The Bonalu festival is underway in Telangana’s capital Hyderabad this year. Temples of Yellamma, Mahankali, and other forms of Adishakti are newly painted and decorated for memorable state festival celebrations. Shivashaktis across Telangana, are in Hyderabad to be a part of the celebrations and the Bonalu Celebrations and Processions Committee has made all arrangements to accommodate the devotees. Bonalu festival is an ancient cultural tradition of celebrating various forms of Adishakti in the region of Telangana. During this festival, devotees pay tributes to local forms of Adishakti such as Yellamma, Pochamma, and Maisamma for safeguarding them and protecting them from evil.
This tribute is offered in the form of a Bonam, a contraction of the Sanskrit word Bhojanam which means food or feast. Since this is a festival of a female deity, Adishakti, women become the centre of this festival and predominantly carry the Bonam, which they later offer to the goddess. After the formation of the Telangana state, the dynamics of the Bonalu festival in terms of practice and celebration have significantly changed. The ritual traditions of the Bonalu festival celebrated in Hyderabad and other rural parts of the state are markedly different with caste and gender playing a key role in how the Bonalu festival is celebrated in rural parts of Telangana. The audience of this festival is predominantly men, while the performers are women.
The rise of Jogini influencers
In her interview with TV45, Jogini Nishakranthi talks about her childhood as a young boy who was fascinated with Bonam culture, and her desire to devote her life to Goddess Yellamma, and becoming a trans woman. Her videos on YouTube demonstrate the process of making a Bonam. For someone like me who has grown up watching people around me making Bonalu for the festival, her approach to making a Bonam seems different. It is different for the very reason that this is a Shaivite folk tradition of people belonging to different socio-economic and cultural locations with varied beliefs and practices towards a tradition. No scripture prescribes a particular way of making Bonam because this is folk culture. As a result, people have their own ways of believing and practising certain cultural traditions.
The Bonalu festival has also become an empowering space for trans women in Telangana. There is a tremendous energy embodied by trans women like Jogini Nishakranthi, Jogini Pooja Kumari and Jogini Navya Sri during their Bonalu procession. They have secured standards of respectful living and popular recognition by embracing the culture of Bonalu. And, most of these Joginis own a YouTube channel that features videos of their Bonam performances in different pilgrim sites and videos of them preparing Bonam and preparing themselves for the performance. They have a huge following on social media and a significant influence on people who practice Bonam culture.
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People watching their videos draw inspiration from their attractive practices and imitate them. For instance, we see the faces of Adishakti on Bonalu in urban spaces. People like Jogini Shyamala and Jogini Nishakranthi and other such Joginis started this tradition a decade back. Now, most of the Bonalu in urban spaces have the faces of Adishakti on their Bonam because of their influence. This influence is explicit in urban spaces for two reasons: one, people have access to such Adishakti faces in the market in urban spaces; and two, it is easy for people living in urban spaces to follow a trend. These two cases differ in a rural setting. Such trends and influences came into being because the Bonalu festival was recognised and given the status of a state festival by the Telangana government.
Bonalu festival in Hyderabad and other urban spaces
The Priests Committee of Hyderabad working under the government of Telangana decides the festival dates in the month of Ashadam, and the Bhagyanagar Sri Mahankali Jatara Bonalu Utsavala Ummadi Devalayala Uregimpu Committee (Sri Mahankali temple Bonalu celebrations and processions committee) plans the festival events for up to a week. During this week, the well-known Adishakti temples in Hyderabad, running with the funds of the Telangana government, host the Bonalu festival.
The Committee makes all the arrangements for the devotees. Sacrifice is another important offering during the Bonalu festival. Traditionally, devotees sacrifice a rooster, a hen, a goat, or a sheep as a cultural offering. But this was stopped after a High court order banning animal sacrifice in Hyderabad and now they offer an ash pumpkin to mark the animal sacrifice. Ironically, a Brahmin priest performs all the rights to the goddesses by chanting Sanskrit slokas. This is an irony because these forms of gods are of masses and non-Brahmin people. The scriptures and beliefs of Brahmin priests do not feature the names, stories, and titles of these gods. Yet, the priests seem to find slokas – presumed to be the chantings of mainstream forms such as Durga, Parvati or Kali – to render during this festival in Hyderabad.
In Hyderabad, the processions usually start on one end of the city to reach a temple on the other end of the city. As most of these temples are under the supervision of the Endowments Department, everyone can enter these temples irrespective of their caste, creed, gender, and other socio-political identities. Anyone can offer Bonam to these temples and can have their own processions to the temples. The audience of these long processions is usually men, who follow the processions and cheer the performers. Usually, the performers are women and trans women with Bonalu on their heads accompanied by Pothuraju, a brother of Yellamma and Pochamma. Social stratifications such as caste and gender do not have any explicit presence during the procession.
Bonalu festival in rural parts of Telangana:
In rural parts of Telangana, Bonalu is a one-day festival. Each of the villages celebrate Bonalu on one of the Sundays of Ashadam, a month in the Hindu calendar. The village priests decide the Sunday on which it is most appropriate for them to celebrate the festival. In rural parts of Telangana, every community has their own temples of Adishakti. For instance, the Backward Caste community has a temple for Yellamma and another for Pochamma. In the same way, the Scheduled Caste community has a temple for Yellamma and another for Pochamma. Devotees from those castes offer Bonalu and other offerings only to the temples of their community. They do not go to the temple of another community. So, the leaders of those particular communities become the resource persons for making arrangements at the temple.
Animal sacrifices are common in the Bonalu festival celebrated in rural places. These sacrifices usually take place after the processions reach temples. A Muslim butcher performs halal, a slaughtering process performed under the conventions of Islamic law. Unlike in urban spaces, processions are strictly confined to the communities they belong to. In northwestern parts of Telangana, the processions take place in the order of the caste. Brahmins, Kshatriyas and Vaishyas do not participate in the Bonalu festival because this is a folk culture that includes substances such as animal sacrifice and toddy, considered impure by them. However, Brahmins are the priests in some of the government-funded temples and perform rights for the gods. Some of the Shudras also celebrate this festival.
The processions start in the evening. The Other Backward Castes and Backward Castes offer their prayers first. A pair of men with drums from the Baindla community, a Dalit caste, lead all the processions with their drums. They go to every house to invite the woman bearing Bonam and join them in the large crowd of women bearing Bonam. Then, as a group, they all go to the temple as a procession and offer their prayers. The Bonams of Scheduled sub-upper castes go second and the Scheduled sub-lower castes go third and offer their prayers respectively. These practices vary from place to place. Here, elders of the community perform prayers in the temples and no Brahmin priests are involved. There is less focus on performance and instead people who get ‘possessed’ dance and lead the processions. Women who bear the Bonam, fast the entire day and walk barefoot to the temple in new clothes. Little emphasis is laid on decorating the temples.
While there is still a significant difference between celebrations in urban and rural places of Telangana, one can feel the winds of change. The urban view of the Bonalu festival is slowly making inroads into rural parts of Telangana and turning the spiritual and religious spaces into entertainment centres.
A postgraduate in Comparative Literature and India Studies from The English and Foreign Languages University, Jagadish Babu writes poems and short stories in Telugu at kalapukoralu.