The ritual of parikramā, Hinduization of space and the case of Ayodhyā

ABSTRACT

The article looks at the uses of the concept of parikramā (circumambulation of a sacred spot) in the 2019 Supreme Court of India judgement on the Ayodhyā dispute and its aftermath. It unpacks the Hindu majoritarian refashioning of a well-established ritual of place by analyzing the judgement and the subsequent mobilization of parikramās by the Uttar Pradesh Government in tourist and pilgrimage initiatives in Ayodhyā. The article argues that parikramā has been used in Ayodhyā to legitimate claims that, not only the so-called ‘disputed site’ but the whole city, constitute an exclusively Hindu sacred space. The article foregrounds the importance of parikramās in the Hinduization of space and points at the cross-fertilization of rituals of place with legal discourses on places of worship. It suggests that, in the aftermath of the 2019 judgement, more attention should be paid to the role of parikramās in ongoing majoritarian redefinition, expansion and control of sacred space.

KEYWORDS:

• Parikramā
• Hinduization
• Ayodhyā
• Supreme Court of India
• Uttar Pradesh

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The Sunni Waqf Board, the Nirmohī Akhāṛā and Rām Lallā Virājmān.

2 Pronounced on 9 November 2019 by Justice Ranjan Gogol, Sa Bobde, Ashok Bhushan, Dy Chandrachud, Sa Nazeer. The Judgement is known as M Siddiq (D) Thr Lrs v. Mahant Suresh Das & Ors (2019) and available at https://www.sci.gov.in/pdf/JUD_2.pdf with the title IN THE SUPREME COURT OF INDIA, CIVIL APPELLATE JURISDICTION, Civil Appeal Nos 10866–10867 of 2010.

3 For overviews of the court cases and proceedings see Bindal (2020), Chandra (2010), Kapur (2014), Mathew (2020), Molia, Upadhyay and Sharma (2021).

4 ‘For centuries, a deity or an idol has been treated as a “juristic person” [recognized by the law as being entitled to rights and duties in the same way as a human person, a typical case being a company] in Indian law because many devotees donate their land and possessions to idols who are synonymous with their shrines.’ (Biswas 2019; see also Berti, Tarabout and Voix 2016; Sen 2019)

5 In the Supreme Court of India Civil Appellate Jurisdiction: Civil Appeal Nos 10866–10867 of 2010 (2019), 45. https://www.sci.gov.in/pdf/JUD_2.pdf.

6 In the Supreme Court of India Civil Appellate Jurisdiction: Civil Appeal Nos 10866–10867 of 2010 (2019), 146. https://www.sci.gov.in/pdf/JUD_2.pdf.

7 In the Supreme Court of India Civil Appellate Jurisdiction: Civil Appeal Nos 10866–10867 of 2010 (2019), 147. https://www.sci.gov.in/pdf/JUD_2.pdf.

8 The concept of Hinduization has also been explored by Hermann Kulke in his studies of early state formation in India. See Kulke (1986, 2018), and Eschmann, Kulke and Tripathi (1978).

9 Criticism includes considering Hinduism as too static and paying too much emphasis on caste. Indologists neglected Weber because of Weber’s lack of knowledge of Hindu textual traditions, ignorance of Indian languages and philological methods.

10 Hinduization is related to but different from the concepts of Sanskritization and Brahmanization that also have been used to understand aspects of the expansion of Hindu traditions. Sanskritization promoted by M. N. Srinivas was intended to refer to the gradual reshaping of local beliefs and practices in the direction of Brahmanical ideals. M. N. Srinivas writing about sacred sites, noted that the pilgrimage sites and their annual festivals were important sources of the spread of Sanskritic ideas and beliefs (Srinivas 1967, 74) and Van der Veer notes that that ‘to some extent Sanskritization is synonymous with Hinduization’ (van der Veer 1994, 166). However, Hinduization refers to the process by which non-Hindu elements become part of Hindu traditions which is not identical with the process of low caste Hindus adopting Brahmanical values.

11 Savarkar wrote: ‘[T]he Dharma of a Hindu being so completely identified with the land of the Hindus, this land to him is not only a Pitribhu but a Punyabhu, not only a fatherland but a holyland … . That is why in the case of some of our Mohammedan or Christian countrymen who had originally been forcibly converted to a non-Hindu religion and who consequently have inherited along with Hindus, a common Fatherland and a greater part of the wealth of a common culture – language, law, customs, folklore and history – are not and cannot be recognized as Hindus. For though Hindusthan to them is Fatherland as to any other Hindu yet it is not to them a Holyland too. Their holyland is far off in Arabia or Palestin. Their mythology and Godmen, ideas and heroes are not the children of this soil. Consequently their names and their outlook smack of a foreign origin. Their love is divided. Nay, if some of them be really believing what they profess to do, then there can be no choice – they must, to a man, set their Holy-land above their Fatherland in their love and allegiance'. https://savarkar.org/en/encyc/2017/5/23/2_12_12_04_essentials_of_hindutva.v001.pdf_1.pdf, 43.

12 A strong recent voice for this argument is Diana Eck who in her book India: A Sacred Geography argued that India for many hundred years was one network of pilgrimage places, ‘a land linked not by the power of kings and governments, but by the footsteps of pilgrims’ (Eck 2012, 6). Eck claimed that India was shaped by ‘extensive and intricate interrelations of geography and mythology’ which was ‘different from the modern notion of the nation state’ (Eck 2012, 45). Historically it is probably more correct to connect pilgrimage to regional traditions and oriented around regional centres (Eschmann, Kulke and Tripathi 1978; Kulke 1993). The large number of pilgrims of modern India seems to have been a function of improved transportation technology.

13 https://www.sci.gov.in/pdf/JUD_2.pdf.

14 ‘“The five-acre land for the proposed mosque in Ayodhya should be outside the Chaudah Koshi Parikrama area, about 15–20 km from the Ram Janmabhoomi site, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad has said in reiteration of its earlier demand … Any mosque in Ayodhya must be constructed outside the Chaudah Koshi Parikrama,” Vishwa Hindu Parishad’s regional spokesperson Sharad Sharma, who operates from Karsevakpuram in Ayodhya, added’ (Dixit 2019). ‘Swami Avimukteshwaranand, secretary of the trust said, “If our claim is rejected, we will go to court.” Meanwhile, the VHP has thrown a spanner in the works and said that the mosque should be constructed outside the ‘cultural limits of Ayodhya”. ”The mosque should be outside the Parikrama route so that there is no dispute in the future,” said Dinesh Chandra.’ (Swarajya 2019)

15 ‘Announcing the allotment, state government spokesman and UP energy minister Shrikant Sharma said, “The land is 200 metres from the highway and has easy access. It’s the best spot in view of maintaining communal harmony as well as law and order”.’ (Singh and Pandey 2020)

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Knut A. Jacobsen

Knut A. Jacobsen is Professor in the Study of Religions at the University of Bergen, Norway. His main fields of research include Hindu sacred geography and pilgrimage, transnational Hinduism, Sāṃkhya and Yoga theory and practice, and religion and public space in South Asia and the diasporas. Among his publications are the monographs Pilgrimage in the Hindu Tradition: Salvific Space (Routledge 2013) and Yoga in Modern Hinduism: Hariharānanda Āraṇya and Sāṃkhyayoga (Routledge 2018), and the edited volumes Handbook of Hinduism in Europe (Brill 2020), Routledge Handbook of South Asian Religions (Routledge 2021) and Hindu Diasporas (Oxford University Press 2023).