SOCIETY
In touch with the past

The Pandas of Hardwar have been maintaining the records of the families of pilgrims for generations, writes C.D. Verma

THERE were times when the concept of family was different from today. The family earlier was an institution, a joint system, characterised by a homogenous togetherness of parents, grandparents, sons and daughters, their spouses, even uncles and aunts. There was no identity crisis, for each member of the family knew his roots. Down the years, between then and now, things have taken a down turn. Today, a family is just an urbanised, sanitised individualistic generation, oblivious of its roots and in quest of identity.

But there is one age-old institution in India, an amazing one, a singular example of its kind in the world, which satisfies the subliminal urges and helps the atomised individualistic generation rediscover the roots lost. They are Pandas of Hardwar, the record holders of the pilgrims’ family trees. They bring people together in time past and time present, in space divided by thousands of miles.

The classic story begins with the personal experience of you and I, an experience of thousands of persons.

As soon as a pilgrim arrives in Hardwar for any religious rite, mundan, child-birth, or for the immersion of the ashes of his kith and kin, he would be approached by a Panda, invariably clad in a white dhoti and kurta with the forehead besmeared in chandan paste. He would put utterly personal questions: "Kaun jat ho ? Kahan se aaye ho ?" On the reply depends what the Panda does next. If you happen to be the right kind of person he has been looking for, he will hail you, and will help you identify your roots, your family background, your native milieu. And if not, he would look smug, grin and nonchalantly walk away.

Here is a chronicle of my personal experience, which can be your experience, too. As soon I parked my car in the parking slot near Hari ki Pauri, and alighted out of it with the earthen pot containing the ashes of my father for immersion in the Ganga, a Panda accosted me and put the personal questions aforementioned. He cross-checked the little information I provided to him with other Pandas present there. After mutual discussion they told me that Kehav Pandit was my family purohit, and that they would inform him to meet me at asthi ghat.

With the asthi urn dangling in my hand and accompanied by my family, I sauntered slowly towards the asthi ghat at Har ki Pauri. Soon a crowd of beggars—men, women, and children—and scantily clad sadhus, followed me. They knew that after the asthi visarjan, I would conform to the customary practice of feeding the poor and giving them alms in cash and kind for the benediction and peace of the departed soul.

At asthi ghat, Keshav Pandit, already informed of a jajman’s arrival, was there waiting for me. The Pandas of Hardwar have a fast network of communal bonding and reciprocal cooperation. Keshav Pandit took charge of the immersion rites, chanted mantras from the scriptures, invoked certain gods, made me recall my ancestors and the gotra, and helped me immerse the ashes of my father in accordance with the Vedic rituals. He, thus, acted as a mediator and routed the invocations to my ancestors in heaven.

After the immersion ritual was over, I scampered to his office, a small, dingy, ancient room, situated in a soiled, filthy narrow lane. There were a few other jajmans like me present there. He asked me as to when did someone from my family last visit Hardwar. ‘’When my grandmother died," I replied. "When did she die?" "Maybe in 1968, " I faintly remembered.

Keshav then asked his assistance: "Pandit ji, 1968 se aaj tak ki bahian lana." The man addressed panditji soon came out carrying six-inch thick, more than two feet long, stacks of papers bound in green cloth, typically folded once over. Each bahi—the record book—contained about 600 to 800 pages. Keshav Pandit flipped the long pages of the bahi, scanned through them. Lo and behold, he put before me the account recorded by my father in his own hand and signed with the date, year and time that he had come to Hardwar for the immersion of the ashes of his mother.

This was a clue enough for Keshav Pandit to unfold my family history. He turned the pages of the bahi and told me that my grandfather had three sons, and one daughter, that the eldest son died in 1930, and the daughter a year later, that my mother died in 1948 and my father had come with her ashes to immerse in the Ganga the same year, and so on and so forth. He even traced from his mighty bahi my family tree up to 1905. It was a captivating, nay, an emotive experience for me. I felt as if I was a having a face-to-face meeting with my ancestors. I now know my roots down to my great grandfathers, almost down to six generations.

Almost every family has its hereditary Panda at Hardwar. The Pandas are an important institution, a constituent of Hardwar, more than the famous sadhus. They perform the religious rites of the pilgrims, and record their visits. Their record books contain records of the pilgrims, their names, castes, the places they hail from, the names of their fathers, grandfathers, brothers, sisters, the religious functions they came for and their signatures.

In India where there is little centralised or organised information, these bahis are often the only record of the precise history of a family, which map the family tree of pilgrims who travel thousands of miles to be here.

Keshav Pandit’s family, and of other Pandas like him, has been in the business of record keeping of pilgrims for hundreds of years. Even his office-cum-house manifests its antiquity.

Like my father, grandfather and great grandfather, I too recorded my visit in Keshav’s bahi together with the information of my family, sons, daughters, brothers and sisters for the future generations to know their roots.

For Pandas like Keshav, maintaining records of pilgrims’ families is business. But for jajmans like me it is much more. It is the end of a quest to discover the cherished past.

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