Kanwar yatra is not chaos. It is a radical act of equality and freedom

Indian Express

5 days ago

Written by Saahil Shokeen
Every year during the month of Sawan, the roads of NCR and neighbouring states are flooded with a wave of Kanwariyas — mostly young men dressed in saffron, carrying intricately decorated kawads on their shoulders. The performance of this pilgrimage has undergone many transformations in recent years. Custom-made t-shirts with political iconographies, kawads decorated with images of socio-political leaders and flags, have made it a symbol of cultural and political identity. For a large section of urban observers, however, the yatra has come to mean traffic disruption, loud music and unruly behaviour. This reduces the essence of the kawad yatra.
The surface-level understanding of the yatra as a public inconvenience ignores how the Kanwar yatra has emerged as a powerful platform for subaltern voices to assert themselves in the public sphere. What may appear as chaos to an observer is in fact a highly symbolic and creative performance by millions of participants for whom the yatra is a temporary respite from their everyday realities and a reimagination of the social order itself, where religion, identity, politics and aesthetics are reimagined.
During the course of the yatra, 'Bhola', another name for lord Shiva, becomes the common term of salutation amongst the pilgrims instead of their actual names. The non-pilgrims en route also address the pilgrims using the same term. This simple linguistic gesture disrupts everyday identities such as caste, class and status for a limited duration. It is this liminality that showcases the radical potential of the yatra. Not only does it challenge everyday social norms, but also provides an arena for alternative social imaginations performed through language, symbols, gestures and attire.
The kawad itself, which was once only a bamboo carrier for holy water, have morphed into elaborate structures decorated with photographs, the national flag, political images and iconographies. They have transformed into mobile canvases of symbolic expressions. It is not uncommon to see pilgrims wearing t-shirts with images of lord Shiva juxtaposed with images of political leaders. This is a conscious aesthetic choice that reflects a fusion of faith and political aspirations. The pilgrims often attach the tricolour on their kawads or wear attires that reflect a nationalist iconography. These displays express a desire for visibility, participation and inclusion in the nationalist imagination, especially by groups that otherwise often find themselves on the margins.
Why then does the yatra create such discomfort in the Savarna imagination? One reason may be unease with the subaltern body asserting and occupying public spaces. This image of the young, male, working-class pilgrim performing religious devotion with such loud vigour is antithetical to the aesthetics of the sanitised upper-class imagination of religious ritual performance. This carnivalesque assertion in the otherwise restricted public sphere must instead be understood as free expression in its raw form. It offers a unique sense of shared joy and purpose for a limited time.
The phenomenon of the Kanwar yatra needs to be understood with nuance and empathy. This spectacle may provoke annoyance and even fear in many of us, but dismissing it as a mere nuisance does injustice to its deeper social textures. We must be willing to listen to the yatri's performance and engage with the questions of what they are trying to say with their kawads, their bodies and their attire. If we keep avoiding engagement with these questions, we will keep missing the potential of this unique ritual performance.
The writer is a researcher, Dr B R Ambedkar University, Delhi