Whose temple is it? The forgotten history of Dalit priesthood in Rajasthan
On August 14, a mob allegedly stormed into the Khakul Dev Ji temple in Barana village, Bhilwara, Rajasthan and beat up Vishnu Balai, a Dalit priest from the Meghwal community. The mob also allegedly stopped him from conducting rituals, merely over the placement of a donation box, according to reports. Though the details of the incident and motives are yet to be known, the refusal of 'upper castes' to accept Dalits as equal claimants to sacred spaces across India has been well documented.
However, what makes this attack more disturbing is that the Dalit priesthood in Rajasthan is neither new nor a result of government intervention. It is an old tradition — born from the region's own religious landscape of lok-devtas, folk deities whose worship was shaped by local communities, not Brahmanical orthodoxy.
Rajasthan's villages are dotted with shrines of figures like Pabuji, the Rathore hero venerated through painted scrolls by Bhil singers; Gogaji, the snake-god revered equally by Hindus and Muslims; and Ramdevji, seen as a protector of the marginalised. Worship at these shrines was never about Sanskrit mantras or Brahmanical gatekeeping. It was about accessible devotion, where ritual authority often lay with non-Brahmins — sometimes Dalits.
The Chamunda Mata temple in Suliya, Bhilwara, is a case in point. For generations, one Dalit priest from the Salvi/Meghwal community and one 'upper caste' priest jointly performed rituals at the shrine. It was a fragile but real tradition of shared priesthood. Yet in 2006, 'upper caste' resentment led to a Dalit priest being thrown out, sparking the Suliya Mandir Pravesh Andolan, where more than 800 Dalits entered a temple of goddess Chavanda at Suliya village, Bhilwara district.
At Suliya, Dalit priests had long survived on meagre offerings in a modest, underfunded temple. As long as the shrine remained marginal, their presence was tolerated. However, when visibility, resources, and prestige came into play, caste society reasserted itself. What had been a quiet coexistence for decades suddenly became intolerable.
This is why the Barana incident feels less like a dispute over a donation box and more like a recurring pattern. Who controls the temple's resources? Who decides legitimacy? And who gets to define what counts as 'tradition'?
In 1930, B R Ambedkar led the Kalaram Mandir Pravesh Andolan in Nashik, where thousands of Dalits demanded entry into a temple of Lord Rama. Brutally resisted, Ambedkar reframed the issue: Temple entry was not about piety, but dignity. If Dalits were barred from worship, it was because caste society refused to see them as equals.
That lesson echoed in Bhilwara's Suliya Mandir Pravesh Andolan in 2006. What began as a symbolic fight for temple entry quickly grew into a larger movement, with Dalits rallying under the ideals of Buddha, Kabir, Phule, and Ambedkar. For three months, Suliya became a site of assertion, reminding Rajasthan — and India — that equality inside temples is inseparable from equality in society.
The Rajasthan government has, in recent years, appointed Dalits and women as priests in some state-run temples. Predictably, these moves faced protests from Brahmin priest associations. But the irony is stark: In folk shrines across the state, Dalits have already been priests for centuries. It is not reform that 'upper castes' resist — it is recognition.
This resistance reveals the deeper contradiction of Indian society. On paper, the Constitution guarantees equality. On the ground, caste ensures that even long-standing traditions like Dalit priesthood can be snatched away when they threaten entrenched hierarchies.
What the Barana incident tells us is that the question is no longer whether Dalits can be priests. The real question is whether the caste society will allow it to stand uncontested.
Each act of resistance — Ambedkar's march in Nashik, the three-month protest at Suliya in 2006, or the quiet persistence of priests who continue to serve in neglected shrines — pushes the boundary a little further. They remind us that Dalits are not seeking favours; they are reclaiming what has always been theirs.
The mob that beat Vishnu Balai wanted to send a message: Stay in your place. But history offers another message, carved through struggle and persistence: Temples, like society, cannot remain fortresses of caste forever.
Until Dalit priests can conduct rituals without fear, until lok-devtas can be worshipped without caste gatekeepers, India's democracy will remain unfinished business.
The sharper question is what Ambedkar himself posed: Whether emancipation lies in entering temples, or in building schools; whether salvation comes from deities who exclude us, or from knowledge that frees us.
The writer is a UK-based researcher specialising in caste and cinema
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Hans India
8 hours ago
- Hans India
Telangana Bandh on August 22 Announced Following Dalit Attack in Monda Market
Condemning the attack on a Dalit by Marwaris in Monda market, OU JAC Chairman Kothapalli Tirupati announced that he is calling for a Telangana bandh on the 22nd of this month. On Monday, slogans were raised at OU Arts College saying, "Marwaris go back." Speaking on the occasion, Tirupati said that Rajasthani and Gujarati Marwaris have migrated here and are damaging the caste professions of Telangana. He said that if they got rid of Andhra's patrons, now the Marwaris are looting. Daruvu Ramesh, Ramesh, Rajender, Shivaji, Charan, Arun, Kumar, and Jalandhar participated in the program.
News18
9 hours ago
- News18
Why You Must Know How ‘Gopal Patha' Saved Kolkata
Last Updated: Vivek Agnihotri's 'The Bengal Files' may dramatise Gopal Mukherjee's role in August 1946 but that's what is needed after decades of motivated silence. For all those protesting about the 'wrong" portrayal of Gopal Mukherjee (known in local lore as Gopal Patha or Gopal the Goat as he had a meat shop) in the soon-to-be released film The Bengal Files by Vivek Agnihotri, the long interview that he gave to Andrew Whitehead in 1997 is illuminating. Including the fact that it is the only interview of this key figure of the 'Great" Calcutta Killings triggered by Jinnah's Direct Action Day call on 16 August 1946. Why was he forgotten? Fifty years passed since those horrific days before, ironically, a Briton came to Kolkata to hear from the man himself what happened. Even Whitehead's silly questions like exactly how many Muslims Mukherjee had killed—entirely missing the point of the events of 16-19 August 1946— shows the extent to which the role of 'Gopal Patha" has been buried or misrepresented since then. And calling him 'secular" now also shows the lingering effects of that ignorance. The carnage that first saw Hindus being killed by Muslim mobs and then an equally bloody retaliation led by Mukherjee—not against all Muslims but just those who had murdered Hindus—was an early example of a 'targeted response", now used to describe Operation Sindoor. The actions of Gopal Patha and his band of armed Hindu 'boys' was neither communal nor secular: they were measures needed to ensure that the Muslim League's gambit to capture Calcutta failed. Films and books exaggerate—they call it artistic licence—to prove a point, so Agnihotri has not done anything unprecedented. To judge a man who did what he did in 1946 by today's standards of 'acceptable' behaviour is not unprecedented either; but it leads to inaccuracies. Mukherjee does not need to be 'saved" from today's 'communal" slur: he lived in extraordinary times; it was an inflection point of history which needed actions that are deemed questionable only today. Before Agnihotri's film catapulted Gopal Patha's life and deeds into the national arena, many people even in West Bengal had forgotten about him. Successive state governments did not acknowledge his achievement, though he was the one who prevented Bengal from entirely falling into the hands of the Muslim League. The vicious Hindu fightback he led against the 'Ladh-ke lengey Pakistan" brigade made the then Bengal Chief Minister HS Suhrawardy back down. Eye for an eye may have been verboten in Gandhiji's scheme of things, but reality seldom cooperated. Most of his non-violent interventions failed though they made for great photos and newsreels. Only now is it being acknowledged openly that had there not been constant unGandhian incidents, from World War II and the formation of INA to the naval ratings mutiny and the forthright interventions of men like Gopal Patha, 15 August 1947 may not have been Independence Day. It is fallacious to rely on the accounts of the police of those days (by definition loyal to the British and duty-bound to 'protect" the colony from Indian freedom fighters) to portray Mukherjee as a 'bad character". It is also equally fallacious to fit him into the default saintly 'satyagraha' mould of nationalist. The Anushilan Samiti and Yugantar which advocated a vehemently muscular path to freedom more akin to Subhas Chandra Bose's INA later, was what Bengalis followed. In Mukherjee's account of those terrifying days of mid-August 1946, people can also get a glimpse of why so many Bengalis then and now do not regard Gandhiji with the degree of reverence that today's school children reading history textbooks think was universal. As Mukherjee pointed out succinctly to Whitehead, when the Muslims were going on a murderous rampage in Hindu majority Calcutta, Gandhiji was in Muslim majority Noakhali trying to prevent violence there. By amassing arms (including buying pistols and bullets from American GIs stationed in Kolkata during World War II in exchange for bottles of whisky!) in 1942, Mukherjee was not committing a cardinal sin but following his instinct to arm himself against a colonial adversary, which also stood him in good stead in 1946 when it became clear that Bengal would be in the crosshairs of Muslim League activists once Partition and the creation of Pakistan became inevitable. The chilling call for Direct Action to attain Pakistan made by no less than the then Chief Minister of united Bengal at the Maidan in Calcutta early on 16 August 1946 proved Mukherjee's suspicions were dead right. Moreover, the Mayor of Calcutta Syed Mohammed Usman circulated a leaflet in which he told the city's Hindu residents: 'Kafer, toder dhongsher aar deri nei. Sarbik hotyakando ghotbei!" (Infidels, your destruction is imminent; there will be genocide!") It is known that Chief Minister Suhrawardy was in the Police Control Room that day, along with the British Police Commissioner. Considering he had reportedly told the estimated 100,000 Muslim League supporters at the rally that he had taken measures to 'restrain" the police, the subsequent killings of Hindus was inevitable. Identifying the proper sequence of events is important to prevent it being portrayed as a spontaneous and mutual outbreak of communal violence. As Mukherjee's firsthand account to Whitehead underlines, the killings began soon after the rally ended, sending streams of Muslims into the rest of the city, confident about annexing it for Pakistan by decimating Hindus. Mukherjee was initially in an area where there was a Hindu majority, so his first reaction was to prevent violence. But when he realised that Muslims were rampaging elsewhere already, he decided strong retaliation was the only answer to stem the tide. The condition of the hundreds of bodies that lay rotting by the roadside when the killing ended—once the Muslims attackers realised the futility of Suhrawardy's plan—showed that fury had been matched by fury, barbarity by barbarity; more than just an eye for an eye. Thus the fierce fightback Mukherjee started made it clear Hindus could not be ethnically cleansed from Calcutta as planned. But rather than put Mukherjee's actions in perspective, there was decades of silence! The traditional propensity of Indians to internalise, compartmentalise and even rationalise traumatic events—sometimes simply to be able to survive and escape recurring mental agony—has led to many subversions of history. Silence is easily portrayed as absence of trauma not suppression of it. In Bengal, in particular, the silence about the events leading up to Partition, especially what happened on August 16, 1946 and the following few days, has led to egregious revisionism. Whatever the merits or demerits of Agnihotri's The Bengal Files, Gopal Mukherjee's story must be heard and remembered. It cannot be glossed over just because it is uncomfortable or distressing. Those who do not want to watch the film must listen to Mukherjee himself recounting the events as even the actor who portrays him in the film clearly has no idea about the complexities of the man and the times he lived in. Saviours and sinners are often a matter of context. The author is a freelance writer. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18's views. Click here to add News18 as your preferred news source on Google. tags : Vivek Agnihotri view comments Location : New Delhi, India, India First Published: August 19, 2025, 16:39 IST News opinion Opinion | Why You Must Know How 'Gopal Patha' Saved Kolkata Disclaimer: Comments reflect users' views, not News18's. Please keep discussions respectful and constructive. Abusive, defamatory, or illegal comments will be removed. News18 may disable any comment at its discretion. By posting, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Loading comments...
India Today
11 hours ago
- India Today
Gopal Patha led Hindu resistance during Calcutta killings. Was he hero or hoodlum?
"With these arms I saved the women of my area; I saved the people. I will not surrender them," Gopal Patha retorted when asked to lay down his weapons at the feet of Mahatma Gandhi in August 1947. "Where was Gandhiji, I said, during the Great Calcutta Killing?" he recounted in a 1997 Vivek Agnihotri, whose recent films have often courted controversies, has stirred another one with his latest, 'The Bengal Files'. Written and directed by Agnihotri, and starring Mithun Chakraborty, Anupam Kher, and Pallavi Joshi, the film narrates the horrors of communal violence in Calcutta (now Kolkata) during the Muslim League's Direct Action Day on August 16, 1946, when large-scale riots between Hindus and Muslims left thousands dead and the city scarred by unprecedented after the release of the trailer of the film, slated for a September 5 release, Shantanu Mukherjee, the grandson of Gopal Chandra Mukherjee, popularly known as Gopal Patha, who led Hindu resistance groups during the Direct Action Day riots, has filed an FIR against the filmmaker. Shantanu has alleged that Agnihotri, in a personal reel video, mentioned Gopal Mukherjee as "Ek Tha Kashai Gopal Patha" (There was a butcher named Gopal Patha)", a portrayal he calls "derogatory and misleading".Agnihotri has, however, insisted the film portrays Gopal Patha as a hero who led Hindu resistance during the 1946 Calcutta Killings. This has reignited a debate over the legacy of Gopal Patha, a person seen through divided some portray Gopal Chandra Mukherjee as a saviour who protected Hindus during the riots, others brand him "a ferocious criminal", according to a report in The Indian Express from 1946, Gopal Patha emerged as one of Calcutta's most feared musclemen with nearly 800 men under his command, who in 1947 defied Gandhi's repeated calls to surrender Patha, who was one of the forces that saved Calcutta from falling into Pakistani hands, also sheltered Hindu families and widows in distress. It was against this backdrop of unchecked bloodshed and administrative paralysis that Gopal Patha stepped in, rallying his men to retaliate and defend Hindu localities from Muslim DIRECT ACTION DAY TURNED BLOODY; KILLED 10,000 IN CALCUTTAIn August 1946, Calcutta was engulfed in communal violence following the Muslim League's call for Direct Action Day to demand a separate Muslim homeland, has to be remembered that Bengal by then had already seen a partition, in 1905."Larke Lenge Pakistan (We'll fight and take Pakistan)!," the slogan rang out from Bowbazar More to Harrison Road, echoing through Calcutta's narrow streets, according to a research paper by academic Debjani other than having a huge Muslim population, was also the place which, according to historians, "saw the first articulation of political consciousness" among them. It was at Dhaka that the All India Muslim League was born to "secure the interests of Muslims of the subcontinent"."India suffered the biggest Moslem-Hindu riot in its history," reported the Time Magazine on August 26, League chief Mohamed Ali Jinnah chose the 18th day of Ramzan to observe 'Direct Action Day' in protest against Britain's plan for Indian independence, which he argued ignored long-standing Muslim demands for a separate intended as a peaceful show of strength, the day quickly descended into chaos, leaving Calcutta's sweltering streets soaked in blood."Rioting Moslems went after Hindus with guns, knives and clubs, looted shops, stoned newspaper offices, set fire to Calcutta's British business district. Hindus retaliated by firing at Moslem mosques and miles of Moslem slums. Thousands of homeless families roamed the city in search of safety and food (most markets had been pilfered or closed). Police blotters were filled with stories of women raped, mutilated and burned alive," noted the Time Magazine report from August 26, riots, lasting four days, claimed an estimated 10,000 lives, with Hindus bearing the brunt of the initial attacks by Chief Minister, Husseyn Shahid Suhrawardy, was accused of failing to curb the violence, allegedly assuring Muslim mobs of chaos set the stage for Gopal Patha's PATHA: BUSINESSMAN, WRESTLER AND MUSCLEMANGopal Chandra Mukherjee was known as 'Gopal Patha', as his family owned a goat-meat shop in Calcutta. Patha stands for a male goat in was a wrestler and a businessperson, by one of Calcutta's musclemen of the 1940s, rose to prominence during the 1946 riots. As violence unfolded, the 33-year-old came to be seen as the protector of the Hindu community."He was very ferocious," recalled SK Bhattacharjee, a sub-inspector at Calcutta's Lalbazar police headquarters during the Great Calcutta Killing of August 1946, as quoted in a 1997 Indian Express report by academic and journalist Andrew Whitehead."Gopal Patha looked like a gentleman. He was a criminal, but he was very helpful to the poor. During the riots, he came out to rescue Hindus," Bhattacharjee Patha, a member of the revolutionary group Anushilan Samiti and admirer of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, organised Hindu youths to counter Muslim League mobs. He reportedly armed young men to protect Hindu lives and properties.'ANSWER BRUTALITY WITH BRUTALITY.' WHAT GOPAL PATHA SAID ON VIOLENCE AND DUTYGopal Patha organised and mobilised the gang, because he believed it was the need of the hour. They equipped themselves with knives, swords, machetes, sticks, and iron rods, while Gopal carried two American pistols tucked into his waistband."I went round the saw mills and factories. I set an amount, sometimes Rs 1,000, sometimes Rs 5,000. They paid up. Then I declared: for one murder, you get Rs 10, for a half-murder, Rs 5. That's how we got started," Patha told actions were also directed at preventing Calcutta (Kolkata) being turned into a part of Pakistan by force."It was a very critical time for the country; the country had to be saved. If we become a part of Pakistan, we will be oppressed. So I called all my boys and said, this is the time we have to retaliate, and you have to answer brutality with brutality," Patha was quoted as saying by academic Debjani Sengupta."If you come to know that one murder has taken place, you commit 10 murders. That was the order for my boys... It was basically my duty... I had to help those in distress," Gopal Patha told the Indian Express in PATHA DEFIED GANDHI THRICE ON ARMS SURRENDERA year later, when MK Gandhi visited Calcutta, still smouldering from riots and bracing for more as Bengal was gripped by the horrors of Partition, Gopal Patha refused to surrender arms despite the leader's repeated August 1947, when Bengal saw widespread Partition violence, Gandhi reached Calcutta and advocated disarmament to foster peace."People came with their weapons and placed them at the feet of Gandhiji. Shabbily-dressed people came with swords, daggers and country-made guns," journalist Sailen Chatterjee told the newspaper in deified calls to lay down arms thrice and even questioned Gandhi."Gandhi called me twice... I didn't go. The third time, some local Congress leaders told me that I should at least deposit some of my arms... I went there. I saw people coming and depositing weapons which were of no use to anyone, out-of-order pistols, that sort of thing. Then Gandhi's secretary said to me: 'Gopal, why don't you surrender your arms to Gandhiji?' I replied, 'With these arms I saved the women of my area; I saved the people. I will not surrender them," Gopal Patha told the newspaper in 1997."Where was Gandhiji, I said, during the Great Calcutta Killing? Where was he then? Even if I've used a nail to kill someone, I won't surrender even that nail," he WAS GOPAL PATHA REALLY? DID HE HATE MUSLIMS?Gopal Patha still remains one of the most debated figures of Calcutta's turbulent from being a one-dimensional communal leader, historians argue his role must be understood in the specific context of the Great Calcutta Killing of Sandip Bandopadhyay, who interviewed Gopal Patha, stressed that Patha was "not a divisive character", noting that his immediate concern was to defend his locality from Muslim League-led attacks.A goat-meat shop owner by profession, Patha regularly dealt with Muslim traders and "never bore a grudge against Muslims", historian Sandip Bandopadhyay told The Hindu in 2014. Yet, when riots reached central Calcutta, he mobilised Hindu youths, training them to also sheltered Hindu families and widows from marauding Muslim mobs and in the aftermath of the said, Gopal Patha carries a dual legacy as both protector and aggressor. His actions reflected a commitment to survival over non-violence at a time when violence had become the norm. Yet his legacy remains contentious. For some, he was a hoodlum whose violent retaliation only escalated the bloodshed. But for many Hindus, he was a hero who filled a leadership void during the Great Calcutta Killing.- EndsMust Watch advertisement
