Hinglaj: An ancient Hindu pilgrimage in Pakistan.

Nani_ki_Mandir2

Hingol: a Hindu pilgrimage in Balochistan province of Pakistan.

Hingol Located along the banks of Hingol river, in Hinglaj town in Balochistan province of Pakistan, is Hinglaj Mata Mandir. Also, called Nani mandir or Hinglaj Devi or Hingula Devi.

640px-Nani_ki_MandirThe Express Tribune (Pak) | Karachi | April 20, 2016:: In the searing heat of Balochistan, Sunil Kumar climbs up the Chandergup volcano barefoot. Sweating profusely and out of breath, he treads slowly, his ascent interjected by chants of ‘Jai Mata Di’.

Sunil is among the hundreds of pilgrims making their way up to the summit of the 300-foot-high mud volcano of Hingol. Once on the top, he takes out a coconut from his side pocket and throws it in the gooey soup to thank the gods for granting his wish.

The steep trek to Chandergup’s rim is the first ritual of the Mata Hinglaj Yatra the holiest pilgrimage of Hindus in the world. After descending from the volcano with their faces plastered by its holy mud, the pilgrims will proceed to the main Hinglaj temple in the foothills of Kirthar mountains about 35km away.

A pre-Partition mandir and the struggle to protect it

The annual pilgrimage takes place every April in Hingol about 250km west of Karachi, from where the majority of people are coming. But most of them actually started out in Tharparkar.

The most devoted are on foot some coming from as far as Mithi and Umerkot about 550km away, taking 22 days to reach their destination. Others have hired cars and coasters. Built in 2007, the Makran Coastal Highway between Karachi and Gwadar has helped reduce the journey for many by days.

Veersi Malke Dewani, the general-secretary of Hinglaj Mata Welfare Trust, which has been organising the festival for the past 31 years, believes people from all over the world want to perform the pilgrimage but logistical problems keep them away.

Three-tier security

The shrine that attracts thousands of tourists throughout the year is declared out of bound for Muslims for the festival. Considering the recent bomb blast in Lahore on Easter Sunday, the security at the temple is unusual.

Balochistan Frontier Corps personnel guard the entrance route at three check-posts, checking the identity cards of all arriving pilgrims. Muslims are turned away if not accompanied by the pilgrimage organisers themselves.

This has not been the case. For years, Muslims have come to the yatra with some even terming it Nani Ka Hajj. Locals volunteer with regulating the parking of hundreds of buses, jeeps, cars and trolleys, arranging water for the pilgrims, operating electricity generators and providing food three times a day.

Sanjesh Dhanja, who runs the nonprofit Pakistan Hindu Seva, has taken up the responsibility of ensuring cleanliness at the site. This year, he has started an awareness campaign to educate the pilgrims not to create a mess and keep the temple clean.

Despite security concerns, Sanjesh says this year has seen the largest attendance of devotees, roughly estimated to be around 250,000.

Hinglaj Photos. Source-Various.

Splash of colours

Veersi says about 75,000 people were present on the second day alone considerably larger in number than last year.

On the way inside, the scene turns as eclectic as any Urs celebrations of Sufi saints across Pakistan. Buntings, red flags and welcoming banners adorn the place. Revellers dance to music. Some watch from the sidelines, some nap under the trees while many continue to walk towards the main temple.

Roadside stalls sell coconuts, incense sticks, statues of Hindu deities, garlands of rose and marigolds, CDs of bhajans, dry fruit and other food items for travellers.

It is no surprise Thari women, with their trademark embroidered dresses and arms full of bangles, are in majority at the Mata Hinglaj temple. The estimated population of Hindus in Pakistan is over three million with most of them living in Tharparkar.

The festivities go on for four days with the climax on the third day when high priests chant mantras, inviting gods to accept the offerings of the devotees and bring them peace.

The legend

According to Hindu beliefs, Sati, the spouse of Shiva, burnt herself to death after her father Daksha disrespected her and did not invite her partner to a feast.

This angered Shiva who went on a rampage in the world carrying along with him Sati’s body. Vishnu then intervened and used his powers to calm Shiva down. He then cut the body of Sati into 51 pieces, which fell to earth in different places.

Giyan Maharaj, a pundit in Khipro, says these 51 places are called Shakti Peethas and became sacred places. Hindus believe the head of the goddess fell in Hinglaj, thus making it the most revered place of pilgrimage.

Trip of a lifetime

All believers, Giyan says, have to go to Hinglaj, which is built in a cave along the bank of River Hingol. This trip along with good deeds elevates the soul, which eventually escapes the birth cycle and reaches god. The soul is then ready for reincarnation inside a new body.

Veersi of the Hinglaj organising committee says most Hindus have come to know about this holy place only recently since the arrival of social media. If visa conditions in coming to Pakistan are relaxed, thousands of Hindus from across the world will come to the place, he says.

For any Hindu, a visit to Hinglaj is the ultimate pilgrimage, but very few like to take the challenge.

Content provider: Asianet-Pakistan | Pic. Various | Courtesy: The Express Tribune (Pakistan).

*Republished in the interest of highlighting the cultural issues of the minorities in Pakistan. 

 

An Indigenous View Of The Hindu Identity

Hindu is the geographical, cultural and metaphysical identity of the people of the land. It’s neither a religion nor a nation-state.

The people of America are called as Americans, Japan as Japanese, and Brazil as Brazilian and so the people of India or Hindustan are called as Indians or Hindus. But whereas American-ism, Japan-ism or Brazilian-ism are not called as a religion, by what yardstick is Hinduism called and officially proclaimed by the Indian nation-state as a religion?

The word religion is rooted in the Latin word “religare” meaning “to bind.” Religion in its most pervasive meaning today is used to describe Christianity and Islam which are marked by being “bound” to One Book and One Prophet, and divides the world as believers and non-believers, thereby ostensibly seeking to “convert” one to another. Every other identity that is called as a religion is thus portrayed through this predominant world view.

Despite repeated attempts to drag the innocuous Hindu identity into this gambit, by no stretch of imagination it qualifies to be called as a religion of Hindu-ism. This is a gross infringement on the rights of the Hindus who constitute the native and indigenous people of the land or the adivasi.

It has been said that religion is akin to “panth” or “math” in the Hindu context, but that’s another gross distortion, when we compare them to either Christianity or Islam. Neither can “dharma,” which denotes a sense of duty and means “that which upholds,” be described as religion. There are attempts to “religion-ise” the Hindu identity through Hinduism or Hindutva by vested interests but only serve to defile and damage the Hindu identity, and cause grave harm to the ordinary people they claim to represent and defend.

The existence of malpractices and sociopathic behavior that crept into a society at some time has resulted in vitriolic being directed against those who profess Hinduism as a religion. Ambedkar states in his essay ‘Philosophy of Hinduism’:

Inequality is the soul of Hinduism. The morality of Hinduism is only social. It is unmoral and inhuman to say the least. What is unmoral and inhuman easily becomes immoral, inhuman and infamous.” (Ref 2)

But if the Holocaust has not cast such an indelible shadow on German-ism, despite the fact that its Christian history of hatred against Jews had a lot to do with the rise of the Nazis and the cold-blooded killings of 20 million Jews; or the British genocide and brutal exploitation of its colonial subjects has not stigmatized British-ism and Turkish and Arabic genocides and brutalities has not blemished these identities forever, even as they happened explicitly in the garb of Islam, why should ordinary Hindus be haunted and bullied today for no fault of theirs, in their own land and elsewhere in the name of Hinduism.

The greater irony is that even scholarly bodies like the Hindu America Foundation make the same mistake of falsely denigrating the indigenous Hindu identity into a religious identity of Hinduism, in their limited and defective vision. They fail to see the powerful and growing tide of humanity that sees through the imperialist machinations of using religion as bait to “convert,” grab land from the indigenous people and which has penetrated academic circles with great deal of deceit and chicanery to show other competing religions in poor light.

Who are the real Hindus?

Hindus are neither religionists of Hinduism-As-A-Religion nor the jingoistic nationalism of Hindutva-vadis, against whom much of the ire and tirade of the “anti-Hindu” forces is directed. Hindus are ordinary people of the land. Over thousands of years of their known existence, the Hindus have heartily welcomed people and their opinion from all over the world with open arms because of their core beliefs in “World as a Village and Village as the World (वसुधैव कुटुम्बकम),” “Guest is God (अतिथि देवो भव)” and “Truth alone shall win (सत्यमेव जयते).”

Addressing the complexity and gravity of the Hindu situation must begin with diving deeper to the indigenous view of the Hindu identity rather than the exogenous view, despite the fact that the latter has far greater currency today and the former has been muted and subdued.

Why is Hindu not a sovereign “nation-state”?

Unraveling the indigenous Indian or Hindu identity could be the uniting principle for its diversity and at times conflicting ideologies and identities. For this we need to challenge and dissolve the imposition of Hindu as a religion and as a jingoistic nationalism as a modern nation-state. The brazen centralization of power by the nation-state is both anachronistic and against the interests and rights of its indigenous people, a right which is guaranteed and staunchly protected by the United Nations Declaration of Rights of Indigenous People, which came to effect since 2007. Article 3 of this epoch-making declaration clearly states that:

Indigenous peoples have the right to self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.” (Ref 1)

The sovereignty in the Hindu context rests with the indigenous forest dwelling communities (वनवासी), village dwellers (ग्रामवासी) and city dwellers (नगरवासी), with a symbiotic and synergistic relationship among the three. The political state had a limited role of regional governance and security for which it collected a percentage of the produce and was responsive to natural calamities.

The political boundaries and administration of these states kept changing to reflect people’s needs and aspirations.

After having experienced several hundreds of years of foreign occupation that continues up to the day in a covert fashion, we need to weigh the pros and cons of the status quo vis-a-vis the Hindu identity and its attendant indigenous systems and structures.

References:

1. http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/DRIPS_en.pdf

2. http://kafila.org/2016/03/09/look-whos-calling-us-anti-national-the-pleasant-antecedents-of-sudhir-chaudhary-and-journalistic-ethics-of-ibn-7/

Illinois’ Rockford City Council to open with Hindu prayer for the first time in 164 years

Reciting
from Brahadaranyakopanishad,
Rajan Zed plans to say “Asato ma sad gamaya, Tamaso ma jyotir
gamaya, Mrtyor mamrtam gamaya”, which he will then translate as
“Lead me from the unreal to the real, lead me from darkness to
light, and lead me from death to immortality.” Reciting from
Bhagavad-Gita, he proposes to urge Aldermen to keep the welfare of
others always in mind.

Zed is a global
Hindu and interfaith leader, who besides taking up the cause of
religion worldwide, has also raised huge voice against the apartheid
conditions faced by about 15-million Roma (Gypsies) in Europe.
Bestowed with World Interfaith Leader Award; Zed is Senior Fellow and
Religious Advisor to Foundation for Religious Diplomacy, Spiritual
Advisor to National Association of Interchurch Interfaith
Families, and on Advisory Board of The Interfaith Peace Project, etc.

Hinduism, oldest
and third largest religion of the world, has about one billion
adherents and moksh (liberation) is its ultimate goal. There are
about three million Hindus in USA.

Rockford,
chartered as a city in 1852, on the banks of the Rock River, is the
third largest city in Illinois. It is known for Phantom Regiment Drum
and Bugle Corps; Mendelssohn Club, claimed to be the oldest music
club in the nation; Cheap Trick rock band; etc. Lawrence J. Morrissey
is the Mayor.

Washington DC’s Smithsonian museum showcasing Hindu deity Shiva

Rajan Zed, who is President of
Universal Society of Hinduism, urged major art museums of the world, including
Musee du Louvre and Musee d’Orsay of Paris, Metropolitan Museum of Art in New
York, Los Angeles Getty Center, Uffizi Gallery of Florence (Italy), Art
Institute of Chicago, Tate Modern of London, Prado Museum of Madrid, National
Gallery of Art in Washington DC, etc., to frequently organize Hindu art focused
exhibitions, thus sharing the rich Hindu art heritage with the rest of the
world.

Founded in 1846, Smithsonian;
consisting of 19 museums and galleries, the National Zoological Park and nine
research facilities; has about 138 million objects/artifacts.  In 2015,
about 28 million people visited Smithsonian. David J. Skorton is the Secretary
of the Smithsonian Institution.

Hinduism, oldest and third
largest religion of the world, has about one billion adherents and moksh
(liberation) is its ultimate goal. There are about three million Hindus in USA.