Recently, I just finished reading Nightmarch: A Journey into India’s Naxal Heartlands by Alpa Shah which chronicled an anthropologist’s journey of living underground with the Maoists of India for multiple years.
I had been looking for a primer for the Naxalbari issue prevalent in India for a long time and this was the perfect choice. Pure academic papers do not work for me as my brain attaches the notion of ‘serious study’ and I end up losing interest very early on. The communist movement and its branches were perfectly encapsulated by the book, and it had elements of a thriller too, making it difficult for me to lose attention.
One concept which struck out immediately to me was in the chapter relating to Sacrifice, Renunciation, Liberation and Violence. The senior level members of the movement were mostly educated people who had left the comforts of their homes to fight for an abstract notion of a casteless and communist state. The author questioned their motivations and incentives which made them callously sever all ties with their ‘normal’ lives and gave them the strength to fight the state which is hell-bent on suppressing them.
For the success of such a community-driven movement, the sacrifice of individualism and materialistic ambitions is the bare minimum which is expected. I was immediately attracted to the discourse around this sacrifice of ‘oneself’. How are solidarities created when people offer themselves in sacrifice, in the hopes of a better future?
Alpa Shah referred to Henri Hubert’s Sacrifice: Its Nature and Functions to trace the roots of sacrifice. Originally a gift made by primitives to supernatural beings to appease them, the idea of sacrifice was usually seen from a religious lens. After performing the sacrifice, the devotee was believed to have emerged from a religious transformation and completely rid himself of sin. By the 19th century, sacrificial rites and homages became popular in which the devotee did not expect anything out of his offering. It also became a means to transcend the wears and tears of the real world and enter an ‘other-worldly’ reality that is sacred and sacrosanct. It acted as a crucial tool to unify people by bringing in a ‘creative’ power that warranted sacrificing yourself in the hopes of a better world.
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Maurice Bloch stresses the great variety that exists under the label of ‘sacrifice’. In ancient Greek, sacrifices were necessarily carried out before the commencement of any legal process as it was assumed that power and wisdom were given to the sacrificers in return. In his book, Prey into Hunter: The Politics of Religious Experience, he describes sacrifices that involve a touch of violence, like animal sacrifices and even mutilation. These rituals perpetuate the denial of the impermanence of human life and allow an individual to escape into a spiritual world that promises longevity by assimilation with the deity. Ideally, this signifies the ‘killing of one’s old self’ to give birth to a being that transcends the mortality of the real world.
I went to Amritsar on a trip last month where we spent almost two hours in line at five in the morning for darshan of the golden temple. The line would move at a painstaking snail’s pace and our feet had become numb standing in 4-degree weather. My friend later questioned, why is it widely accepted that any religious visit must have elements of an ordeal? Why is it expected to have suffered some amount of ‘discomfort’ if you undertake a religious journey?
One of the holiest pilgrimages in Hinduism, more than 9 lakh devotees underwent the Vaishno Devi Yatra in January and February 2020 alone. Pilgrims all over the world undertake the long and arduous journey for a multitude of reasons. Some do it to attain moksha which can relieve you from the continual cycles of rebirth, however, most do it for the revitalization provided by spiritual journeys which are marked by gruel and effort.
It is a wide belief that the darshan is marred if the yatra is not undertaken on foot. The sweet fruits of redemption and washing of sins cannot be attained unless the journey is laborious. Sacrifice of ease and comfort is to be presumed.
Ever since humans have started walking, they have walked to feel closer to their gods.
The Babylonians made pilgrimages, as did the Greeks, Israelites, Chinese and Mayans. The Arabic word for pilgrimage, hajj, comes from the Hebrew word for celebration, hag. In Tibetan, the word for human being means “goer.”
Many of these difficult pilgrimages have helped people settle questions of religious identity. Faith in one’s religion is reinforced after a long and trying journey that challenges not just your physical but also mental faculties. Such experiences prove pivotal in an individual’s spiritual path. Satisfaction lies in suffering. As many say, there are no gains without any pain. This might hold true in both communist movements and spiritual fulfillment.
Brain Food for this Week
Here I plug in whatever I am consuming. Someday I would love to write a collection of essays like Briallen Hopper talking about all the things I love in literature, pop culture and music, but that is for the future.
Read 📖 : The Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck
Watch 🍿 : Finished the Fear Street trilogy this week, super fun horror slasher films. Inspired by R.L. Stine’s books of the same name, I’ll recommend this if you need something light and entertaining to watch.
Thank you for reading! Feedback is always welcomed.
Warm Wishes.