Elavoor Thookkam 2004

 

by Swami Bhoomananda Tirtha

1.	BACKGROUND   q Background and Relevance q Need of the hour q Viveka-instilling Crusade

 

No evil can be uprooted, nor any good preserved for ever. Does Nature want us to be ever watchful? Or is it to enrich humanity with constant awareness, enlightenment, thereby making knowledge and discrimination a constant guide for them?   Constant vigil is the price for democracy. The price for good conduct, be it of the individual, home or society, too is likewise, unyielding discipline. Adages seldom go wrong. People in their behaviour may default, not these proverbial statements.   There can be no other instance than the Thookkam indulgence where these truths become evident beyond doubt.  Thookkam stopping crusade started suddenly in March 1987.   It was prompted by a newspaper report on the subject.

q     Background and Relevance

Elavoor Putthankavu Devi Temple in Ernakulam District, is 10 km off Ankamaly, en-route to Cochin from Trichur.  Legends narrated by Elavoorians say that the practice of Thookkam continues as a vestige of human sacrifice begun by a King of ancient times, whose kingdom was suffering from calamities and epidemics.  After agitated prayers the King had a divine dispensation that human sacrifice at the Devi Temple would redress the misfortune.  The sovereign’s word being unassailable law, the practice of suspending a human being from a wooden scaffold using steel hooks pierced to his back, began. As if to make it more sportful for the Goddess, the victim, suspended from a height of 32 ft, would be whirled around the temple compound thrice and then left to die helped by vultures and crows who pecked at his bleeding wounds! The Temple would remain closed for seven days, and when reopened on the 8^th day, the dead man’s skeleton would be collected and disposed off.  After purificatory rites such as sprinkling sacred water with tulasi leaves, the daily worship would be revived.

In its present form, the ritual is the same except that the victim is quickly brought down and set free after three rounds in the temple compound. That he may succumb to the deep wounds is a medical fact. There have been accidents during the Thookkam event. This is the legend Elavoorians proudly narrated to the Press, in defence of their resolve to preserve and intensify the ritual in its present form unhindered, calling it the great symbol of their devotion, a prestige of their rural identity.

 

q     Need of the hour

The Media men brought it to my attention in 1987, asking why Hind Navotthana Pratishtan was not reacting to the detestable, barbaric legacy.  That was the time we were in the thick of spirituo-social movements aimed at strengthening the society.  As part of the process, we were actively protesting and working for stoppages of practices like untouchability, obscene singing and the like in the name of religion and superstition.  It was in that strain that the Press sought our response to this abominable, criminal Temple practice.

Elavoor Thookkam is carried out as an offering by a devotee. The offerer does not choose to hang himself from the 32 ft. Scaffold (called ‘chaadu’ in Malyalam) but hires another for a fee. The bait offered runs into thousands of rupees.  The hired victim undertakes a 41-day vow implying some austerities including celibacy. He takes the vow standing in front of the Putthankavu Devi, when he is given a sword as insignia to let everyone know that he is under the vow. From then on he has to be regular in his Temple worship without leaving the village throughout the period.

While these austerities are basically good practices, its purpose makes it an extremely ungodly superstitious ordeal!

The fated day for Thookkam is the 10th of Medam (Mesha), around the 23rd of April, this year. Mesha is also the first month of the agricultural year in Kerala.  The day is called patthaam-udayam –  the 10th dawning, the day the Sun is right on the meridian of the place. Loka-Sangraha (wellbeing of the society) being our avowed purpose in life, we Sanyasins, could not ignore the Thookkam evil. And so started the crusade against it in 1987!

 

q     Viveka-instilling Crusade

 

Religious misconduct has to be religiously met.

For Police, it is merely enforcing law.  For us Acharyas, stark physical opposition is not the means. The speciality and surprise will be only when Spiritual Teachers deal with religious abuses in a spiritual manner, causing insult to none but spreading a subtle but powerful force of correction everywhere. The idea is to change the society, making even sleeping minds wake up to the disaster and think deeply!  Dharmic values, propriety and restraints are first to rise in the mind.  Only then they transit to the sensory, actional dimension.

So I, on behalf of HNP declared through the Press: We have started on a Shayana Vrata.  This binds us to lie inert before the Scaffold in front of the Devi, making Thookkam Scaffold carriers trample over our bodies to fulfil their Thookkam mission.  The move was clearly non-violent, austere to the core.  By this, we wanted to make the Thookkam proponents think deeply about their frenzied love for a criminal behaviour in the name of religion.

For us it was simple, but each passing day proved it otherwise.  Mass media used their pen graphically, vying with each other for importance and excellence.  Strangely, some defended the criminal misconduct in the name of Tradition, Faith.  Hindu Society is strange.  And the Newspapers representing it also have to be equally divergent.

We took out a Purificatory Yatra from Kalady on 21st April 1987 from the Crocodile Ghat in Poorna River.  District Authorities were informed formally of it.  Heavy police escort was there.  We could not enter Elavoor, not to speak of reaching Putthankavu  Temple and have darshan of the Devi.  Helmeted team stopped us 2 km away.  I addressed the “strong human wall of men and women erected on the other side of the canal”, a few metres away.  After that, police arrested and removed us.  They called it a ‘protective arrest’!

 

NEXT / TABLE OF CONTENTS