On the outskirts of Shanti Camp, an unauthorised colony in South Delhi’s Mandi village, many saperas have pitched tents. Here, they have access to snake holes in the forested ridge. However, the year 1991, which ushered in neo-liberal reforms, was also marked by a clampdown on their traditional vocation. Under pressure from wildlife activists, snake-charming was banned on the grounds that saperas defanged and killed snakes, thereby leaving them at the mercy of an inclement fate. They were prohibited from keeping or displaying these reptiles.
If the intent was to uproot them from their heritage, the move seems to have failed. Shanti Camp’s Vijaynath, 30, affirms that snakes remain integral to their identity. But the ban wrongly equates them with poachers, who peddle snake skin, fangs and venom. “We don’t kill snakes or defang them. We worship them as gods,” he says.
He avers that singling them out for punishment while conservationists are permitted to catch snakes and suppliers sell venom, sourced from snake farms, at an astronomical price to the global pharmaceutical industry, is blatant discrimination. “Our tradition forbids us from selling venom,” says Vijaynath, reacting to activists’ proposal that they too become suppliers or join hands with snake farms. Instead, they make their own medicines to treat snake bite, arthritis, dental caries and diminishing eyesight.
The conversion brigade has reached here, with about 25 families having become Christian. A woman proclaims that they will now be redeemed. But since the only snake known to the Judaic-Christian world was the one in the Garden of Eden, their new identity is an anomaly.
Vijaynath’s assertion that their dharma forbids them from injuring serpents or selling venom is echoed by Meena, a young woman at Khetwas village in Haryana’s Jhajjar district. Her husband is a police constable in Gurgaon. There are about 200 families of snake-charmers here.
Banwarinath, in his seventies, and guru to younger saperas, is a skilled healer. He displays a bent branch. “This is naag jeevan booti. We get it from the hills and jungles. Its powder, given with ghee, cures snake bite. Both prayer and medicine are needed to cure snake bite. Surma, made from snake skin, strengthens eyesight. We also make medicine for dental caries.”
After much persuasion, he procures a basket and opens the lid. A rat snake uncoils itself and suddenly leaps into a stack of wood nearby. It is a nerve-wracking moment. They will retrieve it later, he says. “We take care of snakes as we do our children,” says Shanti, his wife.
Another man, who has a small cobra at home, reveals that custom dictates that they release snakes after a few days in captivity, when they are fed rats and the like. He voices the common demand, growing louder, that the government lift the ban. “This is our work,” he says.
The ban flouted the right to ‘practise any profession, or to carry on any occupation, trade or business’, contained in Article 19 (g) of the Constitution under Right to Freedom. Thereafter, they were forced to eke out a living by doing manual labour, selling merchandise door-to-door, and providing music at social events via the naagin been party, cobra band. A group of men play been, toomba and dhol, in accompaniment to male dancers. Their work as healers has helped sustain them to a degree.
As saperas, owing to their age-old association with snakes, revered in Hindu cosmography, and deep knowledge of diverse species and cures for snake bite, they commanded some respect. There is historical precedent for such an unjust law. Along with myriad communities, many nomadic or semi-nomadic, they were first outlawed by the British under the Criminal Tribes Act, 1871. Though this act was repealed in 1952 after India’s Independence, the same bias against people who failed to conform to western norms prevailed. The ban also seemed geared to dent their identity as members of the esoteric Nath sect, claiming descent from Lord Shiv, their first guru or Adinath, down through Matsyendranath, Nepal’s patron saint, followed by Gorakhnath, Chowringhinath, Jalandharnath, Kanipa, Charpati and three others in the line of nine Nath immortals. The suffix ‘Nath’ is added to adherents’ names.
As devotees of Lord Shiv, whose throat is encircled by a cobra, saperas revere snakes that also figure in rites of ancestor worship. Their spiritual legacy, which engendered the tradition of Hath Yoga, is inextricably linked to the doctrine of Kundalini Yoga, widespread in India and Nepal. Briefly, the gradual ascent of the Kundalini Shakti, life force, depicted as a serpent, coiled at the base of the spine, via a complex spiritual regimen to the apex of the cerebrum, leads to liberation once the apex is pierced. It is a legacy that they will never repudiate. Saawan-Bhadon in the Hindu calendar, roughly mid-July to August-mid-September, when monsoon rains are heaviest and serpents proliferate, are marked by huge gatherings at sacred sites. Naths display snakes at the mela at Gugga Medi in Rajasthan, where Guru Gorakhnath and Gugga Veer, the serpent deities, are worshipped. Similar events are held in other parts.
The ban really aims to negate this heritage while allowing commercial farming of snakes.