Kapal Mochan: Three Tanks That Three Religions Use

The site carries a second and much later association, which is why there is a gurdwara.

The tradition:

• Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth Sikh Guru, is said to have stayed at Kapal Mochan after the battle of Bhangani, fought in around 1688
• The battle was against a coalition of hill rajas near Paonta Sahib
• The Guru is said to have camped here for some days
• Gurdwara Kapal Mochan Sahib marks the association

Guru Gobind Singh:

• Born at Patna in 1666, tenth and last human Guru of the Sikhs
• Founded the Khalsa at Anandpur Sahib in 1699
• Fought a series of battles against hill rajas and Mughal forces
• Lost his four sons, the Sahibzade, two in battle at Chamkaur and two executed at Sirhind
• Compiled the final recension of the scripture and installed the Guru Granth Sahib as the eternal Guru before his death at Nanded in 1708
• A poet in Braj, Persian and Punjabi, whose compositions include the Jaap Sahib, the Zafarnama and much else

Bhangani. The battle is described in the Bachittar Natak, a composition attributed to the Guru, and was fought against a coalition of hill rajas near Paonta Sahib on the Yamuna.

The Guru was in his early twenties. The battle was, in the account, a victory.

Why he would come here. The site was already a tirtha of considerable standing on a route through the region, and a large gathering was held there.

Whether the visit was for the fair, for rest after the battle, or for other reasons, is not something the sources settle.

Paonta Sahib, about 40 km, is where he spent several years and is one of the major Sikh sites of the region. It is well worth combining with a Kapal Mochan visit.

How Hindu and Sikh sites relate in this region. As set out at Mansa Devi, the relationship is closer than modern categories suggest.

• Guru Gobind Singh's period in the Shivalik hills, at Paonta Sahib and Anandpur Sahib, was spent in a landscape full of Hindu shrines and hill states
• His compositions engage extensively with Puranic material
• The hill rajas were sometimes his allies and sometimes his opponents, on political rather than religious lines
• The Bachittar Natak and the compositions of the Dasam Granth are the subject of substantial scholarly and community discussion, and positions on them vary

And the practical fact at Kapal Mochan. There is a gurdwara and there are temples, on the same tanks, and both communities have used the site for a very long time.

That arrangement is described in the next section, along with the third community that uses it.

The Kartik Purnima fair at Kapal Mochan is one of the larger fairs in Haryana and is genuinely attended by three communities.

When:

• Kartik Purnima, the full moon of Kartika, generally November
• The fair runs for several days around it

What happens:

• Bathing in the three sarovars, which is the principal act
• Circumambulation of the tanks
• Worship at the temples
• Services at the gurdwara
• A very large fair, with trade, livestock, food and entertainment
• Attendance in the lakhs

Who comes:

• Hindus, for the tirtha and the bathing
• Sikhs, for the gurdwara and the Guru Gobind Singh association
• Muslims, who have historically attended in substantial numbers and continue to

That last is the fact worth dwelling on.

Muslim attendance at Hindu fairs. It is much commoner in India than the current public conversation suggests, and it is worth setting out.

• Village and regional fairs across India have historically been attended by everybody local, irrespective of community
• A fair is a market, an entertainment and a social occasion as much as a religious one
• Traders, performers, craftsmen and stallholders at Indian fairs have always been drawn from every community
• Many specific shrines are visited by people of multiple faiths, as set out at Trilokinath

Why this matters. Because the assumption that Indian religious life has always been communally segregated is wrong, and the evidence against it is at every fair in the country.

Other shared occasions and sites:

• Sufi dargahs across India, visited in very large numbers by Hindus, including Ajmer, Nizamuddin and countless local shrines
• Sabarimala, where the pilgrimage route includes a stop at the shrine of Vavar, a Muslim companion of Ayyappa
• Trilokinath in Lahaul, described in the Himachal batch
• Rewalsar, with Hindu, Sikh and Buddhist sites around one lake
• Hinglaj in Balochistan, visited by Hindus and by local Muslims as Nani Mandir
• Kapal Mochan, here
• A very large number of local shrines, saints and pirs whose devotees cross community lines

And the honest qualification. The picture is not uniformly harmonious and should not be presented as such.

• India's communal history includes real and severe violence, before and after Partition
• Shared shrines have in some cases become contested
• Reform movements within each tradition have discouraged shared practice
• Political mobilisation on religious lines has made shared observance harder in some places
• People who attend each other's fairs may also, in the same district, be in conflict

Both things are true. A fair where three communities have gathered for centuries is a fact, and so is everything else that has happened in the same region.

What a visitor can do. Attend, notice who is there, buy from whoever is selling, and do not treat the arrangement as remarkable, since treating ordinary coexistence as remarkable is itself part of the problem.

Kartik Purnima generally. Since it is the date, it is worth explaining.

• The full moon of Kartika, generally November
• Also called Dev Diwali or Tripuri Purnima
• Marking Shiva's destruction of the three cities of the demon Tripurasura
• Also the birth anniversary of Guru Nanak in most years, observed as Gurpurab
• Also the day of the Kartik snan bathing observance, at the culmination of a month of bathing
• Dev Diwali at Varanasi, when the ghats are lit with lamps, is one of the great sights in India

So the date carries a Shaiva festival, a Sikh Gurpurab and a bathing observance simultaneously, which is precisely why a fair on that date draws everybody.

The site is three tanks, and the Indian temple tank deserves a proper explanation because it is one of the most important pieces of infrastructure in the subcontinent's history.

What a temple tank is:

• A constructed water body, generally rectangular, with steps down all sides
• Called sarovar, kund, pushkarini, teppakulam, talab, baoli and other names by region and form
• Attached to a temple or a shrine
• Used for ritual bathing, for the deity's rites, for festivals and for the community's water

What they actually did:

• Stored monsoon water for use through the dry season
• Recharged groundwater, so that surrounding wells held water longer
• Provided drinking and washing water in a period before piped supply
• Watered livestock
• Regulated flooding by holding runoff
• Provided a public space

Why sacralising them worked:

• A tank declared sacred is protected by prohibition
• Fouling it is an offence against the deity, not a nuisance
• Its maintenance, the annual desilting, is a religious obligation with a fixed occasion
• A custodian exists in the temple
• Encroachment on it is unthinkable

That is a functioning water management system enforced by religion, and India built tens of thousands of them.

The regional systems:

• Temple tanks across Tamil Nadu, of which there are thousands, many now dry
• Stepwells, the baoli and vav of Gujarat and Rajasthan, which are among the most remarkable structures in Indian architecture. Rani ki Vav at Patan is a UNESCO site; Chand Baori at Abhaneri and Adalaj are among the finest
• Johads in Haryana and Rajasthan
• Eris, the chain tank system of Tamil Nadu
• Cheruvus in Telangana, described at Ramappa
• Ahar pyne in Bihar
• Zings, kuls and khadin in the drier and higher regions

What happened to them:

• Piped water removed the daily necessity, so the tank stopped being used
• A tank nobody uses stops being maintained
• Desilting stopped and tanks filled with sediment
• Sewage and drainage were connected into them
• They became convenient dumping grounds
• Where land values rose, they were built over, and this is the commonest fate in urban India
• Groundwater extraction by borewell replaced recharge, and the aquifer fell

The Gurugram example, given in the Sheetla Mata entry, is the paradigm case: a district that built over its johads and quarried its recharge zone, and now has among the most depleted groundwater in India.

The revival. This is worth knowing because it is happening.

• Community tank restoration projects have been undertaken across India with substantial success
• Rajendra Singh and the Tarun Bharat Sangh's work in Alwar, restoring johads across hundreds of villages, brought back seasonal rivers and is the best documented case
• Tamil Nadu, Telangana and Rajasthan have run state programmes on tank restoration
• Mission Kakatiya in Telangana restored large numbers of cheruvus
• Temple tank restoration by temple managements is increasingly common

Why it works when it does:

• The structure frequently still exists and needs desilting rather than rebuilding
• The community knowledge of how it was managed frequently survives
• The religious framing gives a reason to maintain it that a purely technical project lacks
• Results are visible within a season or two, in well levels

At Kapal Mochan. Three tanks, maintained because a very large number of people bathe in them once a year and a smaller number throughout it.

That is the system working, and it is worth looking at them as water infrastructure and not only as tirthas, because they are both and they always were.

The site exists because of a sin that required expiation, and the system of expiation is worth setting out.

Prayashchitta:

• The system of expiatory rites in the dharmashastra literature
• Prescribing what must be done to discharge the consequence of a wrong act
• Graded by the gravity of the act and by the circumstances
• Set out at length in the Manusmriti, the Yajnavalkya Smriti and the later digests

The mahapatakas, the great sins, traditionally five:

• Brahmahatya, killing a brahmana
• Surapana, drinking liquor, specifically for a brahmana
• Steya, theft, specifically of gold from a brahmana
• Gurutalpaga, violating the teacher's bed
• Samsarga, association with those who have committed the above

What the system does:

• It states that a wrong has consequences independent of whether anybody knows
• It provides a procedure for discharging them
• It grades the response, so that a lesser wrong requires less
• It considers intention, since an act done knowingly requires more than one done in ignorance
• It permits completion, so that the matter ends

Why the last is important. A system of guilt with no mechanism for discharge produces people who carry things indefinitely.

Prayashchitta says: do this, and it is finished. That is a psychologically substantial offer.

And what is wrong with it. Stated honestly, because a guide should.

• The system is graded by caste, explicitly and throughout. The gravity of an act, and the expiation required, differ according to the caste of the person who did it and of the person it was done to. That is the central and disqualifying feature of the dharmashastra literature on this and there is no reading around it
• The penalties prescribed include things that are unacceptable by any modern standard
• The system as set out in those texts is not a system anybody should apply now

What survives usefully:

• The idea that a wrong creates an obligation
• The idea that the obligation can be discharged by specified action
• The practice of pilgrimage and charity as forms of discharge, which are what the tirthas actually offer
• The insistence that justified actions still incur consequences, which is the point Kapal Mochan's story makes

The last point is the interesting one. Rama's killing of Ravana was necessary and right in the epic's terms.

And it still required expiation, and the epic and its tradition insist on that.

A moral framework that says a justified killing is free of consequence produces people who kill easily. One that says it must still be paid for produces people who are careful.

Whichever tradition you come from, that is the more demanding position, and it is worth noticing that Indian tradition took it.

Where else this appears:

• Rama at Kapal Mochan and at Rameswaram, where the linga was installed for the same reason
• Keesaragutta, in Telangana, described earlier, where the same expiation produces the story of the scattered lingas
• Arjuna and the Pandavas, seeking absolution after Kurukshetra, which produces the Panch Kedar
• Shiva as Kapalika, released at Varanasi
• Ashoka, historically, whose remorse after Kalinga is recorded in his own inscriptions and produced a documented change of policy

Ashoka's edict is worth quoting in substance because it is the historical version of the same idea.

After the conquest of Kalinga, in which very large numbers were killed and deported, Ashoka records in his thirteenth rock edict that he felt remorse, that the conquest caused him deep sorrow, and that he had turned to dhamma.

That is a ruler publicly recording regret for a war he won, carved in stone, for anybody to read.

It is not the same as a temple story, but it is the same instinct, and it is the earliest example of it in Indian history that is unambiguously documented.

Getting there

• Kapal Mochan, near Bilaspur, Yamunanagar district, Haryana
• About 20 km from Yamunanagar and roughly 40 km from Ambala
• Around 220 km from Delhi
• Yamunanagar Jagadhri and Ambala are the nearest railheads
• Chandigarh and Delhi for airports
• Buses run from Yamunanagar, Jagadhri and Ambala

Timings

• The site is open through the day. The gurdwara and the temples have their own timings

When to go

• Kartik Purnima, generally November, for the fair, which is the principal occasion and draws numbers in the lakhs
• October to March for weather
• Ordinary days for a quiet visit to the tanks
• Avoid the peak summer

Bathing

• Bathing in the three sarovars is the principal act
• Bring a change of clothes
• The tanks are managed and there are steps
• Follow the arrangements, which are separated for men and women at the fair

At the gurdwara

• Cover your head, which is required
• Remove footwear
• Do not carry tobacco onto the premises
• Langar is served and everybody is welcome to eat, which is the point of it
• Sit on the floor for langar, in the line, and do not treat it as a queue for free food, because that is not what it is

Langar deserves a note. The free community kitchen at every gurdwara, in which everybody sits in a line on the floor irrespective of anything and is served the same food, is one of the most significant institutions in the subcontinent.

• Established by Guru Nanak and formalised by the later Gurus
• Explicitly designed to break caste commensality rules, since sitting and eating together was the one thing caste most strictly regulated
• Run entirely by volunteers and funded by donation
• Serves very large numbers, and the langar at the Golden Temple serves tens of thousands daily
• Operated at enormous scale in disasters, and Sikh organisations are among the first and most effective responders in Indian emergencies

Eating in a langar is worth doing, at Kapal Mochan or anywhere, and the correct way to do it is to sit down, eat what you are given, and offer to help with the dishes.

Practicalities

• Basic facilities at the site, expanded greatly during the fair
• Yamunanagar and Ambala have accommodation
• Cash
• Very large crowds at Kartik Purnima

Combining the visit

• Adi Badri, in the same district, the Saraswati origin site
• Paonta Sahib, about 40 km, in Himachal, where Guru Gobind Singh spent several years, on the Yamuna
• Yamunanagar and Jagadhri, known for metal and brassware
• Sugh or Sughan, an archaeological mound near Jagadhri, the ancient Srughna, a substantial early historic city mentioned by Xuanzang
• Kalesar national park, in the Shivalik
• Kurukshetra, about 110 km
• Chandigarh and Panchkula, about 90 km
• Nahan and the Himachal Shivalik

Sugh deserves a mention. The mound near Jagadhri is the site of Srughna, an ancient city on the Yamuna, described by Xuanzang in the seventh century as a substantial Buddhist centre.

It is an unexcavated or partly excavated mound in the fields, with almost nothing to see and a very large amount underneath it, which describes a great many Indian archaeological sites.

A closing thought. There are three tanks in Yamunanagar district where a story says a god was released from a killing he had to commit.

A Sikh Guru camped there after a battle. There is a gurdwara. At the November fair, Hindus bathe, Sikhs pray, Muslims trade, and everybody eats.

None of the people who go there think this is remarkable, and they are right, and that is the most useful thing about it.