Do Our Gods Hit the Gym?

Do our Gods hit the Gym?

I am not trying to be an agent provocateur (my friends would say i never had to try hard). Nor am i trying to incur the saffron wrath so fashionably feared by the fashionably liberal. I am not being disrespectful of our Gods, but have you seen them change? I somehow seem to think so. That sounds like blasphemy.

God by definition is the only changeless and immutable ‘entity’ and thus purporting change is sacrilege. But some of us have also borrowed the monotheistic creed of the English language and to remain consistent with its linguistic purity have taken to using ‘gods’ with a small ‘g’ and “God” when referring to that singular ‘entity’; as though only the monotheist has the right to the capital G, which includes only the Semitic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam). As an aside it is indeed funny to see the Malaysian Supreme Court decide that ‘God’ cannot be translated as “Allah” and vice versa (ironically thereby denying the universality of their conception of a supreme being); accusing the Christians of confounding the innocent Malays by such mistranslations. This means that my Hindu gods now stand shoulder to shoulder with extinct gods like Zeus, Apollo, Thor, Woden, Freya or even Yggdrasil (Nordic). It is certainly no august company as they are mostly dead except in literary allusions by equally dead poets. The Greek gods long abandoned the Acropolis and are probably hiding in the British Museum plotting to take their lost “Elgin” marbles back home. Some say they are probably dead as all Greece is now an Augean stable (especially for Syriza Tsipras and Varoufakis-have you noticed his biceps and pecs, he does hit the gym!) and that they might as well call Hera the wife of Zeus as Merkel and offer her libations and oblations.

When i range my Hindu gods and goddesses against their versions in comparison, my Hindu gods seem malnourished and even puny despite their purported awesome power. The firangi gods seem muscular, hirsute, with raging hormones notoriously fickle minded and jealous (some of our Gods are no less) and rage and show wrath and passion (and rape and pillage) that would put us to shame. They even age and show grey beards (look at the Guy above the Sistine chapel...boy He is old, even his finger barely touches) somehow making them seem less than men we admire. I even wonder if they have to take insulin shots and antihypertensive and might need anti arthritic balms. In other words when we use the terms God or gods we might mean very different things with only some overlap that we yearn to stretch and homogenise with urgency so that the ‘Other’ thinks us to be respectable and not anachronistic like the hammer of Thor.

But then I am a Hindu blessed with plenty of “Gods” to add to this confusion. Max Muller even coined the term ‘henotheism’ which meant that the conception of the supreme is singular and unitary despite the varied modes men choose for worship (even though that sounds like a banal apology). However that is also not entirely true in ritual practice where the priest begins with Om, then propitiates Ganapati, then the Guru, then a host of other deities and then the particular One to whom the worship is directed to. But my Gods are changing, and I am not sure it is an entirely nice thing. The first time i noticed this change was during the Ram Janmabhoomi issue in the early nineties.

Ram (and i do have a very soft corner for him) who in most Indian representations over the centuries in art was a slender graceful lissom youth who looks sometimes shy and bashful (imagine his ‘tribhangi’ thrice bent form with his bow next to an even more bashful Sita with downcast eyes.  Such a Ram suddenly became muscular sporting biceps and pecs and six packs (post Ghajini) have a glint in his eye seeking the ‘other’ shore. I wince when i see such representations  and wonder that such a toned body only modern gyms can deliver (with recommended scoops of Whey protein they recommend pre and post workouts) with enormous fees that includes six months of trainers and dietary supplements of creatinie and albumin. I wondered how a youth in his late teens wandering in the forests eating tubers, roots, fruits and shoots can have that form even if he were using the carcasses of rakshasas or felled logs for weight training. That is not all, even Shiva his patron God whose bow he broke with impunity much to the wrath of that half crazy anti Kshatriya Parasuram has been roped into this masculinisation project. As an aside some artisans at Kumortuli now conceive of Durga in the image of the Chinese Guan Yin or Avalokiteshwara/Tara with a thousand arms. Amish would have us think of Ram as a fresh MBA (without the blazer) at his Orientation programme and Shiva as a wild guy; while Devdutt would drown us in a woolly esoteric interpretation. I must clarify that i don’t see this as a Right wing conspiracy that the Left would urge me to believe.

Early mornings we at home switch on the TV with Bhakti Channel (Telugu) and play the holy chants of the Gods e.g. Shiva shahasranama on Mondays, Vishnu on Wednesdays and Lalitha on Fridays etc. I wonder Shiva has grown so bulky and so exaggeratedly muscular that his soft facial features do not gel with those rippling biceps or quadriceps. It is as though the face was using a different aesthetic style of ‘soumya’ (tranquil) and the body that of ‘ugra’ (ferocious) a different style unnaturally affixed together. Mercifully i have seen few portrayals of Vishnu that way making me wonder how we harness different Gods to our different agendas of virilisation. Virilisation in the Hindu tradition is not very old and traces its roots to the late 19th century with Swami Vivekananda, and possibly Swami Dayananda trying to reconcile the violent encounter with the West that led to subjugation. Swamiji thought that that the Hindu society seemed to have become effete and weak and needed to invoke its own indigenous martial warrior ethic. He probably even drew parallels to Western society for such a project that was imagined on the lines of a strict monotheism and a dictum of “one God, one book one church”. Unfortunately not much has been written on this idea. I would believe that Sister Nivedita rather than the Ramakrishna Math was probably one of the few who supported this line of interpretation that also kindled the spirit of Sri Aurobindo at Alipore. Virilisation is an agenda that both reformers and politicians have used to pursue their varied ends and is reflected in the changing contours of Hindu iconography. But changing iconography does not mean that i wish to see Ganapati in skinny jeans and a rakishly unbuttoned shirt and spraying himself with Wild Stone. This brings me to the entire point of this piece that calendar art or even popular religious portrayals seem to have unloosened their conformity to traditional aesthetic sensibilities, reflecting their own anxiety with the ‘body’. This is embedded in a changing social and aesthetic sensibility that prescribes new values and eschews old attitudes and generating new anxieties. It would be for example considered unhygienic and dirty to think of Napoleon who purportedly wrote to Josephine from the battlefield that he wanted her unbathed for a few days more to make love after he arrived; it makes us wonder not at the magic of pheromones but the anxiety that we show today to mask body odour or highlight the shape of our limbs through our clothes.

Vrishabhavahanamurti Chola bronze 11th CE

Hindu iconography, unlike the Greek did not value the pursuit of an empirical reality in the portrayal of the human form. They valued a felt reality that was intuitively grasped (sadrishya) rather than an anatomical or objective accuracy of the human form; being faithful to an inner essence of the object (swadharma). That does not mean that Indian iconography had no conceptions of proportions (pramana) of the human form. In fact they had many schools of such proportions. How can one who has beheld the glorious form of Shiva as “Vrishabhavahanamurti” 11th CE Chola bronze at the Thanjavur museum even say with sufficient reason what beauty is? Can we say that the sthapati did not have an idea of proportions?

Vatsyayana (4th -6th CE) has enumerated six elements of form or rupa viz. proportion (pramana), perception (rupa bheda), emotion (bhava), grace (lavanya yojana) semblance to reality (sadrishya) proficiency with materials and instruments (varnikabhanga). Proportion was to the artist not merely measurement but more importantly harmony and rhythm. Pramana thus was not based on the study or mimesis of empirical forms but sought to capture an inner beauty. These were then codified by the margi traditions as canons of iconometry (image measurements). The human form in art has followed diverse conventions in balancing empiricism and aesthetic sensibility; for example Greek norms embodied in canons for the human figure such as those of Polyclitus etc. Indian iconometric canons included those of Varahamihira, Brihatsamhita, Pratima Lakshana, Vikhanasagama, etc.

Modelling of features was to be based on an idealised form of youthfulness of a sixteen year old (shodashi), with full fleshy limbs that masked musculature, joints and veins, which were not considered auspicious. Herein lies the conflict with the canonical representation of Ram as a slender youth of the forest and Ram the body builder from Powerhouse Gym; Shiva the ascetic who is supposed to be a meditating on charnel grounds oblivious to bodily needs and Shiva of a pec deck or leg press machine. I am not advocating any intervention, nor am i really critical of the new imaginings. I believe that a new aesthetic will emerge with time as we struggle with representing our Gods in our own image, need and anxiety. Most of their apparel and presentations seem to be the fashions of the Vijayanagar empire in South India. The North seems to deck them in even later period costume and refuses them to be even glimpsed in modern western wear. Indeed neither do we see Jehovah giving up his white sheets for blue denims. Our costumes for the Gods are frozen at an unreasoned point of history to give semblance of antiquity without being authentic. I dont imagine they need wearable devices of not smartphones. But what they hold in their hands does seem curious if not anachronistic. I say this with no malice, but just reflecting on those tridents, bows and arrows, elephant goads, nooses, discs, conches etc. Does anyone even think them fearsome? But despite  the incongruity i worship them all and with devotion.

I do hope that now our shodashopachara or the sixteen offerings in puja does not include antiperspirant deos, aromatherapy spas and foot massages or replace bells with dumbbells there for some comfort.