it's way underappreciated just how absurdly huge the impact of bollywood on hindu culture has been. an actual goddess exists and is worshipped who only exists because of low budget movie in the 70s

Alright friends, thread time! let's talk about one of the coolest things to happen in modern hindu culture, and in modern religious studies- the birth of a brand new religious tradition

First, let us introduce her. This is Santoshi Ma, the goddess of Satisfaction and Happiness.

She is, mythologically, the daughter of Ganesha and his wives, Riddhi and Siddhi and Buddhi (prosperity, spiritual power, and wisdom respectively.) ((don't ask how this works))

Santoshi Ma is what we might call a folk goddess. Her worship is in the form of a 'vrat-katha', which is a vrat, or ritual fast, combined with her story (katha) that is performed for 16 consecutive fridays after which it is said that the devotee's most ardent wish is granted

There are many many of these kinds of local goddesses and folk traditions. A very popular one is the "satyanarayan katha", which is kind of like a religious chain letter, where such and such devotee read this and got infinite money or whatever, but that's another thread.

So Santoshi Ma. How did this one folk tradition make the jump from a tiny localized goddess of a lake near Jodhpur into a legit member of the pantheon?

To understand this phenomenon, i'm gonna take you on a couple of side trips through bollywood and folk religion as well as explaining how hinduism tends to spread. Plus we might talk about the difference between temple hinduism and street hinduism, but we'll see.

(after lunch, though. bbiab)

back! let's pick up, shall we?

Hinduism, like most of the big religions, is multiple expressions of related faith traditions under a big umbrella. this is an absurdly huge topic to cover, but if i summarize in the broadest generalization, there are two giant flavors of hinduism over everything else

and these two strains (again, utterly broad generalization here) can be roughly summed up as the brahmanical, liturgical tradition, and then the folk traditions.

The brahmanical tradition is what we in the west are taught in schools (or at least a really super reductive slice of that based on misunderstandings and bad translations filtered through victorian era christianity)- castes, vishnu, shiva, sanskrit chants, all of it

we're talking a very stratified, rigid, vedic based system with rituals and ceremonies and temples and mystic secrets and all that. When i say i'm a hindu priest, it's this tradition i draw upon.

But hidden behind that, the way prometheus hid the meat and fat of the ox from Zeus underneath the ox's stomach, is a vast ocean of folk and indigenous traditions that make up the vibrant life of Hindu culture.

now, i'm not going to go into the infinite variety of folk gods and goddesses and the ways they're worshipped, cause i could be here till the end of time, and then the end of the time after that.

Folk traditions of hinduism tended to have been the provenance of the lower classes, of women, of tribes and communities and other smaller, more marginalized groups of people. Brahmanical Hinduism was more the faith of the ruling classes, though it was not as stratified as sounds

Nonetheless, these traditions tend to get ignored by the histories and texts, and the upper class priests and rulers tended to frown on these departures from orthodoxy. (aka, the story of literally every religious heirarchy in human history)

so let's go to Jodhpur (yes, where the pants originated), in the deserts of Rajasthan, close to, but not at the border of India and Pakistan. Think the late 50s, after independence. the huge and bloody riots and forced migrations of hindus and muslims across borders

Society, especially in the border regions of Rajasthan and Punjab, has been utterly and completely disrupted. families have been forced from their homes and lands of centuries past and sent to god knows where to suffer god knows what fate by the word of Mountbatten

Times are desperate, people are dying, and in the deserts of Rajasthan, god, where the fuck even are you, and how are you gonna make it?

Now, let's talk about Hinduism for a sec. Here's a 53 (!!) post refresher about the most popular deity in modern Hinduism, Ganesha- https://twitter.com/elektrotal/status/901169422794084352

Ganesha has steadily been on the upswing in the faith since he really emerged as his own independent deity since like the early 4th or 5th century CE (seriously, way way later than i would have imagined) as the beloved remover of obstacles

So it stands to reason that this deity would be called upon by these displaced hindus en masse after partition. But more than that, the brunt of the pain and agony was borne by the women, especially in these nomadic communities who were newly cut off from their ancestral lands

Now in Hindu folk traditions, there are a lot of local mother goddess figures. They are the protectors of family, of harvest, of all the things you would expect. Every community has one or more, and for reasons unknown (read-patriarchy) they are folded up into one generic goddess

so you get a handful of ur-male gods (shiva vishnu ganesh surya murugan) and then just one mega-mother amalgamation (devi, shakti, parvati, kali) at the top top level.

but in the interior spaces, the women's spaces, stories of the goddesses are infinite and omnipresent. And it was in these spaces that Santoshi Ma's story was born.

It behooves me to tell you the story of the film real quick so that i can refer back to it as we go. In short, it's very much a woman's archetypal myth in South Asian culture.

So! In the celestial sphere of Heaven, we are told that Ganesha's sons would really like a sister. Initially he resists, but his wives are like, bro, this would be great. So the elephant lord relents, and draws upon the spiritual power of his three wives to create a daughter

Upon her birth, the divine bard Narada, a pseudo Mercury/hermes figure, declares that this girl, the mind-born daughter of the god of good beginnings, will always fulfill the desires of her devotees, and would be called Santoshi Maa, Mother of Satisfaction and Happiness

The other goddesses are hella miffed about this new entrant into the pantheon, because she's encroaching on their space, and they start making trouble for her. This, btw, is a divine mirror of the life of a girl in hindu culture.

In the sense that a girl is born, gets married, moves to her husband's home, and is immediately attacked by her Mother-in-law and her husband's sisters, who used to rule the roost and are now set to lose power to this newcomer

it's a tale as old as time, and the archetype of the evil mother in law is basically ingrained in humanity (as i type this, it occurs to me that holy shit, cinderella is basically the story of santoshi maa)

Anyway, back on earth, a young woman named Satyavati is Santoshi ma's greatest devotee, and leads prayers and all that. She is blessed by the goddess to find and fall in love with a handsome young farmer.

She marries the dude and moves in with him. (note, this breaks a number of taboos- not arranged, not of equivalent communities etc). He's the youngest so his family doesn't care, but he's the youngest of SEVEN, and the other six sister in laws and MiL do care.

and mother in law and two of the sisters decide they don't like this spunky upstart girl or her faith in a nontraditional goddess, so they start trashing her life. Meanwhile, we're shown the elder goddesses acting parallel to santoshi in heaven.

The elder goddesses decide, much as YWHW and the Advocate do in Job, to test Satyavati's devotion to Santoshi Ma. Satyavati's husband is forced from home by his elder in-laws, and is almost sent to his death, saved only by his wife's devotions.

But the goddesses convince his family that he died anyway, so they treat Satyavati like a widow, which is to say, the very worst you can treat someone in Hindu culture. Widows are bad luck because their husbands died, and there's all sorts of vile stigma associated

Satyavati's sister in laws start beating her, starving her, treating her like a slave, some random thug tries to force himself on her, all of the worst things. (at this point the story will have fully captured the lives of the viewers, being all too relatable)

Satyavati starts considering suicide, because she sees no way out of her predicament. As she's about to, the divine bard Narada appears before her and stops her. He tells Satyavati about the sacred vrat, or fasting ritual, that honors Santoshi Maa

In this, the supplicant fasts for 16 consecutive fridays , at the conclusion of which Santoshi Maa will grant their wishes. Satyavati completes this ritual just barely (obv her in laws are trying to ruin her devotions however they can).

The goddess appears before Satyavati, and helps bring back her husband, who was stricken with amnesia, fell in love with a rich merchant's daughter, and was about to marry her. He wakes up, comes home with all this money, and returns to his true love Satyavati

He's horrified by her treatment, and takes his cash to build her a mansion, complete with a temple dedicated to Santoshi Maa. But wait, his sister in laws have one last trick. At the final dedication ritual, they spike the food offerings with lime juice, ruining the offering.

The movie makes a point of this, because sour and bitter foods are forbidden in the vrat ceremony of Santoshi. the film is practically a how-to guide on her worship, complete with all the devotional songs and prayers a follower would need.

Just as chaos is about to erupt, Narada explains what he did to rile up the goddesses, everyone calms down, and Santoshi maa is welcomed into the pantheon through the virtue and tenacity of her devotee Satyavati never losing faith. it's an incredible story of perseverance

And moreover, the film is about women, about goddesses, and about the power and strength of women's faith. It is, perhaps, the most vivid look at interior folk tradition as we've ever had

thread broke, continues here. my apologies. https://twitter.com/elektrotal/status/992546182948794373