Why JNU’s Mahishasura Story Is An Intellectual Travesty And Not Alternative Reading

During the Durga Puja in 2013, some pamphlets and posters appeared at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) campus. One of them read as below:

The Neocon Heartbeat of the Indian Left

The above passage was penned by Prem Kumar Mani, a party hopping politician, who is currently with Lalu Prasad Yadav’s RJD (he was with JDU before) though he started his political career with the Communist Party.[2] He had also dabbled in ‘progressive literature’ with establishment blessings. The passage was originally written for a caste magazine ‘Yadav Shakthi’.

It was translated and published in 2012 by an anti-Hindu propaganda bi-lingual magazine ‘Forward Press’ in November 2011. Following this, a ‘Mahishasur Martyrdom Day’ was organized by ‘All India Backward Students Forum’ (AIBSF) at JNU campus on 17 October in which among the main speakers were Prof. Kancha Ilaiah, a former professor at Osmania University and Prem Kumar Mani.[3]

Prof. Kancha Ilaiah has a gifted mind for churning out crackpot reconstructions on Indian mythology, often portraying it as a collection ‘Aryan’, ‘Brahminical’ conspiracies against the down-trodden. That is understandable given the fact that he is with Dalit Freedom Network (DFI) which is a front of Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) whose honorary president is Jonathan Aitken, a politician charged with ‘perjury and perverting the course of justice’ in 1999, who then served seven months in jail. In jail, Aitken discovered evangelical fundamentalist Christianity as a means of comeback. [4] It is interesting that the anti-Hindu shows staged in ultra-left wing citadels in India have their ultimate string pullers in the Christian Right of the West.

Coming back to the original duplicity of making a martyr out of Mahishasura and peddling a racial interpretation of a Hindu myth as the ‘Shudra’ reading, one finds an immense ignorance of not just Indian history but also a colossal insensitivity to the local traditions that exist throughout India.

Asuras are a Race?

Let us start with some hard facts.

There is a tribal community called Asurs who venerate Mahishasur. Can this be taken as the proof of the speculation that the slaying of Mahishasura was indeed the slaying of aboriginal tribes by invading Aryans?

The answer can be easily gleaned by looking at Ravan, another valiant anti-hero of pan-Indian epic Ramayan. After the advent of colonial narrative, the anti-Brahminical Dravidian movement had been projecting Ravan as the non-Brahminical Dravidian hero who was defeated by cunning Aryan Rama. However traditionally it was Kanyakubja Brahmins, a Brahmin sub-sect in Madhya Pradesh, not non-Brahmins, who have been venerating Ravana as their ancestor. [5]

There are temples for Duryodana, the anti-hero of the other pan-Indian epic Mahabharatha at both Uttarakhand in the north and Kerala in the south. Hence it should not be surprising that in India which has traditionally nurtured diversity and pluralism, every anti-hero in any mythology would also be venerated by some community somewhere in the country. To construe a racial interpretation to the mythology based on the existence of such communities is not just bad academics but also hate mongering.

Harappans Stand Accused?

Further, there is not an iota of evidence that buffalo was not venerated by Vedic civilization. There may be a correlation between the buffalo like head-gear of the Harappan ‘yogi’ seal and the hymns of the Vedas invoking the imagery of buffalo with regard to Vedic divinities. Indologist Stella Kramrisch pointed out in her authoritative work on Siva:

So much for the so-called ‘Aryans’ of the Vedic society detesting the buffalo rearing native Dravidians. But what is even more interesting is that the slaying of Mahishasura myth has its origin in the Harappan civilization itself. Jane McIntosh an archaeologist from Cambridge University specializing in Harappa states:

Soviet scholars, who attempted the deciphering of Harappan seals, also had observed the depiction of an earlier version of the slaying of Mahishasura, not by Durga but by Skanda (as narrated in Mahabharatha):

So, if the worthies at JNU who celebrated the imagined martyrdom of Mahishasura are right, then as a logical extension they should also claim that the architects of Harappan civilization were the original perpetrators of the massacre of native ‘Shudras’.

Ilango Adigal an Aryan Stooge?

Even more damaging to the crackpot conspiracy theorists is the account of tribal worship described by Chilapathikaram – an ancient Tamil epic. Definitely not later than 3rd century CE and authorship attributed to Ilango Adigal, a prince who renounced crown to become a Jain monk, the epic described the Goddess worship ritual of the tribes found deep inside the Tamil landscape. Illango Adigal speaks of the Goddess through the tribal ritual litany, which is worth quoting in a somewhat detailed way:

The demon of two forms with strong formed shoulders

On his head She stands

And all worship Her as

The Immortal the Youthful, the Shining, the Warrior,

She with the trident, She who is dark cued

She the younger sister of Vishnu

…

Warped in elephant skin and with

The skin of tiger adoring the hips

You stand on the

Dark head of the forest buffalo

With celestials venerating You as

The essence of scriptures

With no flickering

You stand as the Flame of Gnosis, Lo!

Sword held in the hands wearing bangles and

Vanquishing the buffalo demon

You stand on the strong horned reindeer

You also are in the hearts of

Hari, Haran and the lotus dweller

The lamp of ever expanding light, Lo!

…

And there

With the garlands of

Golden shower flowers and Ocimum

Adoring your shoulders

You battled for the Celestials

Against the Asuras [9]

If Prof. Kancha Ilaiah and the other assorted crackpot theorists are right, then Ilango Adigal, considered a Jain monk, should be accused of being an Aryan stooge deluding the Tamil Shudras with the worship of an Aryan prostitute who killed the leader of the Shudra-Dravidians.

This a modified version of a piece written by the author in 2013 for Centre Right India

References:

[1] Twish Mukherjee, The ‘Myth’ in Mythology, roundtableindia.co.in published: Published on 11 November 2012: accessed 17-Oct-2013

[2] http://blc.bih.nic.in/Members/PremKumarMani.htm: accessed 17-Oct-2013

[3] JNU group to observe Mahishasur’s ‘martyrdom’, Times of India, Oct-15-2013

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Aitken : accessed 17-Oct-2013

[5] In MP’s Ravan village, the demon king is a revered deity, Hindustan Times, 14-Oct-2013

[6] Stella Kramrisch, The Presence of Siva, Princeton University Press, 1994, p.13

[7] Jane McIntosh, The Ancient Indus Valley: New Perspectives, ABC-CLIO, 2008, p.283

[8] B.Ya.Volcok, Interpretation of the Proto-Indian figures, in The Soviet Decipherment of the Indus Valley Script: Translation and Critique, (Ed. by Arlene R. Zide, Kamil V. Zvelebil), Walter de Gruyter, 1976, pp.115-6

[9] Ilango Adigal, Chilapathikaram: Madurai Canto: Vettuva vari