Mansa Devi at Panchkula: The Goddess of the Thing You Want

The main temple carries wall paintings of the early nineteenth century, and they are the reason this site matters beyond its crowds.

What is there:

• Painted panels on the walls of the main temple, generally given as around 38 in number
• Depicting deities, scenes from the Puranas and the epics, and decorative work
• In the Punjab hill or Pahari derived idiom, related to the Kangra and Guler traditions described at Brajeshwari
• Dating to the temple's construction under Gopal Singh and to subsequent work

Why they matter:

• Wall painting of this period in the Punjab plains and the Shivalik foothills is comparatively rare in surviving form
• The Pahari painting tradition is known overwhelmingly from miniatures, portable works on paper, held in museum collections
• Wall painting in the same idiom, in situ, in the building it was made for, is a different and much scarcer thing
• It shows how the court style translated to architectural scale and to a religious setting

The Pahari tradition in a temple. This is the interesting question.

The Kangra and Guler paintings described at Brajeshwari were made for courts, as portable objects, on devotional subjects, for connoisseur patrons who knew the texts.

Here the same visual language is applied to temple walls, for a general congregation, at a shrine drawing very large numbers.

That transfer, from an aristocratic private art to a public devotional one, is the sort of thing that happens repeatedly in Indian art history and is frequently the point at which a style reaches the largest number of people.

Condition and conservation:

• Wall paintings in an active temple are exposed to smoke from lamps and incense, to touch, to damp and to well meaning repainting
• Conservation of Indian wall painting is a specialised field and is not adequately resourced
• Overpainting, in which a damaged painting is repainted rather than conserved, has destroyed a very large quantity of Indian wall painting and continues to

A general point about temple repainting. It is worth stating carefully because it produces real friction.

• A congregation reasonably wants its temple to look cared for, bright and complete
• A deteriorating painting looks neglected
• Repainting it in modern paint makes it look new
• That destroys the original permanently
• The alternative, conservation, is slow, expensive, requires specialists, and leaves the painting looking old

That is a genuine conflict between two legitimate positions, and the reason so much has been lost is not vandalism but a community trying to look after its temple with the resources it has.

What a visitor can do:

• Look at them, which almost nobody does
• Do not touch them
• Do not photograph with flash
• If you are in a position to support conservation work at such sites, it is among the more useful things to fund, because there is very little of this material left

Where else to see Punjab and hill wall painting:

• Sheesh Mahal and the Qila Mubarak at Patiala
• The Rang Mahal at Chamba
• The Ram Bagh and other Sikh period buildings around Amritsar
• Nurpur and various hill fort remains
• Sheesh Mahal at the Golden Temple complex and the interior decoration there, which is a related tradition in a different medium

The temple's principal occasion is Navratri, twice a year, and the scale is very large.

The numbers:

• Devotees come from Haryana, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh and beyond
• Attendance across a Navratri runs into the lakhs
• The Chandigarh, Panchkula and Mohali urban area supplies a very large local constituency
• Special transport arrangements are made and the approach roads are managed

What is done:

• Darshan, in a managed queue
• Mundan for children, as at Sheetla Mata
• Threads tied for wishes and untied when granted
• Offerings of chunri, red cloth, coconut, sweets and flowers
• Kanya pujan on the appropriate days
• A very large fair with the usual market

Managing a Navratri crowd. Since this is a practical guide, it should say what a first time visitor is walking into.

• The queue can run for hours
• The approach is crowded and the last stretch is dense
• There will be very large numbers of families with small children
• Heat, in Chaitra Navratri, and cold, in Ashwin, are both factors
• There are separate arrangements and lines for various categories. Ask

Practical advice:

• Go very early, before dawn, or on a weekday within the Navratri if you can choose
• Carry water
• Keep children with you at all times and agree a meeting point
• Carry as little as possible; there are cloakroom arrangements
• Do not carry valuables
• Be patient with the people around you, all of whom have also been standing for a long time

Why Navratri produces this scale. It is worth explaining because the pattern repeats at Devi shrines across India.

• Navratri is the one period in the year when Devi worship is universally observed
• It falls twice, in spring and autumn, at the two seasonal transitions
• Families fast and the observance is domestic as well as at the temple
• A visit to a Devi shrine during Navratri is held to be particularly effective
• The nine nights structure gives people a reason to come on a specific day rather than at some point

That last is the operative mechanism. A festival that concentrates a year's visits into nine days will produce a crowd, and every large Devi shrine in India faces the same arithmetic.

The other Devi shrines of the region. Panchkula sits at the junction of several circuits.

• Mansa Devi, Panchkula, this one
• Chandi Mandir, near Panchkula, from which the city of Chandigarh takes its name
• Naina Devi, Bilaspur, Himachal, about 90 km
• Chintpurni, Una, Himachal
• Jwalamukhi, Brajeshwari and Chamunda, in Kangra
• Kali Devi, Patiala, described in this batch
• Bhadrakali, Kurukshetra

Chandi Mandir deserves a note. The temple near Panchkula is where Chandigarh gets its name: the fort of Chandi. A planned modernist city designed by Le Corbusier is named after a Devi shrine in the Shivalik foothills, which is a juxtaposition worth registering.

The Chandi Mandir cantonment, headquarters of the Western Command, takes its name from the same temple.

The temple is named for wishes and the practice around them is worth setting out, because it is one of the most widespread religious behaviours in India and it is rarely explained.

The mechanism:

• A devotee comes with a specific request
• They ask, and undertake something in return: a visit, an offering, a fast, a walk, a donation
• They tie a thread, a coin, a bangle, a stone or a piece of cloth as a physical marker
• If the request is granted, they return and fulfil what they undertook
• They untie the thread, which closes the transaction

Why the physical marker:

• It makes the request exist outside the person
• It stays at the temple after they have gone
• It creates an obligation, since an untied thread is unfinished business
• It joins them to everybody else who tied one

Where you see this:

• Threads on trees and railings at Devi shrines across north India
• Bells at Golu Devta and Jhula Devi, described in the Uttarakhand batch
• Cradles tied for children at temples across the south
• Locks at various shrines
• Stones stacked at pass shrines
• Chunris tied at Devi temples
• Threads at Sufi dargahs, in exactly the same form, by people of every community

The mannat vocabulary. In north India the word is mannat and the structure is well defined.

• You maango, ask
• You make a mannat, a vow specifying what you will do
• If granted, the mannat is puri, fulfilled, and you must complete your side
• Failure to complete it is a serious matter and people are careful about what they promise

What is actually being described. It is a contract, and the tradition treats it as one.

• Both sides have obligations
• The devotee's obligation is conditional on the deity's performance
• The undertaking is stated in advance and is specific
• There is a physical record
• Non performance by the devotee is a default

That is a considerably more precise structure than the vague notion of prayer that outsiders assume, and it is why people are so careful to return.

The uncomfortable part. There is a real question about what happens when the wish is not granted.

• Most people simply do not return, and nothing further is said
• Some conclude they did not ask properly or were not sincere enough
• Some conclude the deity had reasons
• Some are told by others that they must have done something wrong

That last is where the practice can become harmful, and it should be named. A woman who has not conceived, a family whose patient died, a person whose case was lost, being told that their vow was insufficient is being blamed for their own misfortune.

The tradition's better answer, which is available in the texts and in the devotional literature, is that the outcome is not the measure of the devotion, and that a relationship with a deity is not a transaction that can be failed.

Ramprasad's mode, described at Haat Kalika, is the model here. He complains bitterly to Kali about everything she has not done for him, and continues to address her as mother, and the tradition regards those songs as the highest devotion rather than as failure.

A devotee who ties a thread, does not get what they asked for, and comes back anyway has understood something the transaction model does not contain.

The second temple at the site was built by Maharaja Karam Singh of Patiala, a Sikh ruler, in around 1840. That is worth explaining rather than passing over.

The Patiala house:

• A Sikh ruling family, of the Phulkian dynasty, ruling the largest of the Punjab princely states
• Rulers included Ala Singh, Amar Singh, Karam Singh, Narinder Singh, Mahendra Singh, Rajinder Singh, Bhupinder Singh and Yadavindra Singh
• The state survived until integration into PEPSU and then Punjab after 1947

Why a Sikh ruler builds a Hindu temple. Several things are going on and they should be separated.

First, the Punjab religious landscape was not neatly divided.

• Sikh and Hindu families were frequently the same families, with sons raised in either tradition
• Many households observed both
• The formal separation of religious identity in Punjab is substantially a nineteenth and twentieth century development, driven by reform movements on both sides, by the colonial census and by political organisation
• Before that, the boundary was considerably more porous than it later became

Second, rulers patronise what their subjects worship.

• Patiala's population was mixed, with a large Hindu majority in many areas
• A ruler's legitimacy rests in part on being seen to support the religious life of the whole population
• Endowing shrines of all the traditions in a territory is standard practice for Indian rulers of every faith, as described at Hyderabad and at Trilokinath

Third, the Devi tradition specifically.

• The Devi shrines of the Shivalik, including Naina Devi, Chintpurni, Jwalamukhi and Mansa Devi, drew devotees from across the Punjab plains irrespective of community
• Guru Gobind Singh himself is connected in tradition to Naina Devi, where he is said to have performed a great homa before founding the Khalsa, an account that is both important and contested in Sikh historiography
• Devi worship in Punjab was, for a very long period, a regional practice rather than a sectarian one

And a note on the contested history. The relationship between the Sikh tradition and Devi worship is a genuinely disputed subject.

• Some Sikh traditions and texts, including compositions in the Dasam Granth, engage extensively with Devi themes
• The Singh Sabha reform movement of the late nineteenth century worked specifically to separate Sikh practice from Hindu ritual, and that project reshaped Sikh identity substantially
• Present day positions on all of this vary widely and are held strongly

This guide's position is that the historical record shows a Sikh maharaja endowing a Devi temple in 1840, that this was not unusual at the time, and that arguments about what it means for Sikh identity are for Sikhs to have.

What is worth taking from it. Standing at Panchkula, you are at a site where:

• A Manimajra ruler built a temple in 1815
• A Patiala ruler built a second in 1840
• Both are Devi temples in the Shivalik foothills
• Both are still in worship, adjacent to each other
• The state's capital region grew around them

That is the Punjab of two centuries ago in one compound, and it is a more complicated picture than the categories now available generally allow.

Getting there

• Mansa Devi, Bilaspur village near Mani Majra, Panchkula district, Haryana
• About 10 km from central Chandigarh
• Chandigarh railway station is close; the city is well connected by rail and road
• Chandigarh airport
• Buses and autos run from Chandigarh and Panchkula
• A straightforward trip from Chandigarh

Timings

• The temple opens early and runs through the day. Check current timings, which extend substantially during Navratri

When to go

• Navratri, in Chaitra and Ashwin, which is the principal season and extremely crowded
• Ordinary weekday mornings for a quiet visit and to actually look at the frescoes
• October to March for weather. This region is very hot from April to June
• Sunday and holiday crowds are substantial even outside Navratri

At the temple

• Look at the frescoes in the main temple, which almost nobody does
• Visit the Patiala temple as well, about 200 metres away
• Traditional dress is appropriate; head covering is customary
• Do not touch or photograph the paintings with flash
• Threads are tied and untied. Do not untie somebody else's

Practicalities

• Cloakroom and shoe arrangements exist
• Prasadam and offering materials are available
• Parking is difficult during Navratri and shuttle arrangements operate
• Chandigarh has accommodation at every level

Combining the visit

• Chandi Mandir, near Panchkula, which gave Chandigarh its name
• Chandigarh: the Rock Garden, Sukhna lake, the Capitol Complex and Le Corbusier's buildings, the Government Museum and Art Gallery which holds an important Gandharan sculpture collection
• Pinjore Gardens, about 20 km, a seventeenth century Mughal garden
• Morni hills, the only hill station in Haryana
• Kalka and the Kalka to Shimla narrow gauge railway, a UNESCO listed line
• Naina Devi, Bilaspur, Himachal, about 90 km
• Anandpur Sahib, about 80 km, with Virasat e Khalsa and the Hola Mohalla festival
• Patiala, about 65 km, with the Qila Mubarak, the Sheesh Mahal and the Kali temple described in this batch

The Chandigarh museum deserves a note. The Government Museum and Art Gallery holds a substantial collection of Gandharan sculpture, transferred at Partition, along with Pahari miniatures.

Gandharan sculpture, from the north west of the subcontinent in the early centuries CE, is the tradition in which the Buddha was first depicted in human form, in a style showing clear contact with Hellenistic art following Alexander's campaigns and the Indo Greek kingdoms.

It is one of the most interesting bodies of Indian sculpture and there is an excellent collection of it half an hour from this temple.

Anandpur Sahib. About 80 km, one of the most important sites in Sikh history, where Guru Gobind Singh founded the Khalsa in 1699. The Virasat e Khalsa museum there, designed by Moshe Safdie, is among the best designed museums in India.

It is worth combining with a Shivalik Devi circuit, both because it is close and because the histories, as set out above, are not separate.

A closing thought. The goddess of wishes has a queue of several hundred thousand people twice a year, each of whom wants something specific and is prepared to stand for six hours to ask.

On the walls of the room they are queuing to enter there are two hundred year old paintings that most of them will never see, made in a court style by artists whose descendants painted for a tradition that has almost entirely disappeared.

Both of those are the temple.