Chhath Puja: What is it, what makes it the most important festival of Bihar

 On November 7 this year falls the third day of the Chhath festival, the sanjhka arag, or the day of the evening offering. While Chhath has been celebrated in Bihar, eastern Uttar Pradesh and Nepal for centuries, over the past decade or so, it has become a lot more visible. Every year, TV channels flash visuals of Chhath being celebrated as far as the banks of the Thames or the shores of the Pacific Ocean.

What is Chhath puja and why is it celebrated? Which deity is Chhathi maiya? What is it about Chhath that makes it so close to the Bihari heart?

Beliefs behind why Chhath is celebrated

Chhath Puja is a four-day elaborate celebration in honour of the Sun. It involves a long fast without water, and making offerings to Usha and Pratyusha — the light of the rising and the setting Sun respectively — while standing in a water body. The prominent rituals begin from the sixth day (shashthi) of the Kartik shukla paksha, which means the waxing-moon fortnight of the month of Kartik.

Several beliefs are prevalent about why Chhath is observed. Some believe that it is a carryover from the time that man worshipped nature. Others trace its origins in the great epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.

The Rig Veda mentions elaborate rituals to worship the sun. After Lord Ram and Goddess Sita returned victorious to Ayodhya from Lanka, they are said to have observed a fast and conducted a yagna for the Sun god.

In the Mahabharata, when the Pandavas were in exile, some sages visited them. Draupadi, realising she had nothing to offer them, went to sage Dhaumya for help. He advised her to observe a fast and pray to the Sun, and eventually, all her prayers were answered. In the same epic, Karna also organised an elaborate ceremony in honour of Surya (the Sun), his father, “Both Sita and Draupadi conducted their Sun worship on the Kartik shukla paksha shashthi. Worshipping the Sun on shashthi is considered specially auspicious,” said Dr Ramesh Kumar Upadhyay, president of the Bhartiya Jyotish Aadhyatm parishad in Jamshedpur.

Today, Chhath is a festival that epitomises religiosity in Bihar, and countless devotees, who join their hands as the Sun’s rays spread over them, feel the touch of divinity and devotion in a measure little else brings to them.

While only some people observe the fast, the entire community gets involved in making the festival a success — cleaning river banks and the roads leading up to those banks, gathering all the little things needed for the rituals, and preparing thekuas, the festival prasad which is now synonymous with Bihari cuisine.

How Chhath is celebrated

Chhath Puja is held six days after Diwali (which is on amavasya, or new moon day), in October-November. Some people celebrate it in the month of Chaitra also (in April), which is called the Chaiti Chhath. Chhathi maiya or Mother Chhathi, Sun’s sister, is considered an exacting but generous deity. While the rules governing the four-day festival are exceedingly strict, immense spiritual gains are said to accrue to whoever observes them all successfully.

“Apart from being Sun’s sister, Chhathi maiya is also the daughter of Rishi Kashyap and Aditi. She is the wife of Kartikeya, Lord Shiva’s son,” said Dr Upadhyay, who has a Phd from Kameshwar Singh Darbhanga Sanskrit University.

The first day of the festival is called naha kha, where those observing it take a meal (khana) only after a ceremonial bath in a river or a pond (nahana). Water brought back from the waterbody is used to make a chulha or stove, and meals for those observing the fast are prepared on this for the rest of the festival. The meal partaken after the bath consists of a bottle gourd sabzi. Over the years, those who can’t go to a waterbody have started observing all the rituals at home.

The second day is called kharna, on which the one observing the fast takes only one meal in the evening, of roti and kheer (rice pudding). This is also the day friends and family gather to prepare thekuas, which are essentially flour cakes with sugar or jaggery fried in ghee. The thekuas, also called khajoor, are prepared taking great precautions to make sure they are perfect for the deity. People can have them only after they have been offered to God. After the roti-kheer meal begins a 36-hour fast, during which devotees don’t even drink water.

On the third day, devotees go to the banks of a water body. Those who can’t, build a temporary pool in their homes. The banks are decorated with diyas, rangoli, and sugarcane stalks. All the offerings to the gods — seasonal fruits like sweet potato, water chestnuts, pomelo, banana — are placed in soops (cane baskets) along with diyas. As the Sun sets, the person fasting raises the soop to it as an offering (arghya). Friends and family members of the one fasting pour milk or water on the soop. This is called the Sanjh ka Arghya, or the evening offering. The next day, the same ritual is conducted at dawn, for the rising Sun, called the Bhor ka Arghya, and the community returns home from the riverbanks, grateful for the successful conclusion of a difficult festival and for having taken part in it.

In South India too, specially in Tamil Nadu, Skanda Shasthi is observed around this period, where Lord Kartikeya and his wives are worshipped. 

What makes Chhath unique

There are many reasons that Chhath has such a special place in Purvanchalis’ heart. This festival means the coming together of the community, the legendary Bihari migrants returning home to soak themselves in their culture and homeland once more.

People from any caste can observe the festival. There are no priests involved, it is the devotee directly fasting for and praying to a visible, apparent God, who shines on everyone equally. The offerings made to the deity are of seasonal, locally produced and thus easily accessible fruit. No matter how rich or poor you are, the rules are the same for everyone, and the success of the festival lies in how faithfully you observe the rules, not on what scale you observe them at. Last, and most important, is the message behind the festival — that everyone is equal in the eyes of God, that nature sustains us and is worth honouring, and that dusk is as important as dawn, because life is cyclical and what sets can, and will, rise again.

Written by Yashee

Source: Indian Express, 8/11/24

Feudal heart

 

Another layer of feudal hierarchy — and excess — may have been inaugurated in the state — politically more empowered and economically prosperous Dalits oppressing ‘lesser’ Dalits.

One of the better ways of responding to ill-behaved adversaries is to refuse to be like them, firmly and obdurately, and if possible in undemonstrative fashion.

Bihar insists on furnishing illustration of the opposite; Biharis are, given the chance, intent on mimicking their adversaries, they would sooner become exactly like the ones who have given them cause for grief and grievance.

Last fortnight, armed gangsters looted and torched to cinders an entire settlement of Dalits near Nawada in central Bihar; nobody was killed, fortuitously, but the assailants would probably not have hesitated to take lives. They came armed, they fired several rounds in the air as they arrived. The victims, as often in Bihar, were Dalits, from the Musahar and Ravidas communities. Their tormentors, as rarely in Bihar, were also Dalits, from the Paswan community. Another layer of feudal hierarchy — and excess — may have been inaugurated in the state — politically more empowered and economically prosperous Dalits oppressing ‘lesser’ Dalits. To begin with, there were the unreserved caste categories — the so-called ‘upper castes’ — lording over the rest. Then you had the socially and politically influential Yadavs putting their heel to other backward caste groups. Now, there are seemingly empowered Dalits rampaging over the weaker among their own. The chronic victims of feudalism have turned feudal themselves, or aspire to feudal ways. Instead of eschewing feudal manners, they embrace them.

This is irony wrapped in irony wrapped in irony. That last of those ironies is that Biharis, having suffered unrelenting feudal and hierarchical excess and gone purple and puce in the face complaining about it, refuse to see it. The middle irony is that Bihar has come to consider itself a laboratory of social change. The first, and probably most insistent, irony is that for close to three and a half decades, Bihar has been ruled by leaders whose signature politics is the overthrow of the politics of pyramidal caste hierarchies. Lalu Prasad and Nitish Kumar are both, on paper and by avowal, Mandalites of the Ram Manohar Lohia brand of socialism. Their extended and unbroken run in power — as foes, and often as friends — should have achieved demonstrable movement in the direction of dismantling feudal and caste hierarchies in society. What we have instead is the fitful and famously fickle Nitish Kumar back sharing power with the sanghi orthodoxy and Lalu and Jitan Ram Manjhi (handpicked by Nitish to warm the chief minister’s seat temporarily after being drubbed in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls) tossing casteist invective at each other; Manjhi has called Lalu a gareri (shepherd) pretending to be a Yadav; Lalu has shot back calling Manjhi a rat-eater.

One of the better ways of responding to ill-behaved adversaries is to refuse to be like them, firmly and obdurately, and if possible in undemonstrative fashion.

Bihar insists on furnishing illustration of the opposite; Biharis are, given the chance, intent on mimicking their adversaries, they would sooner become exactly like the ones who have given them cause for grief and grievance.

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Last fortnight, armed gangsters looted and torched to cinders an entire settlement of Dalits near Nawada in central Bihar; nobody was killed, fortuitously, but the assailants would probably not have hesitated to take lives. They came armed, they fired several rounds in the air as they arrived. The victims, as often in Bihar, were Dalits, from the Musahar and Ravidas communities. Their tormentors, as rarely in Bihar, were also Dalits, from the Paswan community. Another layer of feudal hierarchy — and excess — may have been inaugurated in the state — politically more empowered and economically prosperous Dalits oppressing ‘lesser’ Dalits. To begin with, there were the unreserved caste categories — the so-called ‘upper castes’ — lording over the rest. Then you had the socially and politically influential Yadavs putting their heel to other backward caste groups. Now, there are seemingly empowered Dalits rampaging over the weaker among their own. The chronic victims of feudalism have turned feudal themselves, or aspire to feudal ways. Instead of eschewing feudal manners, they embrace them.

This is irony wrapped in irony wrapped in irony. That last of those ironies is that Biharis, having suffered unrelenting feudal and hierarchical excess and gone purple and puce in the face complaining about it, refuse to see it. The middle irony is that Bihar has come to consider itself a laboratory of social change. The first, and probably most insistent, irony is that for close to three and a half decades, Bihar has been ruled by leaders whose signature politics is the overthrow of the politics of pyramidal caste hierarchies. Lalu Prasad and Nitish Kumar are both, on paper and by avowal, Mandalites of the Ram Manohar Lohia brand of socialism. Their extended and unbroken run in power — as foes, and often as friends — should have achieved demonstrable movement in the direction of dismantling feudal and caste hierarchies in society. What we have instead is the fitful and famously fickle Nitish Kumar back sharing power with the sanghi orthodoxy and Lalu and Jitan Ram Manjhi (handpicked by Nitish to warm the chief minister’s seat temporarily after being drubbed in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls) tossing casteist invective at each other; Manjhi has called Lalu a gareri (shepherd) pretending to be a Yadav; Lalu has shot back calling Manjhi a rat-eater.

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I have often found myself collared for being harsh on Bihar and its people, for using the advantage of exile to probe and expose warts I was privileged enough to leave behind. But it was also a wrench, as all departure from home is. There may well be merit to some of the carping that has come my way. But there is no merit, in my book, to romancing misdemeanour. I have often been tempted to quote to my critics passages from a speech the Nigerian Nobel laureate, Chinua Achebe, made to a Western audience in Paris. It was a discourse titled “Africa is People” and it should rank as compulsory reading for anyone trying to understand the complexities of our world. I merely quote this: “I am not an apologist for Africa’s many failings. And I am hard-headed enough to realize that we must not be soft on them, must never go out to justify them. But I am also rational enough to realize that we should strive to understand our failings objectively and not simply swallow the mystifications and mythologies cooked up by those whose goodwill we have every reason to suspect… I understand and accept the logic that if a country mismanages its resources it should be prepared to face the music of hard times.” Bihar has much to learn, a long way to go. Its leaders alone cannot carry the burden of that journey, its people will have to.

Perhaps a good place to start would be to stop imagining the world to be shaped like a spittoon. The mouthfuls of masticated paan Biharis are wont to spit any and everywhere must rank high on the catalogue of uncivil liberties they feel entitled to. To have a dual-carriageway in Bihar is to find ways of violating the one-way regime, to wade your vehicle — four-wheel, two-wheel, bike or bullock-cart — in the face of oncoming traffic, the road’s toll-free. To find a padded seat on the bus is an invitation to stab it and rip the foam. Correction: the delight of deflowering virgin foam is reserved for those who bother squeezing into the bus; the best seats are still on the top deck, whether or not the inside is entirely taken. The New Bihar Story awaits the courtesies of its people.

Bihar was never at a loss for those who set out to build it. In the narrow firmament of Bihari consciousness, they make a clotted constellation of visionaries and builders, reformists and revolutionaries, Samaritans and messiahs. Srikrishna Sinha and Anugrah Narayan Sinha, JP and Karpoori Thakur, Ram Lakhan Singh Yadav and Jagannath Mishra. They have either been forgotten, some mercifully, or live on in dust-ridden memorial halls and annual, rent-a-crowd commemorations. Or in disregarded town squares as busts bejewelled in bird dropping. For all the retrospective reputation they have come to acquire, the gifts of Bihar’s league of legends don’t add up to much. Quite often in recent years, and especially since Nitish Kumar took power in 2005, the arrival of Naya Bihar has been bragged about. A schoolgirl on a cycle, a new coat of paint on a block development office, syringes in a primary health centre, a stretch of unbroken road do not a Naya Bihar make. On the evidence of the horror visited upon the Dalit bustee near Nawada by other Dalits, Bihar may only have regressed deeper into the quagmire Biharis and their chosen leaders say they want to pluck the state out of. It’s also what comes from not knowing better than to aspire to ape poorly behaved adversaries.

Sankarshan Thakur

Source: The Telegraph, 30/09/24

Bihar caste survey data released: A look at the complicated history of caste surveys

 

Every Census in independent India from 1951 to 2011 has published data on Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, but not on other castes. Before that, every Census until 1931 had data on caste.

The Bihar government has released the results of its recently concluded survey of castes in the state, which reveals that Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and Extremely Backward Classes (EBCs) constitute more than 63% of the population of Bihar.

CM Nitish Kumar congratulated the entire team involved in the caste survey process and said: “Resolution on caste-based survey was passed in the Bihar legislature through consensus. Nine political parties had taken a call in the Bihar Assembly on the state government bearing expenses of the caste survey.

The survey has not only considered one’s caste but also one’s economic status, which would help us devise further policies and plans for the development of all classes.”

What kind of caste data is published in the Census?

Every Census in independent India from 1951 to 2011 has published data on Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, but not on other castes. Before that, every Census until 1931 had data on caste.However, in 1941, caste-based data was collected but not published. M W M Yeats, the then Census Commissioner, said a note: “There would have been no all India caste table… The time is past for this enormous and costly table as part of the central undertaking…” This was during World War II.

In the absence of such a census, there is no proper estimate for the population of OBCs, various groups within the OBCs, and others. The Mandal Commission estimated the OBC population at 52%, some other estimates have been based on National Sample Survey data, and political parties make their own estimates in states and Lok Sabha and Assembly seats during elections.

How often has the demand for a caste census been made?

It comes up before almost every Census, as records of debates and questions raised in Parliament show. The demand usually comes from among those belonging to Other Backward Classes (OBC) and other deprived sections, while sections from the upper castes oppose the idea. This time, however, things have been quite different. With Census 2021 delayed several times, the Opposition parties have made the loudest cry for a caste census as they seem to have converged on “social justice” as their slogan and glue. Earlier this year, while campaigning in Karnataka, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said the Narendra Modi government should reveal the data of the Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC) conducted under the UPA-II government. Moreover, he called for a caste census and for the removal of the 50% cap on SC/ST/OBC reservations.

In July 2021, Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Nityanand Rai said in response to a question in Lok Sabha: “The Government of India has decided as a matter of policy not to enumerate caste-wise population other than SCs and STs in Census.”

Before this statement, Nityanand Rai had told the Rajya Sabha in March 2021: “The Union of India after Independence, decided as a matter of policy not to enumerate caste-wise population other than SCs and STs.”

But on August 31, 2018, following a meeting chaired by then Home Minister Rajnath Singh that reviewed preparations for Census 2021, the Press Information Bureau stated in a statement: “It is also envisaged to collect data on OBC for the first time.”

When The Indian Express filed an RTI request asking for the minutes of the meeting, the Office of Registrar General of India (ORGI) responded: “Records of deliberations in ORGI prior to MHA (Ministry of Home Affairs) announcement on August 31, 2018, to collect data on OBC is not maintained. There was not issued any minutes of the meeting.”

Where did the UPA stand on this?

In 2010, then Law Minister Veerappa Moily wrote to then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh calling for the collection of caste/community data in Census 2011. On March 1, 2011, during a short-duration discussion in Lok Sabha, Home Minister P Chidambaram spoke of several “vexed questions”: “There is a Central list of OBCs and State-specific list of OBCs. Some States do not have a list of OBCs; some StateThe Registrar General has also pointed out that there are certain open-ended categories in the lists such as orphans and destitute children. Names of some castes are found in both the list of Scheduled Castes and the list of OBCs. Scheduled Castes converted to Christianity or Islam are also treated differently in different States. The status of a migrant from one State to another and the status of children of inter-caste marriage, in terms of caste classification, are also vexed questions.”

What happened to the SECC data, then?

With an approved cost of Rs 4,893.60 crore, the SECC was conducted by the Ministry of Rural Development in rural areas and the Ministry of Housing & Urban Poverty Alleviation in urban areas. The SECC data excluding caste data was finalised and published by the two ministries in 2016.s have a list of OBCs and a sub-set called Most Backward Classes.

The raw caste data was handed over to the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, which formed an Expert Group under former NITI Aayog Vice-Chairperson Arvind Pangaria for classification and categorisation of data. It is not clear whether it submitted its report; no such report has been made public.

The report of a Parliamentary Committee on Rural Development presented to the Lok Sabha Speaker on August 31, 2016, noted about SECC: “The data has been examined and 98.87 per cent data on individuals’ caste and religion is error free. ORGI has noted the incidence of errors with respect to 1,34,77,030 individuals out of the total SECC population of 118,64,03,770. States have been advised to take corrective measures.”

What is the contrary view?

The RSS has not made any statements on a caste census in a while now, but has opposed the idea earlier. On May 24, 2010, when the debate on the subject had peaked ahead of Census 2011, then RSS sar-karyawah Suresh Bhaiyaji Joshi had said in a statement from Nagpur: “We are not against registering categories, but we oppose registering castes.” He had said a caste-based census is against the idea of a casteless society envisaged by leaders like Babasaheb Ambedkar in the Constitution and will weaken ongoing efforts to create social harmony.

Source: Indian Express, 3/10/23