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Trespassing Tradition: How ISKCON's Parallel Jagannath Yatra Risks Diluting India's Sacred Heritage
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At stake is not simply a question of which date a ritual is performed, but who gets to define and control cultural and liturgical grammar of one of India's oldest living traditions
Gajapati Maharaja Dibyasingha Deb, the hereditary head and ceremonial servitor of Hindu deity Jagannath in Odisha's Puri, issued a formally worded letter expressing deep concern to ISKCON's global leadership on June 15.
The message was unequivocal: temples affiliated with the organisation are increasingly conducting Snana-yatra and Ratha-yatra festivals of Jagannath on dates directly contravening those laid down in sacred scripture, and have been traditionally honoured in Puri for centuries.
This was not a minor calendrical disagreement, but a misappropriation and breach of the cultural and heritage integrity of Jagannath. The closest analogy of this would be that a Chinese company tomorrow decides to celebrate Christmas in summer because it is convenient.
This cultural and religious misappropriation will continue if we don't grant protection — the legal kind — to assets such as Jagannath yatra. This requires a policy shift to recognise it and give it GI (geographical identification) protection as a cultural asset.
The letter may appear to be an internal dispute between two branches of Vaishnavism. But read more closely, it reveals a deeper anxiety – one that touches the heart of India's spiritual and cultural sovereignty. At stake is not simply the question of which date a ritual is performed, but who gets to define and control the cultural and liturgical grammar of one of India's oldest living traditions.
When a global institution like ISKCON, with temples in over 150 countries, celebrates these key festivals independently of the Puri calendar – sometimes weeks earlier or in different months – it doesn't just introduce confusion. It subtly creates a parallel universe of legitimacy that dilutes the sanctity and singularity of the original tradition rooted in Odisha.
To understand why this is so significant, one must revisit the origins and structure of these festivals. The Snana-yatra (ceremonial bathing festival) and Ratha-yatra (chariot procession) of Jagannath are not just festivals – they are deeply codified rituals mentioned in several ancient texts, including the Skanda Purana, Padma Purana, and Brahma Purana.
According to these scriptures, Snana-yatra is to be performed on Jyeshtha Purnima, which was on June 11. The Ratha-yatra begins on the Asadha Shukla Dwitiya – June 27 this year – and culminates on Dashami Tithi or July 5, after the Bahuda-yatra (return journey). They have been practiced as such on these dates for years.
These dates are not arbitrary, but based on the lunar calendar and cosmological alignments scrupulously maintained in Puri for centuries. More than a million followers gather each year to witness the deities of Jagannath, Balabhadra, and Subhadra ride three massive chariots from the Jagannath temple to Gundicha temple in a grand and spiritually charged procession.
This is not merely symbolic; it is one of the most ancient and vibrant public rituals in India's religious life, forming a key part of the country's intangible cultural heritage, as recognised by the culture ministry and international organisations like UNESCO.
Yet, ISKCON, possibly to make the festival globally accessible, has chosen to perform Ratha-yatra on other dates. While inclusivity and global devotion are laudable goals, they do not grant licence to sever sacred tradition from its roots. In doing so, it may be unwittingly engaging in a form of spiritual franchising – taking the symbols, names, and outer rituals of Jagannath worship while ignoring the particular, scripturally sanctioned contexts in which these festivals are meant to be celebrated.
The Gajapati Maharaja's intervention is, therefore, more than a defence of temple authority; it reveals an enormous gap in our cultural policy structure, which allows appropriation and control to be taken away by any organisation anywhere in the world. It's not just important to preserve the ritual coherence and historical ownership of this sacred tradition but also identify and recognise other such misappropriations.
The chariot festivals of Jagannath have been stewarded for centuries by a complex ecosystem: the temple priests (daitapatis), the king as adya sevaka, the calendar scholars (panchangis), and a social consensus that ensures the tradition survives unbroken from generation to generation. Performing these festivals on unauthorised dates, without alignment with the anasara period (when the deities rest after the snana-yatra) or the auspicious lunar tithis, is not merely a deviation – it constitutes a disruption itself.
This misalignment cannot be dismissed as mere administrative flexibility. It echoes a pattern seen in colonial interventions where indigenous rituals were reinterpreted or reorganised for the benefit of external audiences, often leading to cultural misappropriation.
When ISKCON holds a ratha-yatra weeks ahead of the Puri yatra, it not only fractures devotional attention but also risks establishing a separate, unsanctioned lineage of Jagannath worship. Over time, this could dilute the spiritual primacy of the Puri tradition and confuse the global understanding of what the ratha-yatra represents.
This is not a mere question of orthodoxy versus reform. It is about the difference between rootedness and reproduction. Just as celebrating Diwali in April or performing Holi during the monsoon would ring hollow, conducting Jagannath's snana-yatra or ratha-yatra out of sequence, and disconnected from the mother tradition in Puri, renders the ritual a simulacrum – a surface spectacle lacking its spiritual depth.
The warning issued by Gajapati Maharaja Dibyasingha Deb, and echoed by scholars at the March 2025 conference in Bhubaneswar, must be taken seriously. As reported by the Times of India, they concluded that the performance of these sacred yatras outside the nine-day window between June 27 and July 5 – and without observing the necessary antecedents such as the anasara period – is a violation of 'ancient, well-established tradition".
The risk here is not that ISKCON will 'take over" Jagannath worship. The danger is subtler: that by operating without deference to the Puri canon, it unintentionally creates a global version of Jagannath worship, which is slowly decoupled from the very soil, time, and ritual infrastructure that makes it sacred.
Devotion does not require distortion. If ISKCON's aim is to honour Jagannath, it must also honour the tradition that made the deity known to the world. The sacred is not scalable in the way software is. It demands fidelity to time, to tradition, and to the keepers of memory who have sustained it for over a thousand years.
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In an age where cultural icons can be copied, rebranded, and globalised with ease, the call from Puri is not for exclusivity but for integrity. Jagannath, the Lord of the Universe, deserves nothing less than the truth of the time and place. Anything else is not homage, it is erasure.
(K Yatish Rajawat is a public policy researcher and works at the Gurgaon-based think tank Centre for Innovation in Public Policy (CIPP). Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18's views)
First Published:
June 16, 2025, 21:06 IST
News opinion Opinion | Trespassing Tradition: How ISKCON's Parallel Jagannath Yatra Risks Diluting India's Sacred Heritage
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