Bonding with The Lord - Jagannath, Popular Culture and Community Formation

About the Book Few other Hindu gods guide a regional consciousness, pervade walks of everyday life and define a collective psyche the way Lord Jagannath does in Odisha and its contiguous areas. Jagannath is metonymic of Odisha and the Odia way of life, arguably much more than any other god for a particular geography or its peoples.

While not derecognizing the historical and the spiritual aspects of jagannath, Bonding with the Lord attempts to look at the deployment of Jagannath in contemporary cultural practices involving the sensorial in the widest sense. The project of a cultural Jagannath not only materializes him in people's everyday practices but also democratizes scholarship on him. The expansion of the scope of research on Jagannath to cultural expressions in a more encompassing way rather than confining to 'elitist' religious literary sources makes him an everyday presence and significantly enhances his sphere of influence.

Jagannath's 'tribal' origin, his association with Buddhism and Jainism and his avatar status make him an all-encompassing, multilayered symbol and a treasure trove for multiple interpretations.

Foreword I congratulate Jyotirmaya Tripathy and Uwe Skoda on their fascinating anthology Bonding with the Lord: [agannath, Popular Culture and Community Formation and for inviting me to contribute a foreword to it. This takes me back to my own sustained engagement with Odisha and Jagannath studies that defined me as a scholar. As a member of the two Orissa Research Projects (ORPs) of the German Research Council from 1970 to 1975 and from 1999 to 2005, it is alluring for me to reconsider their history in view of the present volume. It makes me see the present anthology as a logical expansion of some of the issues that my colleagues and I delved deep into.

One observation is particularly noteworthy. Looking back to the preliminaries of the second ORP, the subject of a few chapters in this anthology reminds me strongly of the conference with a very similar title 'Iagannath Revisited: Studying Society, Religion and the State in Orissa', which had been organized jointly together with Prof. Burkhard Schnabel in June 1997 at the South Asia Institute at Heidelberg. The German Research Council financed the conference.

The subsequently published conference volume with the same title was presented to the Chief Minister of Odisha, Naveen Patnaik in 2001. In fact, the inducement to organize this conference was the expected presence of several Odia and Indian scholars of Odisha studies at that time at Heidelberg such as Gaya Charan Tripathi, Gaganendra Nath Dash, Prasanna Kumar Nayak, Ishita Banerjee, Saurabh Dube and Subrata Mitra. What would have been more obvious than to invite together with them also the former German members of the first ORP to a conference for a kind of stocktaking about ongoing new research on Odisha about twenty years after the end of the first ORP? No exact plans about future cooperation existed yet at that time, although Burkhard Schnabel and I had toyed already with the idea of trying to apply for a second ORP. But the successful course of the conference and the consent and approval by the participants led to the clear decision to apply for a new project as the second ORP.

But it took more than a year to define in detail the new research agenda of a second 0 RP in view of the results of the first project and the individual and general accomplishments of Odisha studies during the last twenty years. As well documented by its major publication, The Cult of [agannath and the Regional Tradition of Orissa, published in 1978, the first ORP had focused primarily on Puri and its Jagannath cult. The result of the intensive debates about follow-up studies was to apply in 1998 for a successor project with the title Various Identities: Socio-Cultural Profiles of Orissa in Historical and Regional Perspectives. Its major idea was to extend the studies beyond Puri and its Iagannath cult into its hinterland and its 'various identities'. The outcomes of the studies of the second project were anthologies like Periphery and Centre edited by Prof. Georg Pfeiffer and Centers Out There? Facets of Sub regional Identities of Orissa, which I edited with Georg Barkier.

It is interesting and fascinating to read the 'Introduction' of this anthology 20 years after the end of a great project on Odisha studies. But again, as in the case of the beginning of ORP II, the present volume rightly intends not only a visiting and revisiting of Jagannath; it reveals a clear progression and further advance of Odisha and Iagannath studies. Already the sub-title of the book 'Iagannath, Popular Culture and Community Formation' and of its introduction reveals three such significant advances. They focus on 'community formation' and not state formation (the subject of both ORPs in different ways), on 'popular culture' rather than Brahman cal or tribal culture, and finally, not only in but also 'beyond' Odisha.

To quote from the 'Introduction'; 'Iagannath is metonymic of Odisha's life-world', but what matters in this context to my knowledge is the fact that so far only very little genuine scholarly work has been devoted to these essential but neglected issues. Without going into details, but looking at the contributions to this anthology, I have the strong impression that it fulfills the necessary requirements to be a noteworthy intervention in the way [agannath is understood and will inspire new projects on, in and beyond Odisha.

Introduction EVERYDAY BONDING WITH LORD JAGANNATH IN AND BEYOND ODISHA

Few other Hindu gods guide a regional consciousness or define the collective psyche the way Lord Jagannath does in Odisha and contiguous areas. Though Lord Tirupati or Padmanabhaswamy may command similar adulation and a lot more revenue, Lord Jagannath is a metonym for Odisha's life-world, arguably much more than any other god for a particular geography or its peoples. Though, occasionally and perhaps increasingly, challenged by sub regional deities, such as Ma Tarini or Ma Samaleswari or a competing Shiva as in Lingaraj or Loknath temples, He remains the ultimate reference point (both sacred and secular) for what constitutes Odianess and Odisha's sociocultural life, and provides the glue for non-resident Odias as well. There is hardly any facet of Odisha’s social world which has not been shaped by histories and narratives around J agannath, His abode at Puri and the symbols associated with His name. Needless to say, His impact on people is not limited to particular registers within the religious sphere but is overdetermined in different social contexts. His deployments are not confined to the quest for a metaphysical realm outside the material and social but are integral to them.

His sway over people spills beyond modern Odisha's borders and commands cross- regional affiliations around temples in West Bengal, Tripura, Tamil Nadu, New Delhi or various parts of the Western world that leads to a multi-region sacred, evident in several Jagannath temples far away from what we know as [agannath culture area. This spillage complicates the idea of a regional tradition that conventionally distinguishes itself from other regions on the basis of some underlying principles underpinning each region. Perhaps, we can never be sure if such spillages dilute the epistemic and experiential specificity of a regional tradition or strengthen it by building networks of such affiliations across the globe. But more than anything, these networks take us from the institutional and structuralism Iagannath to a popular and cultureless' Jagannath and the focus, thus, moves from what [agannath is to what Iagannath means in everyday contexts. This culturalisation of Lord Jagannath deals with artefacts, objects and experiences in our daily lives-what we hear, watch, eat or the temples we visit or the way we fast and pray. This meaning-making process shifts our attention from Iagannath to His sociocultural usage and guides the chapters in this anthology.

Towards linganath Praxis:' Culture, Materiality and Agency Though religious and mythological literature on Iagannath grows virtually every day and hundreds of new books on Jagannath leela (divine play) and mahima (glory) are produced every year to be consumed by an ever-expanding number of devotees, they are mostly in Odia language and cater to the devotees' religious universe. The same is the case as far as films; video/music albums or prabachanas (religious speeches) are concerned that provide a sense of purpose in an Odia's life, not just a guideline for rituals but as a guide to everyday social conduct. Scholarly attention to Jagannath in English (also in German) language only partially responded to the constantly evolving culturalisation of Iagannath faith, while this volume contributes in novel ways to the existing but often dated literature with a focus on the Lord. The two major Orissa Research Projects (ORP I and II) funded by the German Research Council, while offering path- breaking insights, had limited space for a sustained engagement with everyday Jagannath. ORP I had focused on the evolution of Jagannath worship through the ages and the religious/political aspects in the context of kingship. The Cult of [agannath and the Regional Tradition of Orissa edited by Eschmann, Kulke and Tripathi (1986) was the most prominent outcome of this project.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages