The Spirit of Onam

 

From the last Onam celebration in my school [2019]
Maveli being escorted to the pavilion

Five Onams ago, Amit Shah made a terrible mistake by wishing the people of Kerala on the occasion of Onam referring to the festival as Vamana Jayanti. Vamana Jayanti is the victory of Vamana. The victory of Vamana was the rout of Kerala’s most loved king, Maveli, whom Onam celebrates. Amit Shah’s greeting revealed his ignorance of Kerala’s version of Indian mythology. Otherwise, it revealed the arch politician’s quintessential villainy of surreptitiously trying to erase Kerala’s version which is diametrically opposed to the North Indian one when it comes to the Maveli-Vamana purana.

For the uninitiated, Maveli is the Malayalam version of Bali who was an Asura king, an antigod (or a demon in the older translations). The Rig Veda, the Brahmanas, and the Ramayana all have slightly different versions of the Bali story. In the Rig Veda, Vishnu (whose incarnation is Vamana) takes three steps and thereby creates the earth and everything else. The Brahmanas make it a war between the gods and the antigods which the gods were losing. In the Ramayana, Bali appears as the sole threat to the gods (instead of all the antigods). The Puranas make Vishnu a Brahmin as well as a dwarf.

Whatever the version, the story is ultimately one of the victory of divine deceit over Bali’s simple goodness. It is interesting to note that in the later versions of the story Vamana is portrayed as a Brahmin. Brahmins created all these stories in order to reinforce their dominance over the others. Most religious myths have within them their own power games. Amit Shah’s attempt to metamorphose Onam as Vamana Jayanti is in tune with that same old power game.

Onam is a celebration of equality, not power. It is a celebration of magnanimity, justice, truthfulness. In all the Onam-related legends and poetry of Kerala, you will find these themes [equality, magnanimity, justice and truthfulness] eulogised. Maveli was a personification of these virtues. His surrender to the dwarf Brahmin was an act of self-sacrifice, the ultimate sacrifice that a good being can make.

Onam, for every Malayali, is a longing for the return of that goodness which was sent underground by the deceit of a powerful lobby.

The message of Onam is more relevant today than ever. We live in a world that has been torn apart into fragments by all kinds of power lobbies who use religion for their nefarious activities.

Perhaps it’s high time for these leaders to think of why our ancient writers created such myths as Vamana’s where antigods are better than gods. I don’t think the creators of these myths were vindicating deceitful power-mongering by making our gods deceitful. Perhaps they were trying to teach us to probe deep and see that the gods are not perfect and the antigods are not all wicked. Perhaps they wanted us to understand ourselves and others better so that we could forge a better world together.

Onam is a celebration of a better world that is believed to have existed once upon a time under the leadership of an antigod.

Wish you a Happy and Meaningful Onam.

 

Amit Shah's poster on Onam in 2016

PS. My 2016 post on the same topic: Onam – celebration of human longing for utopia [This remains the most read post of mine on the topic so far.]