Sita and Mother Earth

There are very few temples dedicated to Sita, Lord Rama’s wife. The famous
Sita Devi Temple, near Bangalore, has become a place of pilgrimage for people, who
seek her blessings for good health and prosperity, writes Papri Sri Raman

FIREFLIES, a small farm about 30 km from Bangalore, has become home to feminism in a gentle, innovative way. "Mother Earth is the deity here," says Aravind Menon, campus resident and a media consultant. He is right. Whether it is the rare Sita Devi Temple, where villagers from all around come to worship the mother goddess as the force that protects their crops and cattle, their plantations and fields, or the various depictions of the 12th century savant Akka Mahadevi in granite, or the more modern and controversial stone and copper works by artists like UK-based Caroline Mackenzie, obvious tributes to feminism in one form or the other are aplenty in these sylvan surroundings.

Menon points out: "There are very few temples dedicated to Sita, the devoted wife of Lord Rama, the hero of the Hindu epic, the Ramayana, while Ram temples are there in plenty." Even social scientists, feminists and filmmakers visualise the character of Sita as ambiguous, to say the least. Sita is seen as a symbol of the devoted wife, the epitome of docility. She is seen as the sacrificing soul who embraces fire and disappears into Mother Earth without a fight. Her sacrifice makes her an "ideal" wife. Her silence is her eloquent fight.

One of the few Sita temples in the subcontinent is in a village in Haryana called Sitamai. Here an old temple site is supposed to be where Sita was swallowed by Mother Earth. Another controversial Sita temple is in central Sri Lanka’s Nuwara Eliya. Sita was supposed to have been confined in the Ashoka orchards here by demon king Ravana.

But at Sita Devi Temple at Fireflies, which is small and fronted by a terrace, villagers from all around come to worship the mother goddess — a force that will protect their plantations and fields. Each year, there is a Sita Devi festival that is celebrated on April 22, also commemorated as World Earth Day. Besides that, there is also a tradition of puja once a month on full moon. It is a "re-interpretation and re-experience of Sita" through personal, social and ecological terms, says social scientist Siddhartha and his friends, the brains behind the Fireflies project.

As per mythology, Sita lived in the forest and was an exemplary mother. Today, mothers here seek her help when their children are sick or need guidance. Women also look to her to find a way out of their personal difficulties, or health problems, and farmers seek her blessings so that there is good rain and, hence, a good crop yield.

"The construction of the temple at Fireflies was the result of long interactions and discussions with farmers, women and youth living near the site about the meaning of the nature of Mother Earth. Now we have a place to celebrate Sita Devi as Bhoomi Thai and respect the earth along with her," says Siddhartha, the creator of Fireflies, who believes in sustainable social empowerment and balanced ecology. "Our purpose in re-interpreting the Sita Devi festival is to show that the fervent veneration of the goddess is connected to a fervent practice of agriculture that is sustainable," he adds.

"So, along with calling for a celebration of Sita Devi, there is also a calling to return to the commitment of practicing sustainable agriculture. This includes an overall larger goal of moving towards forms of development with zero carbon emissions. It is also an acknowledgement that Sita Devi is indeed the earth, that our earth is, therefore, sacred and that we cannot continue to despoil her soil, water, air, trees, mountains and glaciers," he emphasises.

The temple aside, the farm also houses a stone sculpture and painting of Akka Mahadevi, a controversial 12th century savant belonging to the Veerashaiva Bhakti movement, known for her poems in Kannada. This defiant woman from Bidar, who had Allama Prabhu as her guru, scoffed at society and tradition, and like nude male sages of that era, refused to cover her body. It is said that so true a devotee was she that Shiva covered her with her own luxuriant hair. In a translation, thus goes one of her famous hymns:

Beside Akka Mahadevi in granite, the Fireflies farm has also offered shelter to controversial stone and copper works (2004-05) by UK-based artist Caroline Mackenzie, in collaboration with Indian sculptors T.N. Muniyandi, M. Elumalai, P. Elango, Mahesh, Azad, Viju, Baiju, Ramesh and several others. "The biggest tribute to our work is that they have found such a tranquil home," says Baiju, a resident artist.

Mackenzie’s sculpture "Male Parenting" — essentially showing man as the nurturer, protector of the girl child, administering childbirth — proved controversial a few years ago, and found no pedestal in any Indian city. The "Lion Lady" is the woman-lion incarnation — distinct from the man-lion incarnation of Vishnu.

Another work is the "Birth of the Divine Girl," which shows the girl child being sheltered by Bird Man (Garuda) and received by Earth Woman (Bhoo Devi), while the mother and father flank her equally. The artist writes: "The girl child could be seen as being born from the rock," and the man and woman representatives of people "who are receiving a new sense of the consciousness" of self and earth. — WFS

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