Power of the Ascetic

THE MYSTIQUE AROUND the Naga Sadhu makes it alluring to try delving into their deepest secrets. Crossing one of the 30 pontoon bridges, built across the Ganga for the Maha Kumbh Mela at Prayagraj, large gates mark their various akharas (monastic orders). Inside one such gate, a seer, sitting on a diwan, is bargaining with a carpet seller from Badohi. He asks him to quote a good price. “Sach bolun ki jhoot? (should I tell you the truth or lie?),” the seller asks. The seer smiles. He ends up buying a couple of carpets for his tent.

As I size him up—deep saffron robes, matted hair neatly piled on top of his head, strings of rudraksha around his neck, sandal­wood and vermilion on his forehead, a large watch with a golden strap and a chunky anklet—a friend, familiar with the akhara, whispers that not all Naga Sadhus are naked all the time. Only a few are. An older sadhu prostrates before him. Several others take his blessings. He tells them to take blessings and keep mov­ing. Some sit on the carpets laid out before him. The friend, who is known to the ascetic, Niranjini akhara Mahant and chief of the 400-year-old Baghambari Math Balveer Giri, introduced me to him. “What do you want to find out?” the seer asks. But he refuses to speak about his past or present, saying he moved from the “bhautik (material life)” to the “adhyatmik (spiritual life)” in search of himself. He goes on to add that maybe after 10-12 years, he will talk about himself. He answers a call on his mobile phone.

“Ask me about Kumbh,” he says and recites Sanskrit chants referring to “Teerthraj”, the king of sacred places, which the San­gam, the confluence of Ganga, Yamuna and the mythical Saras­wati, in Prayagraj is known as. With his right foot on his lap, his anklet is conspicuous. He says it’s a silver “tode”, maybe dating back around 200 years. Another sadhu prostrates before him. He gestures to put both his thumbs up as he bows with his fists on the ground. He, again, refuses to tell its significance. “That is not for you to understand,” he says. I get curious about his age. He ends the conversation by saying these are personal questions. With a few strands of white in his flowing black beard, I guess it to be anywhere between 35 and 45. As we move away, I ask my friend why older ascetics are bowing before him. He tells me that even within akharas, there is a pecking order and he was senior in terms of position. Their status is reflected in their lifestyle, tents and demeanour. Balveer Giri was anointed successor to Mahant Narendra Giri, who in September 2021, was found hanging from his ceiling fan in his room at the Baghambari Math in Prayagraj. I search the internet about Balveer Giri and find out that he left his home and became an ascetic at the age of 20.

Giri, which means peak of the mountain, is one of the 10 orders established by Adi Shankaracharya under the Dasnami Samprada­ya (10 sects). The dasnami sanyasi, Hindu Shaivite ascetics, belong to one of these orders. Historian Jadunath Sarkar has written in his book, A History of Dasnami Naga Sanyasis, that most of these mili­tant sanyasis belong to the Dasnami Sampradaya, “the oldest, the biggest and the most effective of our monastic Orders.” The Greeks, he wrote, when they came with Alexander, called the Naga sanyasis “gymno-sophists”, which means “naked philosophers”.

The images of the ascetics, wearing just loincloth, with vibhuti (ash) smeared on their bodies walking through the cold, foggy morning, chanting “Har Har Mahadev”, to take a dip at the San­gam during the Maha Kumbh remain etched in public memory. The Naga Sadhus, known to have guarded Hindu structures, are showstoppers at Kumbh. Some take a pledge to remain unclothed, while most wear robes of saffron, the only colour they are permit­ted as per their rules. Covered in just ash and strings of rudraksha around his neck and arms, with his matted hair falling on to his lap, Digambar Darshan Giri, 55, left his parents when he was 14 and has never seen them after that. “They must have looked for me, but in such a big world, how do you find anyone?” he says. It was in Haridwar that he came across sadhus and where he will return after Kumbh. Cutting off from their past, the Naga Sadhus erase their former identity at their initiation, which also entails pledges of celibacy and detaching from the material world.

At another akhara, Digambar Amrit Giri, wearing a headdress of 5,100 rudrakshas, weighing 15kg, with an additional 5kg of shringar (decorations) on it, which he wears for around 12 hours a day, left his home at seven and became a sadhu at 16. He says he failed thrice in the third standard and is now doing research on Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesh, the trinity of gods representing creation, preservation and destruction, respectively. He poses for photographs with people and security personnel. “Don’t consider the earth to be a dustbin. Even the kings kept a spittoon so they don’t dirty the ground,” he says. People queue up at the akharas either to take the blessings of the Naga Sadhus, or out of curiosity, intrigued by the esoteric, history and lore. Some of the ascetics bask in publicity, others shun it. Some unleash their famed tem­per, while others maintain a serene disposition.

At the Juna akhara, one of their 13 recognised akharas, Sakshi Giri, a sadhvi who took sanyas at 14 in 2007 at Kumbh in Allahabad, says she learnt mantras from her father and emulated him performing religious rituals. As someone in her tent offers prasad and a cup of tea, she clarifies that the sadhvis are not Naga Sadhus, and are always clothed. Born in Dibrugarh in Assam, she made mud lings (cylindrical objects symbolising Shiva) when she was five. “At that time, it was play for me. I didn’t know what bhak­ti was then. As I grew up, I tried to understand Mahadev [Shiva],” says Sakshi Giri, who studied in an Assamese-medium school till she was 14. Now, at 31, wearing saffron clothes, a rudraksha and a large bindi of vermilion and sandalwood paste on her forehead, the Haridwar-based sadhvi is a mahant, with two kotwals who carry metal lathis and walk along with her. A fourth-generation sanyasi in her family, she has her kutiya (hut) in her hometown, where her older sisters and brothers meet her like any other visi­tor, addressing her as “mataji”, but she has never gone back home.

In another humbler tent, with a motorbike of a Mahant parked in one corner, two sadhvis—Durga Giri and Meera Giri— narrate their past. While Durga Giri studied till Class 10, Meera Giri, who never went to school, was married and had children before becoming a sadhvi. Durga Giri, whose matted hair falls to the floor, despite the two mundans (tonsuring), done as part of the initiation ceremonies, says she does not know how she became a sanyasin. “It’s karma,” she says, lighting a bidi. As I get inquisitive, their guru Mangal Giri, a Naga Sadhu dressed in saffron sitting across, says: “Fakiri mein jo mazaa hai, amiri mein nahi hai (the fun in poverty does not exist in riches).”

According to Sarkar, the Dasnami monks have held the two-fold idea of astra and shastra (sword and scripture) and anticipated the fighting monks of Christianity, who originated in the 12th century, while the Nagas appeared in history many centuries later. “Unfortunately, we possess no contemporary record of the origin and history of the different Akharas before the line of Go­sain Rajendra Giri, who became famous in the affairs of the Delhi empire about 1750. Since that time we have detailed and correct accounts of the doings of the fighting monks [Nagas],” he writes.

Further, he wrote in his book published in 1955, how Rajendra Giri went with his followers to Allahabad and “burnt with indig­nation at the sight of atrocities committed by the Afghans and offered the aid of his arms gratuitously to the besieged garrison. His intervention gave a new turn to the war. The dispirited Oudh troops were fired with a new spirit at the sight of the courage of the death-defying monks, who refused shelter and were delighted to bask in the sun under the enemy fusillade. They executed light­ning attacks upon the Afghan camp and did daily killings there.” He also wrote that in the mid-18th century, a large body of Nagas won martyrdom by fighting for their faith against the fanatical Afghans at Gokul. Later, in 1858, the Gosain militia formed the bodyguard of Rani Lakshmi Bai when she fled from the fort of Jhansi during its siege by a British army officer, Sir Hugh Rose.

It is at Kumbh that various akharas of the Naga Sadhus initiate more into their fold, in ceremonies that last nearly 48 hours. One such ritual, of the Juna akhara, began the following morning on the banks of the Ganga. It is foggy and cold when those waiting to be initiated, around 800-1,000, sit barefeet on the sand wearing just white loincloth. Among the seers, in saffron robes, overseeing the ritual, some take selfies on their mobile phones. As a crowd collects to watch the proceedings, the seers try to push people away, stop­ping them from taking videos and pho­tographs, even as a drone hovers over them. A freelance cameraman, who is shooting a video, says a kotwal almost threw his camera away. The bystanders increase as the sun comes out, drawing the wrath of the seers, including one dressed like Shiva, with ash smeared on him and a cloth designed like a cat skin around his waist. One of them threat­ens to throw someone into the Ganga, while another warns a man that he will also be made a Naga Sadhu if he moves nearer to the ceremony site. One kotwal asks me why I was taking the trouble to stand in the crowd. When I tell him I will write about it, he asks, “And what will you get writing about it?”

A little later, a couple of police­men try to push the crowd back. Those who are being initiated, young and old, are tonsured, leaving only a braid in the middle of the head, and shaved. Their bodies are smeared with ash. It takes hours to complete the process. They are then given the janeyu, a sacred white thread, worn across the body. Later, they perform pind daan, a Hindu ritual generally performed in homage to departed souls, but in their case, it is symbolic of severing ties with their past. Besides carrying out pind daan for their past and future generations, they perform one for themselves, putting an end to their life before becoming a sanyasi. By evening they return to the akhara, where the rest of the rituals are carried out. No one is allowed to watch it. A seer says that it involves sitting under their respective flags, a havan (a ritual in which offerings are made into a sacred fire) at night, cutting the braid by their guru, reciting mantras and the tang tod, signifying breaking off from any earthly attachment. The next morning, they will take a dip in the Ganga, completing the process.

A day later, the Juna akhara organises an initiation ceremony for women to become sanyasins. The women, wearing white cloth of around three metres, also have their heads shaved. Among around 100 women who get initiated is Purna Giri, a 45-year-old law gradu­ate from Delhi, who has worked in tribunal courts. What drove her to take this step? “I didn’t think. It just happened. For the past 21 years, I have been living a spiritual life,” she says. She, however, refuses to divulge her earlier name, saying it has no meaning now. She gives her mobile number, but her phone goes unanswered.

While some get initiated even before they have known ado­lescence, others become ascetics later in life, after getting mar­ried and having children or even grandchildren. While several of them are illiterate, some have left lucrative professions. As times change, these devotees of Shiva, some of whom smoke cannabis, too, have changed, with several of them owning mobile phones and laptops. The quest to explore the life of the Naga Sadhus leaves me rummaging through more questions. This is not the first Kumbh where their overpowering presence has put them in the spotlight. Nor will this be the last.

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