01/10/2025
As Brahminical society with all pomp and din celebrates Durga Puja, we mark Mahishasura Martyrdom Day - not in festivity but in subaltern grief. For the Dalit and Bahujan of this land, this annual ritual is part of the brutal displacement and loss of history. The conquest and killing of Mahishasura, the buffalo-riding pastoral king, signifies violence against the leader of the indigenous and pastoral peoples of this land.
Beneath all this pomp and grandeur lies the centuries of subaltern grief, muted by the history and normalized through the dominant Brahminical symbolism. Such festivities are a reminder of a Brahminical invasion of those territories which refused to be co-opted into the Dharma shastras canon and stood for the indigenous people of the land. What is remembered as a victory of the goddess is, for us, a story of dispossession- the conquest of indigenous peoples by Aryan-Brahminical forces.
The age-old story told in the Devi Mahatmya and ritualized every year in Durga Puja pandals presents an innocent myth of "good versus evil." Underlining this dichotomy is the embedded memories of violent dispossession- the pastoral, tribal, and Bahujan communities crushed under the verbiage and cant of Brahminical power. What is ritualized as “victory” in Durga’s triumph is for us the institutionalized celebration of our grief, our defeat, our demonization.
Mahishasura was not a monster. He was a king whose buffalo symbolized the life-world of the pastoral economy: the Sudras and Adivasis who reared cattle, sustained agriculture, and built this civilization. The buffalo-riding king stands as a reminder of our collective histories - histories erased, rewritten, and demonized so that the victors could remain gods and the defeated forever condemned as “asuras.”
In observing this day, we do not worship Mahishasura as a deity; we mourn him as a martyr, as a reminder of our grief, and to run an intervention into the popular culture which celebrates Durga Puja as a part of a normalized culture, digested and performed, with no inkling of the violence behind it. His killing by Durga - celebrated in gilded pandals by zamindars and their heirs - is for us the mythic inscription of subaltern grief, where the powerful turned our ancestors into demons so that their own violence could be sanctified and justified. The entire cultural apparatus that goes into the iconization of Durga- the myths, the rituals, and the elaborate paraphernalia- serves as a central mechanism of caste dominance. What is celebrated as “culture” is, in fact, the sanctification of their icons through mythico-political violence.
These myths are not mere stories: they are weapons of caste domination, naturalizing the oppression of Dalit-Bahujan people. These festivals are the ground for contestation over memory, legitimacy and authority- extending to what is mourned in public and what is elated and celebrated as “good.”
Our refusal to celebrate and to not be a mute bystander to Durga’s victory is therefore an act of defiance, a refusal to participate in a ritual that masks the pain of generations behind the pomp of Brahminical culture.
Today, ASA stands with the Asur communities of Jharkhand who mourn their king, with the pastoral castes who still live with stigma, and with every subaltern memory that refuses to be erased. We call upon all progressive, democratic, and oppressed sections to join us in rejecting narratives that demonize our ancestors. To remember Mahishasura is to remember that our struggle is not new- it is story of violent dispossession, erasure of history and agency, and the marginalization by the minority elite.
