Abstract 136. Shankar Narayan Bagh
Mahima Movement emerged as a powerful religious movement symbolising simmering dissent among the tribals and lower caste communities in the 19th century colonial Orissa. This movement articulated the aspirations of the marginalised and challenged the Brahminical Hinduism signified by practices of untouchability, exploitation and various forms of caste based discriminations. It symbolised popular social dissent against monotheistic order by contesting the dominant caste hegemony and delegitimised the bourgeoisie class (the Chieftains, landlords) and the priests (the Brahmans). The prominent leaders of this movement suggested something like “Mahima” and “Alekh” which literally meant glory and unwritten / oral respectively. In principle, they proposed formless, shapeless, classless, and omnipresent character of the devine, and the whole idea was to demolish the exploitative order of Brahminical Hinduism. Subsequently the Mahima movement had to also negotiate with the emerging colonial modernity based on the idea of equality, humanity and universal brotherhood. The paper aims to analyse the dissenting traditions of the tribals and lower sections combined with the modern values to fight against the hegemonic caste practices as well as exploitations by the burgeiose class. While analysing social history of the movement, one could see that after the death of the founder of the Movement, it was gradually institutionalised. It is important to mention here that the founder Mahima Svami was very much against the institutionalisation and rituals. But after his demise, the followers established his gadi(seat), formulated norms and devised various rituals. Subsequently the movement got highly sanskritised and hindusied, as well leading to the Brahminic connection.This paper is an attempt to critically examine the Mahima Movement with contextualising it in the 19th century Orissa (rather undivided colonial Bengal). It is very important to examine how such a powerful protest movement like Mahima which rose against the hegemonic and oppressive Brahminic Hinduism was appropriated by its object of criticism.
Dissenting Rituals and Ritualising Dissent: Situating Mahima Movement in Orissa
Mahima Movement emerged as a powerful religious movement symbolising simmering dissent among the tribals and lower caste communities in the 19th century colonial Orissa. This movement articulated the aspirations of the marginalised and challenged the Brahminical Hinduism signified by practices of untouchability, exploitation and various forms of caste based discriminations. It symbolised popular social dissent against monotheistic order by contesting the dominant caste hegemony and delegitimised the bourgeoisie class (the Chieftains, landlords) and the priests (the Brahmans). The prominent leaders of this movement suggested something like “Mahima” and “Alekh” which literally meant glory and unwritten / oral respectively. In principle, they proposed formless, shapeless, classless, and omnipresent character of the devine, and the whole idea was to demolish the exploitative order of Brahminical Hinduism. Subsequently the Mahima movement had to also negotiate with the emerging colonial modernity based on the idea of equality, humanity and universal brotherhood. The paper aims to analyse the dissenting traditions of the tribals and lower sections combined with the modern values to fight against the hegemonic caste practices as well as exploitations by the burgeiose class. While analysing social history of the movement, one could see that after the death of the founder of the Movement, it was gradually institutionalised. It is important to mention here that the founder Mahima Svami was very much against the institutionalisation and rituals. But after his demise, the followers established his gadi(seat), formulated norms and devised various rituals. Subsequently the movement got highly sanskritised and hindusied, as well leading to the Brahminic connection.This paper is an attempt to critically examine the Mahima Movement with contextualising it in the 19th century Orissa (rather undivided colonial Bengal). It is very important to examine how such a powerful protest movement like Mahima which rose against the hegemonic and oppressive Brahminic Hinduism was appropriated by its object of criticism.
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