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Onam - celebration of human longing for utopia


Kerala has been celebrating Onam for years and years as a festival of equality, prosperity, and utopian dreams.  The legend is that the reign of Maveli (Maha Bali) was a utopia.  People were honest.  They respected one another.  Everyone was happy.  Life had a heavenly dignity.  The heavens were unhappy, however.  Gods conspired to put an end to the earthly utopia.  Vamana, an avatar of God Vishnu, encountered Maveli and sent him down to the netherworld (Patala) deceitfully. 

Maveli
Happy Onam to you 
The right wing Hindu organisation, RSS, has come out in defence of the gods.  Onam was originally a celebration of the birthday of Vamana and had nothing to do with Maveli, argues K Unnikrishnan Namboothiri in his article published in the Onam special edition of Kesari, the RSS mouthpiece in Malayalam.  

Namboothiri wants to exculpate the gods from their deceitfulness and other venality.  The Maveli legend “is an attempt by some vested interests to distort the mythical stories and paint in poor light the characters of Hindu Puranas," he writes, adding that such attempts to destroy Hinduism should be checked.

How much of the Puranas will be rewritten in order to exculpate the gods?  There is a plethora of seduction, incest, conjugal infidelity, deception and much else in the most sacred Vedas.  The Puranas have a lot of stories depicting sexual perversions.  The Shiva Purana, for instance, speaks of Brahma as a cheat and a sex maniac.  It contains a lewd story about Shiva and Parvati. 

The gods molested the wives of the sages and even the wives of their own heavenly colleagues. 

There is a lot more such entertainment in the ancient scriptures.  How much of that will be rewritten by Namboothiri and his organisation?  It is better to leave the scriptures to those who are interested in them.  Most people are not interested in them.  People want their gods and rituals.  And some celebrations like Onam.

Onam is an innocuous festival that celebrates the human longing for a utopia.  Why to meddle with that simple dream and its legends?  We can never achieve that utopia.  But we can celebrate the longing for it.  We can remind ourselves of the possibility of such a utopia.  We can rekindle in ourselves some ideals presented by the legend of Maveli.  That’s the purpose of Onam.  Why not let Kerala celebrate it without bringing in unsavoury religious revanchism?

Namboothiri and his organisation are doing a great disservice to the people of Kerala by raking up such controversies which have ulterior motives.  As many commentators in Kerala have already pointed out, the controversy is trying to usurp the festival of Onam which is accepted by the people of Kerala as a secular festival and convert it into a Hindu festival. 

There is already much communal polarisation taking place in the state though not very overtly.  It is a dangerous trend.  Namboothiri and his organisation are trying to fish in those troubled waters.  It will do no one any good in the end.

Let Maveli return from Patala to visit his people this Onam too.  Let Onam remain a secular festival expressing human longings for a better world.  If possible, let us strive to make our world a better place.  At least, let us not bring more toxin into it with the kind of articles that the RSS magazine carried this time.



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  1. Pranju chakrapaniSeptember 12, 2016 at 11:27 AM

    I have never visited your place but have met one fellow who claims that the place, with the highest literacy rate, is the most secular state. The onus lies on the educated ones to not become victims of polarisation.

    The real reason behind the festival was not known to me. An edifying post.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalSeptember 12, 2016 at 12:07 PM

      Kerala has a significant population of Muslims and Christians. People have lived in relative peace until the communal dragon started stirring recently. Pathetic. Why should people insist on destroying good relationships in the name of gods?

      Delete
  2. sunaina sharmaSeptember 12, 2016 at 6:06 PM

    Meddlesome gods and their agents on earth!

    ReplyDelete
  3. rifle range boySeptember 12, 2016 at 7:20 PM

    He says she says... The loudest always has the last say!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalSeptember 14, 2016 at 1:24 PM

      Amit Shah also joined the rabble rousers but was shooed away by Malayalis.

      Delete
  4. UnknownSeptember 13, 2016 at 2:02 PM

    Very well written!

    ReplyDelete
  5. जितेन्द्र माथुरSeptember 14, 2016 at 9:43 AM

    Hearty Onam wishes Sir. Let's discard everything which is disgusting, perversive and heinous and let's everything which is noble, pious and heart-warming.

    Jitendra Mathur

    ReplyDelete
  6. sheilaSeptember 14, 2016 at 9:53 AM

    I have visited Kerala twice and there is something that attracts me there so I'm planning my next trip there soon.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Rajeev MoothedathSeptember 15, 2016 at 4:17 PM

    Couldn't agree with you more!

    ReplyDelete
  8. EJSeptember 22, 2016 at 2:29 PM

    Divide and Rule...It works everywhere...Onam is just another excuse for that. Why would they bring up the Vamana Jayanthi when we are not clearly interested?

    ReplyDelete

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