Shiva Linga, Jageshwar, May 1998

Introduction: This film was shot in Soyapur, a small village near Benares. This region tends to be poor, backward, and undeveloped; it also tends to be socially and religiously conservative. This is both good and bad, from the perspective of the viewer. On the one hand, the village displays traditional patterns of religious practice and social organization, and thus reinforces the importance of these ideas. On the other, there are many parts of India that are no longer anything like this--they are "modern" in both technology and thinking. The people in these latter places, like most "modern" people, still pay a lot of attention to some of the ideas from the past, but pay considerably less attention to some others.

1. The film opens with a man pouring water from a steel pitcher and muttering mantras, as part of daily worship directed toward the sun. This opening sequence plants a couple of important ideas: that Hindus see the divine in many different forms/symbols, and that there are many different ways of approaching the divine.

2. This idea of different conceptions and different paths is then illustrated by several short montages sets of images. It begins with a brahmin man taking a morning bath to regain his ritual purity, followed a trip around the village, in which he does puja (worship) at various small shrines. It next shows some wrestlers at an akhara ("wrestling-ground") making an image of the god Hanuman out of sand, and then engaging in their daily regimen of training and competition. There's a shot of an old woman taking care of her sacred tulsi plant, and there is also a discussion of ghosts and wandering spirits (particularly those who died violent deaths), and the various ways their spirits can be pacified.. For each of these, part of the message is that Hindu religion touches every aspect of life, and is interwoven with everyday life.

3. The next section takes up this everyday aspect of Hindu life by talking about purity and pollution, which are two of the central ideas ordering Hindu life. Their pervasive quality is shown in the settlement patterns of the village (in which different castes live in different areas), in the idea of the caste system itself, and in the regulations associated with food (preparation and eating). In this sequence we meet members of the Upadhya family, the richest and most influential family in the village.

4. Although the caste system assumes hierarchy, it also assumes interdependence among the various groups. The next sequence shows a healing ritual done for Upadhya's son by a low-caste Chamar servant who is also an ojha (sorceror/healer). The boy had been sick for some time, and medicines hadn't helped, so it was suspected that some sort of malevolent powers were at work. One of the assumptions this reveals is that there are a variety of spiritual powers at work in the world--some good, some bad, but all of which can have an affect on a person.

5. Next comes the performance of a special ritual known as the Satyanarayan Puja, commissioned by a grandmother in thanksgiving for her granddaughter passing her college exams. The site for the ritual is first purified by smearing it with cow dung, and then covered with designs drawn in flour. Note that everyone in the village is invited, and that everyone in the village comes (showing that although the different castes have differing levels of status, that they all interact with each other all the time). This ritual is chanted in Sanskrit by the family's pundit, and shows the "high culture" sort of textual elaboration. At the end of the ceremony people are given prasad (food blessed by the deity).

6. The next sequence changes tone, to note that such big rituals don't happen every day, and again highlight the notion that it is connected with everyday life. As part of this, the film shows the departure of a groom and his wedding party for the bride's village, and the sorts of ceremonies that often go with this.

7. The next sequence again shows "high" (textualized) religious culture, when Upadhya and his wife go to a temple in a nearby village. It is a festival day, and there are shots of people bathing in the Ganges, getting heads shaved, singing devotional songs, and generally having a fine time. Upadhya and his wife go to the temple there, make their offerings, and say their prayers.

8. In contrast, the next rite is at the temple of a village deity named Dee Baba. Village deities are responsible for the general health and welfare of their village (no sickness among the people and cattle, general welfare, etc.), and their mythology is usually not nearly as well developed as the "higher" gods. These village deities are generally served by non-brahmin priests, and communicate their wishes by possessing their priests, and speaking through them. All of these elements can be seen in the film.

9. The last parts of the film look at two different Hindu ascetics (sadhus). The first is an older man who lives in a small Shiva temple (although his forehead markings identify him as a devotee of the god Rama--so this clearly doesn't matter). This ascetic speaks of a true sadhu as thinking about noting but God--a notion I have often heard in my own travels in India. The second ascetic is a younger man, who wanders through the village singing devotional songs, in part to remind people that they will be called to account for their actions. Although Hindu religion has plenty of rituals, in the end it is concerned with life and with living.

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