struggle,
Shailja
http://www.shailja.com