Kantara and the mystical right-left divide

Kantara was a visual spectacle and a shining example of our penchant and flair for story telling. Rooted in a combination of folklore and mythology, it builds a bridge between our enigmatic past and our complex present through a classic tale of good prevailing over evil. However, as is the case with everything else in our times, the ideological left and right are at loggerheads even over this, with the former suggesting cultural appropriation of tribal folklore by mainstream political Hinduism, whereas the latter asserts the folklore as an unquestionable facet of Hinduism. Perhaps this itself is a testament to the success of this movie.

However, it raises a larger question: how did mythology, spirituality, culture, and art become so vulnerable to the crossfire between the left and the right and what are its implications?

The story of Kantara is based on the folklore involving two daivas, Panjurli and Guliga. Though the word daiva is sometimes translated to ‘demigod’, the origins of the latter lie in Greek mythology, where demigods exist as a sort of crossover between gods and humans, and therefore it remains a poor translation.

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However, I presume that, in its spirit, the word daiva simply means the divine. Panjurli and Guliga, from Kantara, are celebrated during the Bhuta Kolata, a sort of ritualistic dance and music routine, which in itself is a cultural experience that is enthralling and surreal.

Yet the precise mythology of these deities is not objectively defined, perhaps due to their origin stories being rooted in folklore or on account of their tales being transferred from generation to generation through oral story telling. There has been little or no effort to study the classics of Tulunadu folklore the way the Iliad or the Odyssey of Homer is studied by Western scholars, or, for that matter, the way the Ramayan or Mahabharata is the subject matter of Indian scholarly work.

With my curiosity triggered, I tried to learn more about the daivas, Panjurli and Guliga. While one school of thought suggested that the animistic worship of these deities preceded the Vedic puranas of Hinduism, yet another school of thought linked these two daivas to Shiva, Parvathi, and Vishnu in Vedic mythology. Whatever school of thought one chooses to follow, one must admire the ethos of a land that allowed all forms of belief and worship to coexist by connecting tales within the same literary and cultural universe and not allowing one tale or narrative to trump the other.

Our stories are inclusive. However, by not extolling our mythology into civilisational statements, the way the West did with Greek and Roman culture and history, we have internalised ignorance and an inferiority complex about our own past. This explains why Europe is not fighting over how the followers of Zeus desecrated the temple of Apollo in the battle of Troy, but we can get into a fist fight over what was done in the name of and against the symbols of the divine.

Therein lies the beauty of the portrayal of the daivas Panjurli and Guliga in Kantara. These enigmatic deities with connections to Lord Vishnu within the movie, serve key roles as the protectors of the poor, the underprivileged and aid their fight against the feudal threats.

As such, they reconcile the seemingly irreconcilable right and left stereotypes and enable the philosophies underlining them to exist as part of the same continuum. We must celebrate these tales as precisely that—a representation of the rich imagination and inclusive storytelling in this land. However, if our political differences continue to become louder over movies such as Kantara, I worry that the noise from these squabbles will render feeble, and perhaps even mute, the many rich tales and folklore that the land has to tell us. It is therefore incumbent upon activists from both the right and the left to ensure that the culture, history, and folklore of this country are strengthened and celebrated as part of politics and do not instead become its cost.

(The writer is an advocate based in Bengaluru)