The World of ‘Vrata Kathas’

Things have really gone obsolete in India. People have unending and unquestioning faith in all kinds of fasts, religious ceremonies and ‘Vrata Kathas’. A ‘Vrata Katha’ can be simply translated as a story (katha) that should be listened to during a religious ceremony performed on a day of fast (vrata). There is an inexhaustible list of festivals like all Poornimas (full moon days), Amavasyas (no moon days), fasts for women like Hartalika Teej, Karava Chauth, Santan Saptami, Vaibhav Lakshmi, Ahoi Ashtami, Pradosh etc, special days like Ganga Dashehra, Aanvala Naumi, Ekadashies, different Panchmies etc. This world of fasts, poojas (religious ceremonies) and ‘Vrata Kathas’ may sound unfamiliar to urbanized, busy, practical, rational individuals. Thanks to television, advertisements and films, Karava Chauth alone remains an elite fast festival of India. Others have gone into oblivion for the uprooted or newly-rooted Indian. But we may remember that the majority of Indian Hindus still cling to each and every fast festival. These festivals have a strong local colour. The ways of celebrating them change from place to place. My thrust is on the text of ‘Vrata Kathas’, their analysis, their impact, value and the need to rewrite them.

Vrata Kathas descend from the Puranic tradition. Puranas have been called the cartoonization of Vedic thought. While Vedas expound pure thought; Puranas convey those thoughts to the illiterate masses through crude stories. Truthfulness, fidelity, honesty, simplicity etc. are universal values. But the way a Puranic Katha would convey them would be through the medium of instant miracles, sudden deaths, losses, immediate gains, Akash vanis (trumpeting of divine words through clouds) and so on and so forth. The purpose is very clear – to instil fear in the masses so that they behave according to prescribed rules of social conduct. But the thing did not stop there. Donation to Brahmins became a prominent feature of these kathas so that the priest class might get its fill without hard work. Similarly, the depiction of women as weak, vulnerable, and helpless got louder and louder. We can see it as a potent ploy of perpetuating patriarchy. The inherent power structure within the Puranic tales and Vrata Kathas is simply too obvious to be ignored. Women have been threatened, and scared to such an extent that every devout Hindu woman is expected to go through severe fasts, religious rituals and ceremonies in order to pray for the life and health of her men folk. Men, in turn, were never asked to pray for the life and health of their women folk. Another notable feature of Vrata Kathas and Priranic tradition is creation, preservation and popularization of superstitions. Baseless ideas have been fed into the Indian mind in the name of religion and God. The language of these Kathas is more often than not very crude and rough. Things are stated very brutally. There is no scope of nuances, symbolism and inference here.

Usually a Vrata Katha begins creating its own grandiosity. The underlying geography is very clear. Gods and goddesses, along with their kith and kin reside above the clouds. They keep watching the mortals on earth. Everything is perfect there. Usually, Narad, the gossip-loving saint or some goddess asks for the ways and means of salvation of the human kind. Usually, a patriarch in the form of Shankar, Vishnu or Brahma gives solutions to the problems of humankind. He unfolds a great secret, which is actually a very tough fast to be held on a particular date with all paraphernalia for worshipping. The rewards are ensured. Prosperity, health and life of the male folk of the family are the treasured targets of all fasts and their stories. Women are satisfied by reservation of a good-place in the other world.

Fertility among women is a major concern of these Vrata Kathas. The blot of infertility has been totally given to women. Birth of children is promised as a result of keeping such fasts and more importantly by keeping the fasts in the strict, prescribed manner. Any lacunae, even committed unknowingly is not forgiven. The modus operandi is simple. You ask the gods for a particular favour and go for rigourous routine of fasts and ceremony. You also promise the gods to perform a particular ‘puja’ once your cherished favour is granted. Once the reward has been bestowed, you are expected to fulfill your promise to the gods. If you forget to do that (which ordinary mortals usually do) you face wrath of gods in the form of sudden loss in business, extreme poverty, diseases and even death of kith and kin. Once you realize your fast and fulfill your original promise, everything comes to you – the dead become alive, the losses in the business turn to stunning gains and all like that.

The teller of the story, the saviour, the wise one is always a patriarch. Goddesses do not unfold such high profile secrets. So much so that in the Hartalika story, it is Parvati who undergoes extreme penance in order to gain a husband like Shankar but when it comes to narrate the story, she helplessly asks Shankar as to what she should do in order gain a seat beside him. Her own past, her own penance, her own acts do not come through her mouth. She needs Shankar to tell them to the world because only then will her actions bear the seal of male approval. What she did was right and all other women should also do the same – this authority cannot come unless and until the sanction comes from the patriarch. Such is the terror, the psychotic fear created by Vrata Kathas which countless women listen to with utmost faith, thinking that none other but Lord Mahesh only is speaking to them, chastising them, instructing them. The life of the women is held really cheap. They do not matter. No body is supposed to be praying for their well-being.

In very harsh language, the one who keeps the fasts is shown the fear of curse. A curse is the final tool. There is no escape from it. There is no alternative. In utter desperation of not being cursed, the devotee is mentally prepared to undergo all the meaningless rituals, pay heavily to the priests, keep strict fasts and so on and so forth. Instead of a loving, caring, understanding, parental figure, God becomes a jailer, an agency for reward and punishment.

The worst part is creation of new stories, new myths, some hidden treasure of a miraculous fast that has been recently dug out for the welfare of the women folk. The creation of Santoshi Mata took place some twenty - twenty five years ago. The role of the film, ‘Santoshi Mata’ that had broken all box office records in popularizing the fast and its story cannot be denied. No Vedic, pre-Vedic text ever mentions this form of the Devi. It is a contribution of our own times to the already existing pantheon of miracle performing means.

In India, mythology is a living force; it is an ongoing process as well. Richard Cavendish writes, ‘The Hindus...know very well how to distinguish gods from men, even from ‘god-men’. For instance, it is generally known that, unlike mortals, gods do not blink or sweat, their feet do not quite touch the ground, their garlands never wither, and they do not get dirty. Divinity in India, like aristocracy in Europe, is largely a matter of history, birth and inheritance. The gods are those who have always been gods, whose names are enshrined in the ancient texts or in the case of assimilation from local traditions, whose names were ‘known to our grandfathers’. The pantheon changes from time to time and place to place, and new gods force their way into it sometimes, but they must be legitimized by stories establishing their birth from, or marriage to, one of the older gods.’ (Cavendish: 14-15)

These Vrata Kathas do not teach us how to face life, how to fight ordeals, how to stand tall before the challenges of life, how to go through struggles. They only tell the Indian woman to live for others, and die for others.

Everybody comes before the self. The Vrata Kathas say that a woman should not live for herself. She has no right over pleasure. She cannot be ambitious. A sort of grandiose personality has been forced upon women where a goddess-like appearance is expected from them. They should be selfless, innocent, devotional fools all the time. A woman cannot be expected to be practical, reasonable and rational. She is either a ‘devi’ or a devil. This idea of living for others is very hypocritical in its results. What happens is that people seek pleasure and hide it and then feel guilty about it. Something that is utterly natural takes the shape of sin in the Indian society. This is the whole problem of the Indian mind.

Vrata Kathas perpetuate superstitions. They stress upon the vicious circle of ‘auspicious- inauspicious’ into the listeners’ psyche. Beauty, health, wealth, progeny, and fame are good concepts and people ought to pursue them. But we will have to or we ought to think about those as well who have missed these things or have partly achieved them. The world of ‘vrata kathas’ further marginalizes the unfortunate. Participation of widows is strictly prohibited in many ceremonies. The ‘vrata kathas’ are against the democratic spirit. They create and strengthen hierarchies. Caste system gets a tremendous boost from these ‘kathas’. The words of John Key are worth quoting here, ‘Every sub-caste has the most elaborate system of rules which govern every aspect of life. They regulate your status in relation to every other caste, the sort of food you should eat, how and when it should be cooked and how eaten, who your associates should be, what your profession, who you should marry, how and when, where you should live, the sort of house and how it should be furnished, the clothes you wear, etc., as well as more intimate functions like frequency and method of intercourse, ablutions and excretions. An orthodox Hindu could seemingly live his whole life in accordance with caste dharma without taking a single decision!’ (48-49) Likewise an orthodox Hindu is forever in fear of planetary positions. Rahu, Ketu, Shani and the galaxy of evil planets shadow his thinking in such a manner that his own efforts and initiatives become dwarfish.

‘Vrata Kathas’ perpetuate the obsession of the Indian mind with the male child. Every second ‘katha’ ensures a son. It is as though women and girls do not exist at all. All folk songs of child-birth celebrate the arrival of a male child, a Krishna, a Ram and so on and so forth. For example, the story of Mahamakha says, ‘In the good old days, before the Kaliyug had set in, there was a very pious king reigning over the country of Mithila, north of Benares. He was happy in every way except that he had not a son to succeed his throne... A holy sage, a rishi, visited the king and told him that if he bathed in the waters of the sacred Ganges on the Mahamakham day he would soon obtain a son...He proclaimed his intention among his subjects and several of them who were unhappy like the king in not having sons, followed their sovereign…’ and finally, ‘The king’s desire had already been fulfilled; for he had a boy.’ (Sarkar: 64-65) Now it is not clear from the story whether the king had daughter/s or not; after having son/s if he had any daughter or not; if yes, why a daughter could not succeed the throne? Not a single word is uttered on these points. Only the queen comes who accompanies the king in his efforts to have son/s. A woman is valuable only when she produces son/s. Otherwise she has no value in her own right as an individual. The Hindu mind is dominated by the unconscious presence of Sita. The figure of Sita dominates the Hindu ideal of a woman. The suffering woman, upholding forced and unrealistic norms, maintaining a joint family system and never demanding anything for herself is the role model of women. I completely agree with Prabhati Mukherjee when she writes, ‘Sita is the eternally remembered, sweet, innocent, pure, self-sacrificing and self­effacing woman in Indian literature. The most notable trait in her character is her infinite capacity to bear suffering.’ (Mukherjee: 40)

It is not that everything is bad in these Vrata Kathas. But the damage they cause is much higher and much more intense than the message of benevolence, rhythm of life, oneness with Nature and continuity of life force from animals to human beings that they give.

In short, we can say that Vrata Kathas originated for preservation of social order. But instead, they are maligning not only the social order but also the mind set of generations of men and women, boys and girls. In a country where people believe mythology to be true, Vrata Kathas are definitely causing irreparable damage. The text of these Vrata Kathas must be changed.