I Knew Ganesha Was Alive When He Began Drinking Milk Through His Trunk In 1995

As a child growing up in Bombay, my favourite of the festivals that livened up the otherwise-quite suburban streets of my hometown was the weeklong celebration of Ganesha Chathruti in the autumn. Living a stones throw from the beach, meant that all the local processions inevitably led down, or around, my little street – statues held high, laddus for all, hymns sung through megaphones, lorries loaded with people on their way to the Arabian sea to immerse Lord Ganesha in its waters. I loved the pomp, the loudness, the life that got infused into the city throughout this festival, the larger-than-life statues that took weeks to build…only to be sent off into the salty waters of the sea. It all seemed so animated and colourful in contrast to the midnight masses that marked the biggest celebration of my own faith tradition!

This week’s Davis reading reminded me about that time in my life when I had first-hand interaction with the living Saiva tradition. Yet somehow, whilst reading, I realized that I was much like the museum visitors in Washington, paying to appreciate the statues of Siva and Parvati. There was a distance between me and that living religious experience – the distance allowed me to appreciate the events of Ganesha Chathruti as more of an aesthetic experience – one to be watched from the balcony, rather than one to be experienced on a spiritual plane.

I believe that this is what Davis means when he says, “an Indian image does not appear to us in a museum the same as it does to Indian worshipers in a temple” (17). Siva worshipers in India engage in an active interaction of worship as opposed to the passive divide that exists between object and observer in an aesthetic setting, such as a museum. This is illustrated in the different perspectives of the lingum figure…Where to the Western aesthetic eye, it is insignificant and hence not thought of as worthy of being in museum displays, to the Indian worshiper, the linga is “regarded as the root manifestation of divinity and the emanating source of all other temple images” (Davis, 18)…In other words, not only is it intrinsically divine, it is also the essence of the divinity in that temple.

This past weekend, I spent the better part of Saturday visiting three different places of worship. One of them was the Shri Swaminarayan Mandir at Highway 427 and Finch in north Toronto. Once again, I was playing the role of observer – removed from the tradition and admiring the religious and architectural richness from the outside, looking in. Since my tour group arrived at about 11AM, our guide in the temple told us that we would be unable to go upstairs to the main place of worship because until 11:30AM, “God was having lunch.” I looked up through the skylight of the havelli and thanked Jung for his theory of synchronicity because had I not been reading Davis’s chapter on living images, I would not have been able to fully appreciate God’s lunchtime! Our tour guide also explained that the statues of the deities are regulary bathed, redressed for bedtime, sleep at night, and are fed three meals a day – much like if they were living, breathing beings…which for all intents and purposes, they are believed to be.

Similarly, Davis states that the Siva and Parvati images of Tiruvengadu would have appeared to their viewers “not as simple metal icons, but as living beings covered over in the material and social adornments of their livelihood” (20).

Saivas believe that the divine presence is invoked by ritual and comes to inhabit the statue. For this reason, for the south Indian Saivas, religious icons like the stone linga and the bronze image of Siva at Tiruvengadu are, in fact, fundamentally living and divine beings.

On the other, aesthetically minded, hand the figures of Siva and Parvati are admired for their art quality. They are evaluated as “art objects” that are to be awarded careful treatment. I found this very interesting – that in the West, we treat art objects almost religiously – ensuring proper moisture levels and optimum lighting; we use hushed voices to point out this detail and that. Almost ritually, we in the West know how to operate around objective art. Which leads me to wonder, what happens when art is no longer objective – but rather subjective of a living religion?

I find it interesting that temple worshipers are traditionally separate from the actual divine subjects – having the temple priest interact with the gods on the public’s behalf. This vicarious relationship with the statues is still considered an active interaction with a living God. On the other hand, the visitor to a museum is also removed from the statue – whether it be by a physical barrier like a glass case, or a velvet rope, or polite space…however, this objective aesthetic experience can also produce something akin to rasa, no? And couldn’t we argue then, that that is a religious experience?