The Bhakti Experience of Women in the Durga Mandir

Written by Bali White: May 11, 2005

In my family, for my mom, my grandmother and myself, Durga is really important.  It is the tradition that has been passed down in my family.  All the females in my family have really strong devotion for Durga.

— Purvi, Mandir worshipper

The Durga Mandir, or ‘temple of Durga,’ in New Brunswick, NJ, welcomes both worshippers living nearby and those with a special affinity for a goddess who is both mother and warrior. People differ in how they approach the worship of the goddess and how they describe her impact on their daily lives. While women especially seem drawn to this space, their numbers are only about equal to those of male worshippers.  As people come here for various reasons, their experiences within the temple walls also differ.  Some come to worship the many other gods or goddesses here; some visit this temple but also go to others nearby, with no particular attachment to any; while some, women specifically, come seeking the feminine power and connection of Durga with a particular devotion, or bhakti, in hopes of affirmation and empowerment. The female worshippers of this temple eagerly tap into this bhakti connection to Durga; their relationship with the goddess is quite unlike the more detached reverence of males.

 When asked why the temple was dedicated to this goddess, the head priest of the mandir, Romlal Sharma, asserted that the temple founders wanted to address the lack of worship of Durga here in the United States: “There are so many temples of other gods…. [A]ll people of India worship Goddess Durga, but there was no temple [here, so they] decided there should be a temple.”  To Sharma’s knowledge there is still no other Durga temple in the wider New York area.  While the Durga Mandir is apparently rare as an independent center of Durga’s worship—it is the only temple in the tri-state area named for and centered around the worship of Durga—there are other temples devoted to the all-encompassing Mother Goddess as well as to individual goddesses.  The Sri Venkateswara and the Hindu Temple of North Jersey, both in New Jersey, and the Divya Dham temple in Queens are some examples. Worshippers in the Durga Mandir, and the women in particular, are aware of these spaces, but are still drawn here for Durga.

The Role of Durga

The goddess for whom this temple is named is described throughout India as simultaneously martial and maternal.  The account of Durga’s origin that is most widely known and the one extolled by the mandir[1] is connected with her defeat of Mahisa, a demon who had overcome all the male gods in battle, usurped their preeminent position and threatened the stability of the universe itself.  The gods assembled and emitted their divine energies so that a “great mass of light and strength congealed into the body of a beautiful woman, whose splendor spread through the universe”; each god then gave her his weapon.  Armed and taking a tiger as her vahana, or mount, “Durga, the embodied strength of the gods, then roared mightily, causing the earth to shake,”[2] as she swept into bloody battle and slew the demon.  Durga is accordingly revered as the “great protectress from worldly adversity, and is at the same time inassailable,” as the meaning of her name, ‘the formidable one,’ reflects.[3]

The name Durga is one that is very often associated with Devi, the one great Goddess that permeates all in Hindu theology.  In Hinduism today three great mother goddesses—Parvati, Durga, and Kali—are conceived of as aspects, even gradations, of the same great Goddess: mild to protective to berserk.  But it is clear that “until the sixth century, when the Devi Mahatmya was composed, there is no proof that…people conceived of an overarching female power behind all individual goddess figures”.[4]  This text, which extols the one Great Goddess who is the source of all creation, is of “unique significance to the Hindu religious tradition….[It] forms a portion of one of the early Sanskrit Puranas [and is] part of the daily liturgy in temples dedicated to Durga”[5] such as the Durga Mandir. Later, epic and Puranic texts like this one recast older Vedic figures, philosophical materials, and elements of indigenous belief, accomplishing two important tasks: they reintroduced an indigenous impulse to elevate goddesses to high status, something that was not the case in previous centuries; then incorporated these autochthonous Indian goddesses into the tradition “through identification…with those of the established Vedic pantheon.[6]  This goddess became associated with Shiva as his consort.  “[I]n this role Durga assumes domestic characteristics…often identified with the goddess Parvati.”[7]

Her Sacred Space

            Since May 2001 the Durga Mandir has been situated in the largest of three buildings in a compound on Route 27 in New Brunswick.  It is a tranquil place, positioned just off the road and surrounded on three sides by tall trees.  In front of the large main worship area are the two smaller buildings nearer the street: one community space for Kathak dance classes and dining, and another to house the temple’s priests.  These three simple buildings look out towards a quaint strip mall, seemingly worlds away across a wide street and expansive parking lot.  There was a recent fire in the building housing the priests, so now there are two trailers parked next to it serving as temporary homes.  In one trailer live Acharyaji and Shastri, the two junior priests, so named for the Sanskrit exams they have passed.  The other houses the main priest, Romlal Sharma, and his wife.

            When walking into the large sanctuary of the mandir, one is stunned to see the immense Durga, majestically dressed in pink and gold, atop her fierce tiger.  Along the walls in half a dozen groups on either side of the goddess are the other deities, much smaller in stature. The mood here is very different from what can be witnessed in other temples, for example the Ganapati Temple in Queens, where the atmosphere bustles with excitement and activity.   That temple is very different from the calm and quiet of the Durga temple even at its busiest.

The worshippers at the Durga Mandir hail from many different parts of India. According to Sharma they are “south Indians, they are north Indians, they are Gujaratis, they are Maharashtrians, [from] all over India, from every [region].”  He feels that the reason for the diversity of the temple is that “all Hindus worship the Mother Goddess, so it is no problem.…We don’t discriminate about our temple.” Although some do come from far away areas for worship, according to Sharma, a large number of worshippers in the temple live in the New Brunswick area.  They are involved in professional occupations: doctors, engineers and other computer professionals, some commuting daily to New York City while others work in the areas surrounding the temple.

The worshippers at this temple freely visit other temples. Sharma explains, “Because we give respect to all the gods, we go to all the temples whenever we get a chance to go.”  All five of the worshippers I interviewed visit other temples also.  One frequently mentioned was the Sri Venkateswara Temple located in nearby Bridgewater.  According to Shashi, a 35-year-old woman from Hyderabad,

 Things are very different [between the Bridgewater temple and Durga Mandir]…two different cultures, south India and north India…. Throughout India we pray to Her, so it’s the different form of praying…This is more north Indian….We [all] have the same philosophy…but the rituals, the practices are quite different from that temple to this temple.

 The common feeling of those I spoke with can be summed up best by her: “The rituals are different, like practices; the way we perform things is different.  [But] ultimately the philosophy is the same—again, it is reaching the god.”

Another worshipper there, Purvi, a young woman about twenty years old, said that she was raised going to the Hindu Temple of North Jersey, which is very near her home, but that she is still compelled to make an hour-long trip to the Durga Temple—“The murti (image) is huge and grand and beautiful, that’s why I guess I enjoy going there.”  In her home they refer to this goddess as Amba Ma—“the Gujarati name for Durga”; Amba is the central deity at the largely Gujarati Hindu Temple of North Jersey. “Amba is what

she is referred to in Gujarati” Purvi explains, “but in the northern states, she is called Durga. Like in Bengal, the Bengalis call her Durga.…I mean, it’s just another name for the one specific goddess who is Durga.”  Purvi’s point that these particular goddesses are in fact the same entity is very different from the concept discussed above, locating all goddesses in one overarching Great Goddess. The precise characteristics and imagery of Durga and Amba are consistent.  They are beautiful young women, brandishing weapons to demonstrate militaristic ability and power, and riding on a tiger (or sometimes a lion) while they battle demons.  These postures and accoutrements signify protection and the reestablishment of cosmic order.

Veneration of the Goddess

The most popular times for people to come to the Durga Mandir, of course, are Durga’s holy days.   As Sharma explains, “There are some days only devoted to one god…Navaratri, ‘Nine Nights,’ these days are especially for the goddess Durga…These days if you go to India there is so much crowd in goddess Durga’s, any goddess’s [temple]–there are so many mother goddesses.  So the crowd will be here too in these times.”  But, he adds, “Everybody comes here throughout the whole year,” as well.  One of the most important festivals in North India is Navaratri, or Durga Puja, celebrated in the autumn month of Asvin, that is, September or October, as  Sharma explains.  During the festival it is customary to recite the entire Devi Mahatmya text several times, clearly asserting “Durga’s central role as a battle queen and the regulator of the cosmos…[T]he festivities celebrate Durga’s defeat of Mahisa and the restoration of cosmic order.”[8]  Purvi explains: “For me, the most defined worship to Durga is probably during Navaratri….Navaratri was always a big deal.  For Gujaratis in general, Navaratri is a huge deal.  Every night, we’ll sing the Durga aarti (a mode of worship)—for the nine nights.

            Sharma explains that Hindus worship all the different deities but that some are also drawn to this temple because of a special relationship with Durga. This concept of a deity as an ishtadevta, or a deity individually chosen as a special guardian,[9] occurs “because some people have special affection for this goddess, so they come here.…There are a lot of gods, but sometimes…we have special affection or love for a goddess or god…Krishna, Rama, or a mother goddess.  That is not only in any one part of India.  In [the] entire [country] you find a special affection for a god.”  Sharma is careful to differentiate the ishtadevta relationship from regionalism:

 Some gods are especially worshipped in different regions.  In our Punjab and north India, we have respect for all the gods but the mother goddess is supreme over all of them.  You go to Maharasthra—Bombay—they respect all the gods the same way, but especially Ganesha.  Go to Kolkata in Bengal, they love and have temples of all the gods, but they have special affection for Mother Kali.  Similarly, you go to Gujarat, they have special affection for Krishna, though they honor and love and worship all.  That is the difference:  some have [a] special affection for [the] mother goddess.  But all the people of India, all the Hindus have respect for all the gods.

 Sharma asserts that the only difference in liturgical prctice is that “we have different verses for different gods…no other difference…. The puja is the same, but we have different verses.”  Sanskrit and Hindi are the languages used in the Durga Mandir.  Being of Punjabi descent but coming from the New Delhi area, Sharma explains,

 we have made [verses] in Hindi because we live in a Hindi speaking area.  The Gujaratis have [verses] in Gujarati, the Maharashtrians have in Marathi, Bengalis have in Bengali.  They all have the chant in their own language also, besides Sanskrit.  The Sanskrit verses are the same all over India, but the local language [is] different.  Because I can’t sing in or chant in Tamil, Gujarati or Marathi, I chant in Punjabi—because I’m Punjabi.  Or in Hindi, because I live in a Hindi speaking area.

In the temple all of the other major deities of north India are also worshipped.  Standing along the walls on either side of Durga there are murtis— ‘forms or ‘likenesses’ of the gods– arranged for individual worship: Ganesh, the Shiva Parivar (‘family,’ including Shiva, Parvati, and Ganesha), Krishna and Radha, Bhole Bhate (Shiva the Ascetic), the Ram Parivar (Ram, Sita and a smaller Hanuman), Laxmi Narayan, Gayatri Devi, a large Hanuman, Saraswati, and Santoshi Ma.  These images all come from the city of Jaipur, Rajasthan, which is known for its craftsmanship.  These images are, as Diana Eck says,  “made according to ritual specifications to become the embodiments of the gods…but only the full rites of consecration, including the opening of the eyes (netronmilana) and the establishing of the breath (pranapratishtha) complete the metamorphosis, imbuing these material embodiments with the communicative power and the gaze of the Divine.”[10]  At present Saraswati and Santoshi Ma have yet to undergo these rituals.  They are kept tightly covered on their daises  until they are so imbued and made worthy of worship.

Durga as Encountered by Worshippers

Some who come to the Durga Mandir are not especially drawn to Durga above and beyond any of these other deities mentioned; this is the case with the temple staff and with many male worshippers. I spoke to two such men in the temple, for whom Durga’s presence was peripheral.  The first was Keyur, a man of about 30, who said that he brings his wife and son to this mandir “because it has all the gods here and it is also close to my home.”  Another was Nidhin, who is from Kerala and about 25 years old, and who came to the mandir along with almost 100 other people for a satsang (‘wise company’) with Shri Shri Ravi Shankar, a well known guru who visits different temples around the country to have these meetings.  Nidhin, who drove all the way from Maryland, explained at length the virtues of Ravi Shankar and his Art of Living organization, which teaches meditation and breathing techniques to help deal with the stress of everyday life.  After the bustling and noisy crowd left, within minutes the temple returned to the more calm and tranquil pace set by those that came seeking darsan (‘auspicious sight’) of the goddess.

        Acharyaji and Shastri, the two other priests, would not talk to me directly, consistently yet politely referring me to Sharma instead.  As they were both quite welcoming, explaining and even including me in the rituals for Durga, I think it was Sharma’s position in the temple that inclined them to defer to the elder priest; it might also have been that they did not feel as comfortable speaking in English to explicate the Durga’s worship and temple.  Acharyaji did introduce me to two women who were to take me to Sharma—Shashi from Hyderabad and her friend Amita from Mumbai. Shashi has been coming to this temple for four years, and refers to Sharma and his wife as her father and mother; the Sharmas too feel this connection, regarding her as a daughter.  They also came to refer to me as their daughter, which was surprising—this was not a relationship I observed them having with anyone else in the temple. The special familial relationship of the three was easily observable and quite touching. I suspect the bond is based at least partly on the religious devotion or interest expressed by the ‘daughters’ involved, specifically a devotion to the goddess Durga.  Shashi is quite devout–and I too was very intent on Durga and what they had to tell me regarding her.

Sharma insists that it is not especially significant to those in the mandir that they are worshipping in a temple devoted to a goddess instead of a god.  He asserts further that women are not particularly drawn to Durga.  Female worshippers say, however, that this is not their personal reality.  This goddess has especially moved all of the women I was able to speak with.

Amita agreed quietly that the “goddess is always there for her,” but it was the much more vocal Shashi who was convinced of the special power of Durga and her relationship with women: “Women are empowered—She is the Mother…we get the power, strength, [by] praying to Durga.” Shashi at one point even looked at me closely saying, “You too have felt her power.”

I found that when women were asked about Durga, they were very eager to share extremely personal encounters with the goddess and the specific traditions used by them to communicate with her their adoration and their very real everyday needs.  Shashi recounted to me how she personally experienced Durga’s help in dealing with immigration challenges before coming to the US.  It was then that she undertook a vrat—a vow or votive fasting—for the goddess:

 There was one Durga temple, and I went there and [a] lady asked me to do the eleven parikramas (circumambulations) of Durga…. Early mornings I went for eleven days and I did eleven parikramas. And on the eleventh day she promised me that the goddess would be there in my dreams.  I could not see Durga in an image, but I heard the voice of a woman saying: “January, February…” and up it went on; and then it came to September and she stopped.  It was May at that time, and I got my visa in August.  That’s how I started gaining the power—the more lights [diyas] I used to offer, the more power I used to feel. I used to get self-confidence in me, more confidence, more bhakti, more praying [to] her, devotion, and the strong feeling that she’s always there for me.

A vrat is usually understood to be, as Anne Pearson explains,

 a rite that is performed on a regular basis to achieve particular objectives, following rules that have been transmitted from one generation to the next.  Further, many Hindus…immediately think of women in connection with vratas….[V]ratas have been an important feature of Hindu religious life for millennia.  The word vrata emerges in the oldest extant literature of Hindu India—the Vedas. This means that the term itself, if not all its ramifications, goes back at least three thousand years.[11]

 From reading the texts, one does not get the impression that the vrats are especially a practice of women.  But today, while both men and women observe vrats in India, women observe far more of them and at more frequent intervals than do men.  As Pearson says, “[L]earning about vratas enables one to understand a great deal about Hindu religiosity in general, and Hindu women’s religiosity in particular.”[12]

From Purvi’s story it becomes clear that only the women in her family have been involved with traditions such as these:

Mom will sing garbas, which are all devoted to like Amba Ma or Durga.  Me and my sister will sit with her and she’ll sing and we sing with her. But for the Aarti we all sing together.  Mom has a book of songs my grandmother actually put together when she was alive—of different garbas; and I have memories of my childhood and my grandmother singing specific garbas that are devoted to Amba and they are all just worshipping her. So I think the attachment I got from seeing my grandmother and my mom just went through to me, too.  And my cousin, who was also raised by my grandmother when she was a kid—it’s the same thing, you know.  She always prays to Mata ji, meaning Mother, and that’s just what has been important to all the women in our family.  My dad will come for the prayer, but won’t necessarily sit….We’d usually do the aarti before my dad would be home and then we would give him prasad afterwards, but he wouldn’t be in on the active part of that.

Durga’s Significance

When I asked Sharmaji why he joined this temple—a mandir to a goddess, to Durga—and not another temple, he explained:  “For us [priests] it is the same.  Only we have to learn different verses for different gods.  And we know–everybody who is a priest knows–verses for Durga by heart…. If I leave this temple and I go to temple of Krishna, it will be no difficulty for me.” What Sharmaji asserts may be true for some, for those learned in the Sanskrit texts—that God is One and that individual, different forms of the Divine mean little in the larger scheme of things— but for women in the temple, like Purvi and Amita and Shashi, this is not the experience of worshipping Durga.

Sharma and the other priests report that there is no difference between the religious life of Indians within India’s borders and those here, save one:

The same in India, the same in United States.  No difference.  The only difference is that they are more particular here and have more devotion than in India.  In India you will go and you will not find that people go to temple, they rarely go to temples, but here, they come.  I think that may be because when they come here they see India here.  They find [it] everywhere in India, so they don’t need to go see India in a temple.

 There are two themes of bhakti in the Durga Mandir, and perhaps others as well.  Sharma describes bhakti in detail as

 devotion towards any…god, maybe towards Krishna, maybe towards Rama, maybe towards Shiva or maybe towards Durga.  Bhakti is only devotion, nothing else… related to the heart; this is not related to wisdom.  [A person] who makes bhakti, that person is called a bhakta…. Jnan means knowledge:  the conclusion that the god is almighty, he is present everywhere—that is jnan.  So these [are] two ways to worship the god….Some people pretend they are jnani, [but] among millions and millions…only one [is] a real jnani.

 Surprisingly, Sharma describes himself as a bhakta.  To me, his emphasis on texts and his professed lack of attachment to any particular deity did not seem particularly devotional, yet he asserted, “I am a bhakta.  I am not a jnani, though.  As long as you can sit I can talk about it, I am telling you what is jnan, but I am not a jnani.”  Sharma states that everyone in the Durga Mandir is a bhakta, but not necessarily in relation to the goddess:

When they come here they become Durga bhaktas. When we go to a Krishna temple, it’s the same.  If she [indicating Shashi] goes to a Krishna temple she will become a Krishnabhakta; when she goes to a Rama temple, she will be a Rama bhakta….Even when [one] enters this [Durga] temple, when one is standing before Krishna, [that person] is the bhakta of Krishna.  A bhakta accepts every god.

I wanted to know more about how women felt about their religious experience, since  Durga was being served  by male priests whose approach to the goddess and her devotion seems to differ so greatly from their own.  On this point Purvi explained,

I have always grown up with the tradition of male priests…. I’ve never in my life, even in India, encountered a female priest.  I don’t know if there are even, I guess, [any women] who have the knowledge for that.…When I go to the temple I touch the priest’s feet and get his blessing.  It seems perfectly natural.  I do feel like he is not like the other men in the temple because he has devoted his life to…the Hindu tradition.…But I don’t relate my experience to what [the priests] are feeling.  I just have respect for them because they are the priests of the temple.

When I spoke with males in the temple the concept of devotion to Durga or any other particular deity did not occur.  In conversation with female worshippers, however, I found that Durga was of central importance.  For these women this Durga was a specific goddess, not the pervading female entity discussed in texts like the Devi Mahatmya.  This was  Durga or Amba, a particular goddess with particular characteristics:  militaristic, beautiful, someone who rides a tiger.  There was no mention of Shiva as her husband, or of children.  I repeatedly heard Durga referred to as ‘mother,’ but I did not hear a single woman in the temple refer to her role as wife.  Durga is ‘mother’ all by herself, because she empowers and protects.  If devotees are questioned, perhaps stories linking Durga to Shiva and his children would be recounted, but when I asked people in the temple to explain who Durga is, these were not the elements that arose. For a person in the Hindu tradition all gods are worthy of veneration; therefore any believer entering this sacred space can readily worship any deity. Yet the intense feeling for Durga that these women convey seems clearly to go beyond what they feel for any other god, even if they maintain, in theoretical terms, that all deities have equivalent value.  For the men of the temple, by contrast, bhakti is functional and transferrable—it is as empowering to commune with one deity as the next.  But that is not the perception of the women at the Durga Mandir.

Bibliography

Coburn, Thomas B.  Devi Mahatmya, the Crystallization of the Goddess Tradition.  Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1984.

Coburn, Thomas B. “Devi, The Great Goddess” Devi, Goddesses of India. Edited by. John Stratton Hawley and Donna Marie Wulff.  Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996.

Eck, Diana.  Darsan: Seeing the Divine Image in India.  New York: Columbia Univeersity Press, 1998.

 Harlan, Lindsey and Paul B. Courtright.  From the Margins of Hindu Marriage, Essays on Gender, Religion and Culture.  Oxford: Oxford Uniersity Press, 1995.

 Kinsley, David. Hindu Goddesses.  Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986.

 McDermott, Rachel Fell. “The Western Kali.” Devi, Goddesses of India. Edited by. John Stratton Hawley and Donna Marie Wulff.  Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996.

 Pearson,

 Pintchman, Tracy.  The Rise of the Goddess in the Hindu Tradition. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994.

 Sivanandana, Sri Swami, “Goddess Durga” Durga Mandir. <www.durgamandir.com> (4 May 2005).  Navaratris.