On the occasion of Mahashivratri every year, the Hindu community of Kashmir makes a very special arrangement to celebrate the auspicious occasion. It is the biggest festival of Kashmir which has a history of thousands of years of celebration in Bharat and especially in the Kashmir valley. The Kashmiri Pandit community, the indigenous people of Kashmir, celebrate the ‘Vatak-Puja’ and the Mahashivratri jointly. It is for them a three-week festival that has deep philosophical, religio-cultural-spiritual and social meaning in the context of the civilization of Kashmir.
Since it is the most important occasion for the Kashmir valley, there used to be a very strong tradition to celebrate it at individual and family level with the social tradition of exchange of ‘Vatak-Puja prasad’ among the near and dear ones. However, there used to be no special programme for celebrations collectively at the social level. This aspect came under debate in the RSS meetings in Kashmir quite a few times. It was in 1981 that the top RSS functionaries and the other important activists within the valley took a decision to organise the celebrations collectively in the year 1982 besides the usual celebrations at the family level.
The project was taken in hand by the RSS directly and named ‘Krishenganga-Pradarshani Mahashivratri-1982’. The Shri Bhat Seva-Ashram was entrusted with the responsibility of organising the event for two to three days in Srinagar on the days following the Mahashivratri. The Mahanagar-Toli was asked to make all necessary arrangements in this regard and initiate a public contact drive in the month of January-1982, one month ahead of the event to come. All important karyakarta-swayamsevaks were involved directly and indirectly to make the important project a grand success.
Among the team members at the top, this author was also involved in the organising team. There were other important members in it and the work began under the able leadership of Amarnath Vaishnavi, Tikalal Taploo, Pushkar Nath Karnail and D.P.Kaul. The other members from the youngsters included Bal Krishen Seru, Ashok Kaul, Utpal Kaul, Kuldeep Sumbly, Chandji Bhat, Ramesh Ganjoo, Tej Krishen, Roshanlal Dalal besides this author. It was a very homogenous group of activists having experience, energy, enthusiasm and fight to finish spirit at their command to accomplish the task.
The first thing to be decided was the venue and there was a consensus about it. Accordingly, the management of the famous Ganpatyar temple in the Habbakadal area was contacted for this purpose. The Ganpatyar temple is a very famous place of worship for the Hindu community situated in the heart of the Srinagar city. The chief office bearer of the management of the temple Hridey Nath Jattoo was contacted by us and he readily agreed to put at the disposal the whole complex of the temple for the Shri Bhat Seva Ashram in order to organise the important event.
It was decided to organise the whole event in three formats simultaneously:
a) organising a public programme on the day of Mahashivratri,
b) organise an exhibition based on temples, shrines, great saints and sages of the valley, places of cultural importance and relevance situated in various corners of the valley and the current socio-cultural situation of the valley in context of the Hindu community based in the Kashmir valley; and
c) make celebrations in various ways around the one kilometre radius of the Ganpatyar temple -the venue of the grant event. The Organising committee of the event contacted all important religious, cultural and social organisations active in the city of Srinagar besides the temple committees and invited them to the grand and monumental event.
The whole area from Basant Bagh-Badiyar to Kralakhud-Habbakadal was decorated with banners of different social and religious organizations. Big coloured cloth hoardings were demonstrated throughout the area. At the main venue of the temple special celebrations were organised inspiring people to take part in the whole gamut of programmes being conducted for three to four days. The Vinayak Middle School in the Ganpatyar complex was earmarked for the Krishenganga-Pradarshani. Here it would be important to mention about the inspiration of naming the exhibition as Krishenganga-Pradarshani.
In 1979, during the Kumbh-mela at Prayag (formerly Allahabad), the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) organised the 2nd World Hindu Conference alongwith the World Sanskrit Conference. It was a huge global event in which lakhs of people participated. The Kumbh attracted both domestic and foreign delegations for the two international events being held during the mela period. VHP on this occasion also organised an elaborative exhibition depicting various aspects of Hindu history, culture, civilization and other aspects of Sanatan Dharma. The exhibition was the star attraction for the people who visited the Kumbh. The big exhibition which lasted for the full period of the Kumbh was named as ‘Dharamganga-Pradarshani’.
A compact big team of swayamsevaks-activists from Kashmir was deputed to this event in January-1979 which camped at the mela site for a full one month period under the banner of Shri Bhat Seva Ashram. This author was also a part of the team in 1979. We were highly impressed by the whole event and particularly the ‘Dharamganga-Pradarshani’. The inspirations of the Kumbh, World Hindu Conference, World Sanskrit Conference, Dharmganga-Pradarshani and the other large-scale programmes and events in the Kumbh had a great impact on our mind which continued to guide all of us thereafter. It was in this context that the exhibition being organised in 1982 during the Mahashivratri-1982 was nomenclatured as ‘Krishenganga-Pradarshani’.
Krishanganga is a famous river in the north-western part of the Jammu and Kashmir state. The river originates from the Krishansar Lake (or Vishnusar Lake) near the high-altitude meadows of Sonamarg in the Ganderbal district of J&K. It flows north through the Tulail and Gurez valleys before entering Pakistan. It is fed by glacier streams and is known for its scenic beauty. While it begins as the Krishanganga in Kashmir, it has been renamed as the ‘River Neelam’ by the Pakistan occupied Jammu and Kashmir government due to communal influences. The river eventually flows into the Jhelum River near Muzaffarabad. The river Krishenganga is also famous as the pilgrimage centre which would fall enroute to Sharda Mata peeth in the Shardi village in Pak-occupied Jammu and Kashmir, In the current context, this river is also a natural line of control between Jammu and Kashmir and the POJK in the Teetwal sector (Kupwara district) which Pakistan calls Neelum valley.
From the civilizational point of view, Krishenganga river has had a great significance for the indigenous people of Kashmir, the Kashmir Pandits, for the last thousands of years. This river is a crucial water source and supports ‘Kishanganga Hydroelectric Power Project’ in Bandipur district in Kashmir valley that Pakistan perceives as a permanent headache for itself claiming the river as a part of the Indus Water Treaty between Bharat and Pakistan that the current government in Bharat led by Narendra Modi has put into undefined abeyance.
Coming back to the original topic, the event went very smoothly from the word go and hundreds of people were charmed to participate in the function enthusiastically. Scholars of various hues, social and religious figures, artists, musicians, singers and children made lucid presentations in the most lovable way. Discourses and discussions formed part of the elaborate series of programmes. A miniature form of Amarnath cave was put on the stage of the main function. Poets and singers lifted the whole atmosphere of the event for three days.
The Krishenganga-Pradarshani was held in the main hall of the Vinayak Middle School and it attracted large crowds despite cold conditions in the valley. Initially, it was decided to hold the exhibition for three to four days, later it was extended by three more days due to the public demand. The huge success of the historic event led the Mahanagar-Toli to a) preserve the Pradarshani for future use on important occasions, b) make the Mahashivratri collective celebrations an important social aspect of the festival in Kashmir, c) build up social contact drives to consolidate the gains of the event and d) ensure participation of main social and religious organizations in the RSS work in future course of time.
Thus the tradition was set in 1982 and it continued to be an annual affair every year in the Srinagar city. The unfortunate forced mass-exodus of the Hindu community from Kashmir brought pause to this tradition after 1990. However, a new beginning was made during the 1990s in this regard by various organizations in their exile. The frontline organizations which carried the noble tradition ahead included Panun Kashmir, Jammu Kashmir Vichar Manch, Aiks Youth, Daughters of Panun Kashmir, Sanjeevani Sharda Kendra and also the local associations and temple committees. As of now, Mahashivratri celebrations among the Kashmir Pandit community in exile besides being a deeply family affair has also assumed importance as a collective social celebration.
The credit for a positive social transformation of the main festival of Kashmir –Mahashivratri, goes invariably to the team of RSS that conceptualized the collective celebrations in 1981. It is reminiscent of what Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak envisaged Ganpati puja festival in the entire Maharashtra more than one hundred years ago that has a great and bigger magnitude and which has assumed now a grand scale over the years globally. The exiled community of Kashmiri Pandits has fully endorsed this positive transformation and the new generation also seems to take it to new horizons in future….!
