SRIKAKULAM: Every village has its own gram devata (community deity). So does the sleepy village of Kedaripuram in Palasa mandal, 70 km from the Srikakulam district headquarters. But the peculiarity is that the deity is not mythological, but Mahatma Gandhi. The Father of the Nation is also worshipped as a goddess here.
For decades, the villagers have been organising the Gandhamma festival before the beginning of farm operations every kharif season. The belief system has it that propitiating Gandhi ensures a bumper crop. Elders say their forebears started the ritual after Independence. But the festival has its roots in the era of the Inamdari system. The rulers had gifted 250 acres of land as inam to local landed gentlemen Parasuram Chaudary and Venkata Rama Chaudary, who used to make the farmers work the land and keep the harvest.
“Our elders, inspired by Mahatma Gandhi, then staged a satyagrah and got the land freed. A Gandhi Youth Association and a Gandhi-aided school were built in the villages,” says 65-year-old K Falguna Rao, sarpanch of Kedaripuram. But why Gandhi is a goddess here? “The villagers used to organise a festival before starting cultivation in the inam fields to showcase their unity against the Inamdars.
Villagers in north coastal Andhra usually worship goddesses before beginning farm operations. So we consider Mahatma Gandhi as a goddess who blesses us with bumper yields. Thus we named the festival the Gandhamma Sambaram,” says Falguna Rao. As part of the festival, which is observed on a Thursday two weeks after the Jagannath Rath Yatra, the villagers take out a procession with a plateful of fruits and sweets, and turmeric water on their heads. The procession ends with a puja performed to a photo of Gandhi. Traditional songs and dances are performed. And then the villagers distribute prasadam, marking the end of the festival. “Not only at Kedaripuram, but the nearby villages of Ganguwada and Edurapalli also follow the same rituals,” says P Appala Naidu, a resident of Kedaripuram.