Religion and 'Durga Puja' : primordial linkages 

Sekhar Datta

Faith in religion or lack of it has always triggered heated debates with theists , agnostics and atheists slugging it out with the power of the lung or pen. Karl Marx , identified by an opinion poll conducted-of all places-in the USA , as the 'greatest thinker' of the second millennium, had dismissed religion as 'false consciousness'. Marx's most quotable quotes on 

religion figure in his celebrated treatise 'Contributions to the critique of Hegel's philosophy of law'. The materialist par excellence was poignantly dismissive of religion : 'the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world just as it is the spirit of spiritless conditions. Religion is the opium of the people '. Continuing the streak of brilliant generalisations Marx had described the 'struggle' against religion as 'indirectly a fight against the world of which religion is the spiritual aroma'. His Euro-centric socio-political view-Marx had never set foot anywhere beyond the continent of Europe-and close encounters with decadent Christianity of 19th century Europe convinced Marx that religion would cease to exist as an article of faith once socialism triumphed all over the world with rapid advancement in science and technology.The reality has however proved otherwise as Marx could hardly have visualised what the humanity is witness to in the opening years of the third millennium of super-technology-a world scarred by religio-political conflict with the shadow of a ‘clash of civilisation’ growing by the day. This may take nothing away from the validity of the basic Marxian postulates on matters of faith and religion but the debate still rages, even as religion and faith continue to flourish.
This may seem a long-winded oration to many but such ideas occur when one confronts a veritable deluge of faith, piety and devotion coupled with vulgar merry-making on the occasion of a prolonged religious festival. The origin of four-day ‘Durga Puja’ , basically a form of worship of the Mother Goddess, is still shrouded in a veil even though fertility cults and worship of Mother Goddesses may be traced to remote antiquity across the world . The celebrated ‘Devi Sukta’ and ‘Ratri Sukta’ in the 10th mandala of ‘Rig Veda’ eulogise the virtues, power and munificence of ‘Adyashakti’ or the original Mother Goddess with a prayer for protection from people stricken by the depredations of demons and ‘Asuras’. 

Excavations by archaeologists across the vast sites of ‘Saraswati Sindhu’ civilization from present Gujrat and Maharashtra up to Afghanisthan have spawned tell-tale signs of the prevalence of fertility cults and worship of the Mother Goddess along with seals containing images of Lord Siva in his incarnations as ‘Pashupatinath’ and ‘Nataraj’. From Mehrgarh in present Pakistan to Lothal in Gujrat and from Dholavira in Rajasthan to Harappa and Mohenzodaro in Pakistan-excavated sites have produced unimpeachable evidence of fertility cult and female deity worship . 

This was not confined to  Indian sub-continent ; it was a world-wide phenomena . Celebrated Scandinavian scholar on comparative mythology Mr Sten Konow in an article entitled ‘A Europen pararrel to the Durgapuja’ , published in the journal of Asiatic Society in 1925 had clearly shown how people in ancient north Europe and Scandinavian region used to annually worship a Mother Goddess known as Nerthus in Germany and Njord in Sweden . The annual festivals used to be held for long ten days and the form of the deity and mode of worship resembled in many ways ‘Devi Durga’. Confined in a temple at an island Nerthus or Njord would be taken on a chariot across the localities inhabited by her worshippers before being reinstalled in her temple, out of public view. A striking similarity with the immersion ceremony at the end of the four-day 'Durga Puja' ! . There was also a flourishing fertility cult as Nerthus had a consort in her priest while a Scandinavian male God identified as ‘Frey’ had her priestess , resembling Lord Siva and his consort Parvati. The invocations to Indo-European Mother Goddess and Indian ‘Durga’ bear uncanny similarity in content : a common prayer for increase in progeny and prosperity. 

Sten Kownow and his French contemporary Sylvain Levi inferred from their study and research on comparative mythologies that in the pre-Christian world , nature worship and propitiation of Mother Goddess alongside male deities would act as a unifying bond in essence . In a world pulverized by forces of nature, diseases and deaths men resorted to nature-worship for protection and looked up to fertility cults manifested in propitiation of Mother Goddess for increase in progeny as a matter of common consensus based on experience . But in that polytheistic world where death rates often outstripped birth rates , straining a precarious demographic balance, religion and faiths never formed a major basis for conflict . This is attested by the authority of celebrated historian Edward Gibbon . In his magnum opus ‘Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’ Gibbon said “the various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true …….And thus toleration produced not only mutual indulgence , but even religious concord”.

 In another significant observation Gibbon said “ such was the mild spirit of antiquity , that the nations were less attentive to the difference than to the resemblance of their religious worship. The Greek, the Roman and the Barbarian , as they met before their respective altars , easily persuaded themselves that, under various names and with various ceremonies they adored the same deities”. Polytheism taught the ancient men and women to treat all faiths and God-heads as equally venerable and to treat nature as friend and life-sustaining force rather than as  an object of conquest. Benign polytheism of antiquity would provide spiritual nourishment , a cultural life and co-existential harmony with the world of mother nature to its adherents and practitioners. But the shadow of  a collective doom had been growing progressively . 

 The ancient world and its polytheistic faiths had collapsed in Europe in the face of aggressively proselytizing Christianity and in other parts , first by Christianity and then by Islam, because they had never been based on any straitjacketed  philosophy of life, theological principles or scripture . State policy of proselytisation or religious expansion in conquered domains and iconoclastic zeal  had easily  sounded the death-knell of benign polytheism.The old order would have given way to new concepts and ideas by the process of dialectics but without armed intervention propelled by  expansionist ideologies it would have  receded more peacefully into grey areas of history and culture. Despite being polytheistic and marred by degrading depravities in the rites and practices of sects and sub-sects, Vedic Hinduism still survives-though not unscathed-because of its rich philosophical foundations, comprehensive theology and scriptures  and composite material and spiritual view of the world-in short, a complete way of life. Hinduism is also negatively helped by absence of a central church and its own inclusive nature. By contrast Buddhism had to retreat because it had basically been a spiritual brotherhood without a social code of existence.

Things , however, started changing as soon as religion and revelatory faiths, based on individual claims of communion with divinity, had been  metamorphosed into aggressive and expansionist ideologies aiming conquest of the world by whatever means possible . Moses , the Jewish prophet, was the first proponent of militant monotheism as recorded in ‘The Old Testament’ of The Bible . But worse things followed with the passage of time as religion emerged as a vehicle of ideas suited for socio-political and economic conquests of the world. The essential elements in this ideology were and continue to be mindless adherence to fundamental tenets, blind resistance against reform-even if it means reversion to medievalism-narrow exclusivism and divine sanction of violence as a legitimate weapon for growth and increase in number. It took the Roman Catholic Church two thousand years to conclude-in its second world council , held at Vatican between 1963-1965-that the Jewish community of people could not be held collectively responsible for crucifixion of Jesus and that other modes of worship and faith may also contain ‘grains of truth’. In regard to other relevant and related issues the less said the better, except the fact that the past two thousand years of human history have been a long litany of religious conflict, mass murder , mayhem and rapine-all in the name of single indivisible God-head . Marxism had provided an alternative course for socio-economic evolution but it is well known how and why Marxist alternative model suffered setbacks in isolated pockets of influence . But this has also opened the flood-gates afresh and at this stage it is alarming to visualize the consequences of a ‘clash of civilisation’ which seems to hang over humanity like the proverbial sword of damocles.