Soora-Samhara, Ram Leela, And Passion Play

Numerous Hindu festivals incorporate re-enactment rituals as a form of collective celebration. During Dusshera it is Ram Leela where the slaying of Ravana by Shri Ram is re-enacted. Down south at the end of Navratri, the slaying of Mahishasura by the Goddess is enacted.

A week after Deepavali, Thiruchendur a coastal town in southern Tamil Nadu, hosts a grand performance of Soora-Samhara, where Lord Murugan vanquishes three Asuric brothers.

On 7 November , 2024, Hindus in southern India will celebrate Soora Samhara. Soora-Samhara is now celebrated in many Murugan temples of Tamil Nadu.

Of late, there has been an increasing tendency to politicise and historicise these sacred traditions through a racial lens.

Ram Leela thus becomes the re-enactment of Aryan expansion into Dravidian south and celebration of the killing of a Dravidian king.

Some voices, notably from Jawaharlal Nehru University, have misrepresented the slaying of Mahishasura as the cunning assassination of an indigenous king by a cunning female Aryan agent. Thanks to the internet, it is now not uncommon to see an increasingly vocal fringe among Dravidianists and Tamil chauvinists saluting their ‘great forefather’ Narakasura on Deepavali.

These intrusive and often unsubstantiated historicising of Hindu festivals are hailed as 'rereading' of the text and is considered as superior to the traditional Hindu re-enactments.

Similar to Hindu re-enactments, the Western tradition also has a dominant re-enactment ritual – the passion play. This re-enacts the trial of Jesus Christ in Pontius Pilate’s court, followed by Jesus' torturous walk through the streets, stopping at the famous Stations of the Cross, and culminating in his crucifixion. Passion Plays are an important part of Christian collective ritualism.

There are similarities and also a crucial difference between the Hindu re-enactment rituals and that of the Christian re-enactment ritual of Passion Play.

Both are sacred rituals. There are beliefs that the re-enactments bring prosperity to the places where they are held and that they ward off tragedies to the community.

The most famous of the Passion Plays in Christendom is the Oberammergau Passion Play. Tradition has it that in 1633, a bubonic plague ravaged Europe. In the village of Oberammergau in Germany, the death toll was alarmingly rising.

The villagers made a desperate vow to God: If He spared them from the plague, they would perform a Passion Play every ten years in gratitude. According to the local myth, the plague miraculously subsided, and the villagers kept their promise.

The first Oberammergau Passion Play was performed in 1634, and it has been performed almost every decade since, except when extraordinary circumstances like war or pandemic forced the ritual to be cancelled.

Throughout Europe there are famous traditional Passion Plays. With the spread of Christianity to the Americas, Passion also began to be held in United States and Brazil.

In India, almost every village may have similar traditions to hold a collective ritual re-enactment. A significant form of Theru-koothu, or street theater, is the re-enactment of the Puranic tale of Prahlada being protected by Narasimha. In many instances the actors would be those with special obligation made to the Deity for a personal favour.

Another common element is that all these re-enactments celebrate the ultimate triumph of the Divine force within the religion or tradition, set against a dramatic backdrop of confrontation with the non-Divine.

However there is an important, fundamental difference too:

-In the case of Hindu re-enactments, the events happen in the Puranic space and time.

The original Puranic event may or may not have a historical core. But the emphasis for the Hindu is not the historical event but the Puranised event.

A Puranic event happens in the cyclic, rather than the linear time. It does not happen in purely external space but in the liminal space where the external and the internal meet. This is also true for all sacred re-enactments. Hindu Dharma recognises this fact and emphasises it.

Christian re-enactments on the other hand emphasize the event as historical and momentous event in historical time. To Christianity, it is a definitive, authentic re-enactment of an event that has taken place in the physical world. To the Hindu, it is an event that happens always. It repeats always. It happens within.

The Asura, so alluringly formidable in the Hindu Puranas, embodies not a race, nor symbolises pure evil, but the potential for downfall even in the mightiest.

Asuras, blessed with divine boons of invincibility, power, and prosperity through intense tapas– desires we all harbour – illustrate the inherent danger of material pursuits without spiritual grounding. Hindu Dharma reminds us that such boons, devoid of Divine grace, can lead to an Asuric transformation, where ego-driven ambition consumes, exploits, and ultimately brings misery and downfall.

The re-enactment thus is a collective resolve for an ultra-individualistic inner sadhana as well.

Each ritual re-enactment, while invoking material prosperity for the community, also implores spiritual well-being for all, ensuring the individual's quest for truth remains paramount.

Whether it's Durga vanquishing Mahishasura, Earth herself as Satyabhama slaying Narakasura, or Skanda-Muruga's spear of Gnosis piercing Surapadman, these battles symbolise the triumph over the monstrous ego, ultimately integrating these forces back into the sacred journey to abide in the Self.

Conversely, when history takes centre stage, narratives become exclusionary, breeding grounds for hatred. Consider the Passion Plays of Christendom. Originating from the Gospels, they were layered with questionable historical additions by the institutional Church.

One priest, Christiaan van Adrichom, even mapped Jerusalem's "Via Dolorosa", ‘the path of sadness’ that Jesus supposedly walked from the court to crucifixion. This Adrichom did without ever setting foot in the city!

This drive for historical accuracy fuelled anti-semitic elements, caricaturing Jews and fostering prejudice. The notorious 1349 Brussels massacre of Jews followed the Passion Play.

In 1934, Hitler attended the Oberammergau Passion Play and endorsed it as a 'convincing portrayal of the menace of Jewry.' Many members of Oberammergau Passion Play were Nazi party members.

After World War II, the West is shifting away from this history-centric approach, emphasising the spiritual essence of Passion Plays. Yet, this lens of history-centrism, a relic of colonial past, seems to have infected the social perspectives of India's English-educated.

History-centric deconstruction of Hindu rituals becomes an indulgence for mediocre minds. Armed with divisive binaries – Aryan-Dravidian, tribal-non-tribal, Brahmin-non-Brahmin – any festival can be twisted into a conflict-ridden narrative, as shallow as an algorithmic bot's chatter.

In doing so, we lose the civilisational richness, the harmonious balance between collective well-being and individual liberation, succumbing to the same conflict-oriented model that has plagued the West.

So, when Skanda-Muruga hurls His spear of Gnosis for Soora Samharam on 7 November, 2024, may that vel pierce not only the Asura of egoistic illusions, but also the delusion of history-centric misinterpretations of Hindu festivals.

Let us reclaim the profound spiritual depth of these traditions, celebrating the eternal dance between the Divine and the Asuric within each of us.