Hindus adjust an ancient ritual in a modern world
Photo:Caroline Rothstein
A woman prepares a plate for the Karva Chauth ritual at the Hindu Center in Flushing.
By Caroline Rothstein November 09, 2009
It was just before noon on Tuesday when Bhanu Shetty, a henna tattoo artist, set up her table outside an Indian clothing store on 74th Street in Jackson Heights. Minutes later, her first customer arrived.
As Shwetambra Nath rested her hand atop a small box, Shetty covered her palm with traditional Indian bridal designs.
It was the first step in a centuries-old tradition practiced each fall by Nath and thousands of other Indians across New York. Called Karva Chauth, the ritual in which Indian women spend a day fasting and praying that their husbands have long and healthy lives. The fast, which took place on Oct. 7, traditionally ends only when a woman sees her husband’s face against the moonlight.
For Nath, a graduate student of Teachers College at Columbia University, following tradition would prove tricky.
Because her husband is at business school in Virginia, they planned to connect via the Internet Wednesday evening. She planned to find the moon in the night sky, look at her husband’s face on the screen, and then proceed to eat, she said.
New York is home to roughly 175,000 Hindus, according to projections by the Hindu American Foundation, though no one can say how many participate in Karva Chauth. But over the past decade, shifts in the rigid rules surrounding the tradition have broadened its appeal. Computers, hopeful single women, egalitarian men and traditionalist elders have all become part of the modern, amorphous equation. Some say that Western culture has transformed, even tainted, this North Indian tradition in communities like Queens.
Once reserved for married women, Karva Chauth has become trendy, drawing young, single women like Poonam Gonga. Gonga, 27, also had her palm covered with henna for her sixth Karva Chauth fast. “You get new clothes,” said Gonga, “New everything. It’s fun. Everybody does it.”
Neena Pal, another tattoo customer, expressed concern with this sentiment. Pal, who is married, has been practicing Karva Chauth for 20 years. “Normally everyone does [it] to get a good husband,” Pal says, “Now it’s become like a fashion. The girls just want new clothes.”
Karva Chauth’s popularity has grown from frequent appearances in Bollywood movies, says Varuni Bhatia, a social historian and professor of religious studies at New York University. Film has had a crucial impact on how Hindu rituals have changed in the last 20 years because movies have exposed the Hindu population at large to the various regional practices throughout India, according to Bhatia. “[Karva Chauth] has become the single representative [demonstration of] faith of all kinds of women’s rituals that women would do for their husbands from different parts of India,” says Bhatia.
On 74th Street, Nidhi Sharma sat for her tattoo while her husband and in-laws crowded behind her, eager to witness their newest family member’s first henna as a wife. This is Sharma’s third Karva Chauth but first henna as a married woman, as she fasted during her engagement. When Sharma mentioned that her husband, Ravinder Kumar, also fasted, they both giggled.
“If she can sacrifice for me, why can’t I do it?” Kumar said. Kumar said his friends make fun of him because this ritual is especially for women. This is Kumar’s fifth Karva Chauth fast. He began fasting before he was engaged, for his future bride. He said he feels his break from tradition has been influenced by Western culture.
On Wednesday, the Hindu Center in Flushing provided Karva Chauth rituals from 4 to 8 p.m. At 4:49 p.m., nearly 60 pairs of shoes clogged the foyer. In the temple’s ritual hall, a religious leader sat cross-legged on a small stage. Six red, square blankets spread across the floor, each with a bowl adorned with an orange cloth in the middle, awaiting food offerings for the Hindu gods and goddesses.
Dozens of women with henna-clad hands held ritual plates, their bodies draped in their finest bridal suits, heads veiled in shawls. They formed circles around the blankets. The priest told a story of Karva Chauth. In it a princess named Veeravati, was tricked by her brothers into thinking she saw the moon, thus breaking her fast prematurely, and causing her husband to take ill. In between the priest’s narrations, the women rotated their plates around the circle, seven different times, chanting a Hindi song about Karva Chauth.
Smiling as he watched his wife participate in this age-old practice, the center’s secretary, J.C. Awasthi, said he was not a proponent of the modern adjustments to Karva Chauth. The fast is a way for a wife to receive the benefits bestowed on her husband, he said, because according to Hindu tradition, whatever a husband receives, his wife is entitled to half. Because Karva Chauth is one of the oldest Hindu traditions, Awasthi said, “We should not break the principles or rules of karma.”
