Karnataka - Mangalore   

‘Vedic practices have made inroads into ‘bhoota' worship'

MANGALORE: In his book “Why I am not a Hindu”, Hyderabad-based Dalit historian Kancha Ilaiah talks at length about the localised and non-Vedic nature of Dalit and OBC religious practices.

He stresses that deified local heroes and nature worship form the central cog of Dalit worship and sets it apart from the centralised structure of Brahminic Hinduism that revolves around the holy trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesh. Indeed, he argues, Dalits and OBCs practise a completely different religion, which was later assimilated into Hinduism for political reasons.

Whether hero, spirit and nature worship exists within Hinduism or outside is a matter of much contention, with intellectual heavyweights such as Romila Thapar arguing against Mr. Ilaiah's conception. But there seems to be no quarrel over the fact that ‘bhoota' or ‘daiva' worship, practised across Tulu Nadu, is a non-Vedic, if not non-Hindu, practice. Tulu historian and author Amruth Someshwar says that bhoota worship is the very soul of Tuluva culture and it forms the basis of all socio-cultural and economic relations between the people here.

He makes common cause with Mr. Ilaiah's observation that it is a practice followed by the traditionally oppressed classes in this region.

But Tuluva culture, according to Mr. Someshwar, which was conceived and practised thousands of years ago by the original inhabitants of this land, has seen several waves of “political invasion”. The first to exploit the bhootas were the feudal and landowning castes in the region such as the Bunts, Billavas, and even the Jains, he says. “These castes used the bhootas to assert their ownership over factors of production such as land.” The second wave of assimilation happened when Brahminical forces saw bhoota worship as a threat to the Vedic system. In the past 30 years alone, Vedic practices such as the performance of ‘Sudarshana Homa' and ‘Chandika Yaga' have made inroads into bhoota worship, he says.“The architecture of bhootasthanas is changing and they are being renovated to resemble Hindu temples,” he says.

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