The many symbols of religion and resistance
When the hijab controversy broke a few weeks ago and spread with speed to different bends and corners of the country, it suddenly made us aware of something that we often overlook—that we are surrounded by symbols of all kinds. It is not just religious symbols, but a plethora of linguistic, class, caste, cultural, civic, cinematic and literary symbols that confront us at every step. They negotiate and ritualise life for us. This should make us wonder if society is about constantly producing symbols and their signification.
There is a ‘Dictionary of Symbols’ that British psychologist Tom Chetwynd brought out in the early 1980s. Chetwynd in his entry on ‘religious symbolism’ says that “differences in religion arise from differences in symbolism”. The differences we saw in the hijab controversy were also differences caused by symbols and amplified by colours—black and saffron. Although hijabs worn by young Muslim women were multi-coloured, black was the colour that came to symbolise them because it was seen as an extension of their other garment—the burqa. It became a convenient visual idea for the media and public. Interestingly, as the controversy grew, the colours of the garments became colours of resistance.
Resistances always seek powerful symbols. For instance, during the freedom movement, the ‘Gandhi cap’ became a symbol of non-violent resistance. It came to signify swadeshi ideas. The khadi cloth that it was made of too became a powerful symbol of a protest culture in a colonial setting. The charka, which made the yarn and sat on the Congress flag, itself emerged as a great symbol of resistance. The cap, the khadi and the charka were all interlinked to an economy of self-reliance.
At several points, the British government tried to ban the ‘Gandhi cap’ but the more they tried to do it, the more it became an accepted uniform of a Congress worker. Gandhi was a master of inventing nationalist symbols. Of course, the anti-corruption movement around 2011 appropriated the Gandhi cap just like the Modi establishment later appropriated the ‘Nehru jacket’ with minor design changes and flashy colours. For a new generation, which had little memory of the ‘Nehru jacket’, almost overnight it became the ‘Modi jacket’. We often say that Modi’s BJP appropriated great icons of the freedom movement and isolated Jawaharlal Nehru. But the truth is they appropriated Nehru too in a small measure via the jacket. The ‘Nehru jacket’ had taken the fancy of the nationalist elite during pre-Independence struggles, and of the liberal elite in post-Independent India, but for the millennials it became the ‘Modi jacket’.
In the current setting, the hijab and the saffron shawl, which to begin with were benign religious symbols, became instruments of protest. Their meanings and signification altered. The hijab, which until then mutedly symbolised Muslim patriarchy and conservatism, ironically, became a symbol of resistance that wove multiple threads of freedom. In solidarity, many non-Muslim women covered their heads with hijab, photographed themselves and posted it on social media. Similarly, a piece of saffron garment of the priestly class among Hindus has for decades now been turned into a symbol of majoritarian assertion.
Even as we debate inter-faith religious symbols and how they come face to face in a charged political milieu, it would be interesting to step back from these binaries to realise that even within Hindus, there are symbols that confront each other. For instance, the variety of Vaishnavite ‘namam’ that people wear on their foreheads to denote their respective sects has often clashed with the holy ash of the Shaivites that is simply smeared on the forehead. Hindutva ideology of course tries to ignore these diverse symbols that are deeply contested for centuries. It presents a unified picture of a political Hindu and struggles to manufacture for the ballot box a homogeneity that does not really exist.
Inter-faith and intra-faith differences get much attention but there is such diversity that intra-sect differences have seen a clash of symbols too in recent times. In fact, the difference of symbols that denote the multiple philosophical heritages within sects are far keenly contested.
When Prime Minister Modi recently visited Hyderabad to inaugurate the 216-feet statue of 11th century Vaishnavite saint, Ramanujacharya, Modi’s flowing silk outfit drew a lot of attention, but none asked if he was wearing a Thengalai namam or Vadagalai namam on the occasion. Because this has been a serious source of dispute between the two eponymous Vaishnavite sects. From television images it appeared he was sporting a Thengalai namam, that has a Y-shaped feel with a red line in the middle.
The dispute between these two forehead appellations among Vaishnavite followers has a history of nearly 250 years. In 1978, the Chief Justice of the Madras High Court, P S Kailasam, deliberated the case that had been fought in the lower courts since 1965 and earlier too in British India. Outlining the ritualistic divergences between the two sects, Justice Kailasam had said, “It has given rise to the most bitter, unreasonable and vicious fight between the two groups for nearly 200 years.”
The case before Madras High Court was to decide if the new temple elephant of the Sri Devaraja Swami Temple in Kanchipuram had to sport the Thengalai namam, which was the age-old custom, or wear the Vadagalai namam because the deceased temple elephant had sported it. The dead elephant had done so in temple service because its donor, the Maharaja of Travancore, had put a condition that it should sport only the U-shaped namam with a yellow line in the middle. Even after the lower court had restored the Thengalai namam, the other sect had tried to sabotage the effort and attracted the court’s contempt: “In the narration of the history of the litigation subsequent A.S. No. 13 of 1854, we have seen that the Vadagalai sect was most reluctant to accept the decision of the courts,” the judgment records.
Finally, the judgment concluded that it was not the whole Vadagalai sect that was causing the problem, but a small influential minority (in the case of the hijab and the saffron shawl too, could it be a small influential minority in each of the faiths provoking an altercation?). Even as late as June 2015, it was reported that a senior priest in the Tirupati Tirumala temple was suspended because he put the Thengalai namam instead of the Vadagalai one on the deity.
Sugata Srinivasaraju
Senior journalist and author
(sugata@sugataraju.in)