In the Memory of a Centennial Visit!
A century ago to this day, may be around the time I am writing this piece, a fifty-two year thin Gujurati man entered the holy precincts of the Jagannath Temple in Puri with his wife and son. He was led by a Gujurati Panda and taken on a tour of the temple. (In Puri, the prime job of the Pandas is to guide the devotees into the temple, telling its history and many religious significance; the Pandas have divided among themselves all the states of India so that devotees of a particular state are to be escorted and guided exclusively by their Panda. The Panda keeps a large diary in his place where his devotees sign their names and date of visit. This diary is kept for generations.. Today, if you visit one Raghunath Gochhikar in Puri, whose grandfather had taken that middle-aged Gujurati on a tour of the Temple and had kept his signature, you can witness it.)
The thin Gujurati, you guessed right, is one and only Mahatma Gandhi.
The collected works of Mahatma Gandhi run into a gargantuan 98 volumes and almost fifty thousand pages. The first mention of Puri had appeared on 20 August, 1903 when he was a brown Barrister in South Africa. He was still 11 years away from his monumental arrival in India and 18 years from setting foot in Odisha for the first time.
In Indian Opinion magazine, which he published, writing under the title ‘Utilisation of Adverse Situation’, he called upon the fractured Indian community in South Africa, who loved to identify themselves on narrow caste and regional lines like Brahmin, Kshatriya, Gujurati, Panjabi etc, to treat South Africa as Puri, where, he wrote, there’s no caste or language distinction. Three cheers for Puri and Mahaprabhu!
In his Odisha tour diary published on April 10, 1921 in Gujarati Navajeevan which has also appeared in the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol 23 (from April 6 to 29 , 1921) Gandhiji writes his first impression of Puri and Jagannath Temple after visiting it for the first time, a century ago to this day and hour.
“After visiting Gopabandhu babu’s school at Sakhigopal, we went on to Jagannath Puri. The town is situated in the sea coast and there is always a breeze there. But let no one conclude from this that in respect of the climate, Puri is any way superior to Dumas or Porebander or Veravel. A business man with established reputation will make money, they say and so the Bengalis and the Government had declared this to be a health resort and helped to acquire a reputation as one. Every year Bengalis repair to the place and come away with good health.
The devout pilgrims believe that the darshan of Jagannath and gifts to the priests help them to return with a plenteous booty of spiritual merits. When I went to darshan, a great many reflections filled my mind.
It is an ancient temple and an inspiring one. On the summit blazes the Sudarshan disc (Neel Chakra) with a flag fluttering over it. The temple has been built to a great height. The images are of Narayan and Laxmi (later correcting it as the images of Krishna, his brother and sister). The images, being of a huge size are awe inspiring too. Thick darkness reigns in the recess where the images are installed. There is neither air nor light. One or two lamps burn dimly. That is all.”
And in the following he described the terror of the priests:
“As at other places, here too the priests are a terror. I recollected the saying as the worshipper so his God.”
He seemed to have been aghast by the attire of Mahaprabhu and wrote
“The garments in which the images are wrapped are of foreign cloth. For the garments of deities in temple, countless virgins with love in their heart used to spin fine yarns and, with similar love innumerable weavers wove it into clothes. Cloth made otherwise was considered unholy. How that is, the priests had become insincere and foreign minded,”
But immediately he philosophies and added,
“God, a formless one, has laid down the law of karma and will have nothing more to do with the matter. How is Jagannath to blame then?”
Out of total 8 visits and 63 days stay in Odisha, he visited Puri thrice and stayed for total 8 days. First was from 26-29 March, 1921. Gandhi visited the Temple on 27th March. And note that in his last visit to Puri, 15 years later, when he stayed for a week in an ashram only 40 miles away from Puri, in Delanga, he didn’t visit the Temple as the Temple doesn’t allow the entry of Harijans (the Scheduled Caste people). He demanded reversal of the decision and after being rebuffed by the Temple, not only did he decide not to visit it but also barred his wife to visit. The Hindus adore Mahaprabhu and Gujuratis, particularly, are ardent Jagannath devotees. Bapu got very angry when, defying him, Bai visited the Temple. In protest, he observed a day of absolute silence.
Puri had been visited throughout history by many enlightened souls like Bhagwan Buddha, Aadi Sankar, Kabir, Ramanuja, Nanak, Chaitanya etc and in that holy tradition of epic pilgrimage surely Mahatma is the last visitor.