Immolation of the Fire
What can ever happen to a nation that brands its goddesses a witch? In these dark times, even the fire won’t atone for our sins.
In the verdant valleys of Himachal Pradesh, surrounded by the majestic and unmoving Himalayas, lies the Kangra district, one of the most populous districts in the state.
Within its many cultural folds, it carries the divine home of a goddess—a personification of fire: Jwala or flame.
As the story goes, upon seeing the humiliation of her husband, Shiva, by her father, Parvati (or Sati) killed herself. Her body would have angered Shiva, who would have launched into the destructive dance of Pralaya Tandava, had Lord Vishnu not intervened with his Sudarshan chakra to divide Parvati’s body into fifty-one pieces, spread across the subcontinent.
One of these, her tongue, landed in Kangda, which henceforth came to be known as Jwala Devi.
There’s more to her story, but I want to linger three seconds longer on this personification of fire. As long as it takes, to be honest, to burn the image into your mind.
For long, humans have skirted the hems of fire and its majesty. We’ve adopted and subsumed many elements into our civilizational pursuits, but none remains as vicious, vivacious, and virtuous as fire.
It’s an essential element in the narrative of our fabric: whether you’re agnostic about humans chancing upon fire or believe in Prometheus’s prognosis on humans, aiding them through the gift of fire.
Fire burns eternal in our collective memory. It also gains many faces and functions across various cultures and beliefs: Agni, Hephaestus, Hestia, Pele, Brigid, Ra, Chantico, Sanbō-Kōjin, Zhurang, Nyambe, Ọya, or even the Abrahamic depictions of communications that God channelled to his prophets by igniting a tree.
It’s the sanctifier of the impure, the personification of a holy witness, and the immolator of the deceased. While not all these figures apply to other religious practices as they do to Hinduism, fire remains a holy element nonetheless.
Just like these gods, and in their place, fire stands where humanity does. It was there to form a ring of hospitability against forces unknown: a comforting hearth we’d eventually call home, a mediator of nutrition for palatable tastes, and a piece of daylight to dissuade the ever-encroaching darkness. We formed our relationships, families, and societies around it.
In essence, we were reborn.
Fire in the Dark
I, too, have had some trysts with this Jwala, this fire . . .
I saw her heat the pans and the underside of cookers under my mother’s watchful command, toiling her energy to prepare our food.
I saw her burn my fingers when I tried to make her dance on the matchsticks in my youthful, innocent, and inexperienced fingers.
I saw her swallow swathes of litter and breathe out the tar that could have harmed us, but I also saw her spill out from man-made tubes to scorch the earth bone dry.
I saw her fashion molten metal into instruments and implements of human ingenuity, albeit used with impunity to sanctify their enemies.
I saw her lick the drops of ghee and offerings on sacrificial grounds during festivities and celebrations, with no hint of her flames harming those around her.
I saw her wrath bring down giant brickworks and reduce them to ashes, as black as the sins of man.
I saw her witness the bond between me and my wife as we circled around her holy gaze, forever binding our love for eternity.
I saw her free many a mortal body from its earthly bonds as we shed tears that could never soothe the fierceness of her purpose.
Fire, in all her forms, has been the engine of human evolution. But lately, I saw her in a different form, one that I could not swallow down even when chased with a mouthful of water from the holy Ganga.
I saw her raging fires immolate an innocent girl whose only dream was to be herself. And that did not sit right with me.
In a recent incident that shocked the nation, no different than all other immolations by in-laws that only shock India rather than jolt her into action, a twenty-six-year-old Nikki Bhati was put on a “trial by fire” by her husband and in-laws.
The reason? Dowry. A sin as immortal as the man who has come to see a woman as his property. And as we all know, a property cannot have freedom—it’s against the basic tenets of ownership, the very act that is sanctified and witnessed by fire in the institution of marriage.
However, this fire—this Jwala, Hestia, Pele, or Ọya—was not complicit. She was only a means to an end.
And dowry? That’s only the new label of the intolerance of a woman, free-spirited, enlightened, and headstrong, that scares the scores of men unable to let go of their pitiful egos.
The fire they use to cook their meat, the fire they use to warm their spines, the fire they hold to spark their creativity . . . when it falls in the hands of a woman, the daughter of Jwala, they cannot stand it.
Does religion matter, then? No. For why, only half a millennium ago, would the women be chased into their fateful pyres? They were smart, they were independent, they were knowledgeable, they were free from the hand of man. These daughters of the new world, of a Jwala reincarnated as Joans of Arc, were condemned as messengers of Satan and branded on the pyre as witches of the west. Salem, Chelmsford, Paisley, Lancashire, Trier, Logroño.
All these years later, the daughters of Jwala found a new mark in a world that’s supposed to be more educated. Supposed to be. It certainly can read. But critical thinking eludes the masses as it did five hundred years ago.
As Nikki succumbed to her injuries, the fire that touched her body was herself immolated in shame. All her light did was etch streaks of soot and stark shadows darker than the sins of the night.
Sati of the New
It hasn’t been long since the practice of Sati came to a halt. The idea of pushing a wife into her husband’s pyre has always been vile. Those first-degree burns, however, still rake the pockets of rural and urban India.
In the midst of all the news of women being burned, I am terrified of even going near the fire. I cannot look her in the eye, much less ask her for her services to the human cause. Those eyes pierce my head, which drops in shame. Yet, there is a wish. Jwala has given me her flames as a daughter. She now locks her gaze with me, almost as a challenge: Let her burn in a new light, away from my shadows.
It is September as of publishing this piece—a month with two prized festivities of the Hindu calendar: Navaratri and Dusshera. Nine nights of celebrating the most powerful women—goddesses—of the Hindu pantheon, followed by the victory of good over evil as effigies of the demon king Raavan are burnt at the pyre. The state of West Bengal will also launch into the most revered festivities bestowed upon Durga.
And right when all this ends, people will go back to burning women in the dark.
There was a rather ill-received and divisive speech by comedian Vir Das about there being two Indias. I wonder where the India that I see unfold with fires fits into his narrative.
This India splits itself with a forced Terminator—the edge between day and night on Earth as seen from space—without the solar divide. It’s not day, it’s not night. Only a stage play that mimics the victory of good over evil.
This India celebrates Parvati, Durga, Kali, Jwala, and countless other incarnations of the Divine Devi in its temples and homes for nine whole nights. On the tenth night, this India steps out to illegitimise its prayers by immolating the daughters of these goddesses. Nikki wasn’t the first, nor will she be the last. All for money and Mercedes. All because the households with Durga’s idols couldn’t bear another Durga in their vicinity.
That Durga, that Sati, that Jwala, could have truly dispelled darkness from their homes, purifying their families for generations to come. She could have immolated their sins, sanctified their souls, and brought prosperity with her hard work and love towards her family. Someone, everyone, grabbed a snuffer from the recesses of the walls and extinguished the only oil lamp, however.
Alas, as the clock strikes the tenth day, this India is once again rife with pyres. The demons of Lanka burn. But in the wake of their shadows, where no one dares to look, Jwala immolates herself.
There’s no Vishnu with his chakra, no Shiva with his tandava.
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