Edison’s Navratri: A Report on Religious
Conflict in the Community
by Vivodh Z.J. Anand
with Farhana Rahman, Lisa Ramos and Rebecca Flores
See end of page for the author's email address.
Funded in part by The Harvard University
Pluralism Project and The Anthropology Department of Montclair State
University, and with support from the Institute for Community Studies. (See
end of text for links to the Harvard Pluralism Project and a link to a
gallery of Navratri photos).
Friday and Saturday nights on four consecutive
weekends during October the Gujarati Indian community, ten thousand
strong, converges on the flood plain at the mouth of the Raritan River.
In a massive communal celebration of the victory of good over evil
devotees in colorful holiday attire dance barefoot through the night
into the early hours of the morning. In graceful swirls and twirls,
thousands circumambulate the image of the great female deity Amba who
astride a tiger rides triumphant holding in her eight arms the weapons
of successful combat against the evil demon Mahishasuara. This is the
famous Navratri festival of Edison, New Jersey and the raison d’ętre
for its organizers, the Indo-American Cultural Society.
Between 1994 and 1998 the metaphor of the epic
battle against the demonic became concrete reality for Navratri’s
devotees. With those who regularly celebrate Navratri, the extended
Indian immigrant community lived and closely watched the combat as it
played out in a modern day court action known as the Federal case
Indo-American Cultural Society, Inc. v. Township of Edison, New Jersey,
et al., Civil Action No. 95-4690 (JCL).
The annual celebration of Navratri in Edison and
its stormy court battle, has become a major marker of the history of
Indo-American immigration. This landmark case fought by the Gujarati
community to protect First Amendment rights is now integral to the
history of Hinduism and Indian immigration in the United States.
Large numbers of Indian immigrants have sunk
expatriate roots in post 1965 Immigration Act America. In Edison and
its environs of Middlesex County, New Jersey many Gujaratis have formed
communities in the midst of established and often deteriorating
neighborhoods. This immigrant influx brings with it the typical
prejudices of race, religion, language and other differences that rear
their heads as the ugly demons of stereotype. Present day storms of
immigrant communities in conflict regularly surface in Middlesex County
as they do elsewhere in New Jersey and throughout the nation.
To provide context for the conflict, I will give
you a brief summary of the ancient story of Navratri as it is revisited
each year in India. Following this is a brief sketch of South Asian
experience in American history that ends with a description of the major
events of the actual conflict through news articles, pertinent documents
and personal recollection.
Navratri, the festival of nine nights, is
celebrated throughout India in the fall or the harvest season. The
subcontinent’s diversity makes pluralism and difference a norm, and the
story of Navratri is a reflection of these very Indian cultural
differences that often confuse those who expect monolithic single
expression traditions. Calendar dates, the names of the principal
protagonists including the name of the festival itself varies from
locale to locale as is common for most Hindu festivals. The prevailing
story may be summarized as follows:
Brahma of the triune Brahma, Vishnu & Shiva,
granted Mahishasura the “buffalo demon,” or simply Mahisa (buffalo) a
boon that protected him from any man in the world (Flood, 176).
Empowered by this gift, Mahishasura set out to conquer the world, heaven
and the world, and brought about the defeat of Indra king of deities.
At the pleading of Indra, the trinity created Durga, the female through
and amalgamation of their own shakti or divine power. Endowed with the
trinity’s shakti, Durga proved to be a formidable opponent who fought
Mahisa for nine days, beheading him on the tenth. The nine nights simply
translated Navratri, symbolize the nine days of battle, while the tenth
day, vijayadashami—literally means the victorious tenth day of
conquest. This great epic is recounted and celebrated slightly
differently in various regions taking on different forms and names. In
West Bengal Navratri, and vijayadashami are respectively celebrated as
Durga Puja and Dasara. In South India the festival includes other
female deities an dedicates three days of the festival to Lakshmi, the
female archetype of wealth and fortune, and another three to Saraswathi,
the female archetype of learning, music and knowledge. In northern India
it takes the form of the great epic Ramyana where Rama, an incarnation
of Vishnu is victorious over the evil king Ravana.
Regional variations of the epic saga also bring
with them changes in the names and physical forms of the triumphant
female deity. In Gujarat, the western most province of India just north
of Bombay and home to most of the people who celebrate Edison’s Navratri
she is Amba. Amba also known as Mata is revered for her victory over
Mahisa the evil and the celebration centers around her. An arti to Amba
with a lighted lamp on a decorated dish signals the start of the
festival and is followed by devotional songs and colorful dances of the
Garba and Raas Dandia. Garba, traditionally a women’s dance, centers
around earthen lamps, devotional songs and syncopated clapping of hands.
Dandia, the dance that follows the Garba, is a group dance performed
with hand held short sticks by both men and women. Traditionally
devotees fast during the nine days of the festival taking only sweets
and non-alcoholic drinks for nourishment. Chitra Divikaruni, an
expatriate writer and poet, captures the Navratri experience in the
Diaspora.
The Garba
The nine sacred nights of Navaratri
we dance the Garba. Light glances
off the smooth wood floor of the gym
festooned with mango leaves
flown in from Florida. The drummers
have begun, and the old women
singing of Krishna and the milkmaids,
Their high keening is an electric net
pulling us in, girls who have never seen
the old land. This October night
we have shed our jeans
for long red skirts, pulled back
permed hair in plaits, stripped of
nailpolish and mascara, and pressed
henna onto hands, kohl
under the eyes. Our hips
move like water to the drums.
Thin as hibiscus petals, our skirts
swirl up as we swing and turn.
We ignore the men,
creaseless in bone-white kurtas.
In the bleachers, they smile behind their hands.
Whisper. Our anklets shine
in the black light from their eyes.
Soon they will join is in the Dandia dance.
The curve and incline, the slow arc
of the painted sticks meeting red on black
above our upraised arms. But for now
the women dance alone
a string of red anemones
flung forward and back
by an unseen tide. The old ones sing
of the ten-armed goddess.
The drums pound faster
in our belly. Our feet glide
on smooth wood, our arms are darts of light, Hair,
silver-braided,
lashes the air like lightning.
The swirling is a red wind
around our thighs. Dance-sweat
burns sweet on our lips.
We clap hot palms like thunder. And
the mango branches grow into trees.
Under our flashing feet, the floor is packed black soil.
Damp faces gleam and flicker in torchlight.
The smell of harvest hay
is thick and narcotic
in our throat. We spin and spin
back to the villages of our mothers’ mothers.
We leave behind
the men, a white blur
like moonlight on empty bajra fields
seen from a speeding train.
-- Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Navratri’s affirmation of community and the
power of women is central to the adoration of Amba. In contrast to
cultural norms of patriarchy, Navratri portrays women as fierce,
independent and not vanquished. In this epic, female shakti saves a
world lost in battle by mighty male deities. Navratri reminds its
celebrants of the duality of woman—gentle, bending and compassionate on
one hand and fierce, unrelenting driven on the other. Community,
collective effort, extended family, village and neighborhood are
celebrated in night long music and traditional dance evoked so
beautifully by Divakaruni sensuous, poem. The triune deity’s power
integrated in a single shakti that defeats evil marks the unity of
family and community strength through power found in the female.
The record of systemic discrimination against
Asians may easily be traced back to fifteenth century European colonial
expansion. The 1492 landfall of Europeans in the Americas brought with
it a tidal wave of genocide made possible primarily through the
stereotype of Americas’ native inhabitants as “Indians.” For a very
readable account of the five hundred years since European contact read
Ronald Takaki who passionately chronicles Asian America and
multicultural America through detailed scholarship that is laced with
personal story (1989 & 1993). Suffice it to say that pre-1965
individual immigrant experience and transformation never quite bought
the concept of the American “melting pot.” Instead Asian immigrants
suffered and struggled mostly in silence for five hundred years to cope
as they seethed from the enthrallment manifested by colonial commission.
When you fast forward to post 1965 Immigration Act
America you find that South Asian settlement of Northern New Jersey
brought with it typical immigrant patterns of neighborhood and
community. Accouterments of language, religion, food, dress have
emerged, and long gone is the silent pre-1965 individual immigrant’s
struggle to assimilate into white anglo thinking and behavior.
The droves of Post 1965 immigrants who move to the
United States, are professionals, non-professional workers and business
people who all migrate for economic reasons. These immigrants who with
their families are present day fixtures of the “bottom line” oriented
economy have the changed monochromatic religious and cultural
landscapes. Immigrants with their lawyers are a new face; a face of
pluralism and expression of their own cultures and styles. When the
power of the law is coupled with a media eager to report the complaint
and tensions of individuals and groups who demand their rights, it makes
for a constant and vexing background noise. This strategy is well known
and is regularly demonstrated in the “public square” by twentieth
century change agents such as Mr. Gandhi, a Gujarati himself.
The massive influx of immigrants brings with it
neighborhoods, ethnic shopping districts, public celebrations and a
visibility dictated by critical mass. The “downside” of critical mass
and visibility is the emergence of open xenophobia against increasing
“otherness.” Naked and unfettered conflict surfaces as “otherness” and
drives wedges between new communities and the older neighborhoods. In
this atmosphere, it is not surprising that South Asian immigrant
communities experience prejudices etched into the European psyche since
its “Renaissance.”
In New Jersey the story of the vicious Jersey City
gang that called itself the Dot Busters is a well remembered response to
Indian immigrant “critical mass.” The Dot Busters conflated race and
religion as they bludgeoned to death a Parsi Indian man Navroze Mody, as
they in bitter hate they shouted “Hindu, Hindu, Hindu” (Eck 1996). A
similar gang that called itself “The Lost Boys” terrorized the Indian
Community of Edison. My good friend Pradip (Peter) Kothari, President
of the Indo-American Cultural Society, the group that organizes Edison’s
Navratri celebration, has experienced numerous drive-by shootings that
smashed the windows of his travel agency as recently as 1997. Just two
summers ago a group of Euro-American racists drove through the Oak Tree
Road shopping district spitting, hurling racist epithets, and shooting
at Indo-American shoppers.
It is in this hostile atmosphere, that Edison’s
populous ethnic Gujarati community celebrates Navratri each fall. This
the largest Navratri held outside of India, originated in 1990 with
humble beginnings as a celebration, in the spirit of the Divikaruni
poem, on a local school property by a small group of individuals headed
by Pradip (Peter) Kothari . The Indo-American Cultural Society as this
small group called itself, found their early effort immensely popular.
After 12,000 people attended the 1991 festival revue, it was moved to
Expo Hall a large indoor facility in Raritan Center, Edison. The
festival sponsored that year by the IACS has gained immense popularity
when thousands more met each Navratri night and forced the organizers to
seek a larger facility.
The 1992 solution to accommodate the large numbers
of celebrants was to move the festival to a giant tent on an
undeveloped portion of the Raritan Center industrial park. With the
popularity of the 1992 celebration public xenophobia, perhaps fanned by
local politicos for reasons of personal gain, set in with a vengeance.
The Township council in its attempt to curb the festival’s resounding
success immediately passed a “Public Entertainment Ordinance.” The
ordinance was crafted with criteria specifically aimed against the
festival and included a string of new rules some of which could be
waived by resolution of the Township Council for “bona fide nonprofit
service organizations.” In 1993 & 1994 the Society was instructed that
it had to comply with the ordinance in order to hold the festival. The
Society dutifully made these applications in accordance with the unfair
rules and the applications themselves were approved only after
bureaucratic stonewalling.
In 1995 when the Society again applied for its permit, a number of
additional restrictions were placed on how the festival was to be
conducted. Members of the township Council claimed that this was
because of noise complaints reported to the police by neighbors. The
Society immediately requested police reports of the complaints and
agreed to meet with any and all concerned individuals including the
complainants informally—the reports never materialized. A meeting was
held on June 19th 1995 where about fifteen Euro-American residents of
Edison showed up to voice their complaints about the festival. June
19th, 1995 was a major open attack on the Society by non-Indian
residents. Because it recounts the happening and sentiments of that
evening, I have reproduced in its entirety the letter the IACS sent two
days later to the three councilmen who arranged this meeting.
June 21, 1995
Hon. Robert Julius Engel
Hon. James F. Kennedy
Hon. David Papi
Township Council of Edison
100 Municipal Boulevard
Edison, N.J. 08817
Gentlemen:
Thank you for arranging a meeting with
residents of Bonhamtown and Clara Barton who are concerned about
sound levels during our annual Navratri festival.
We were happy to dispel some misconceptions
that existed about the requirements for the festival, and glad to
formally hear of concern about the sound level. We had assumed
sound not to be problematic in view of natural barriers created by
the extensive highway infrastructure between the festival and its
nearest residential neighbors. The first of these highways is
Woodbridge Avenue that looms at least 100 feet above the festival
grounds.
Surprising was the vehement outpouring by
residents of Clara Barton who live as far as two miles away to the
north of Woodbridge Avenue, the Turnpike and Route 287 -- some of
these individuals wore hearing aids. As you know, we will be happy
to submit to sound monitoring with accurate devices widely used to
measure ambient noise created by surface and air traffic and other
noise pollutants.
Several residents did bring up the fact that
truck traffic noise from the Turnpike and the adjacent New York
Times complex contiguous to Bonhamtown is an unresolved issue along
with aircraft noise associated with surrounding airports. We
certainly hope that our music does not reach the decibel levels
generated by these. We suspect that you must regularly measure
these for compliance with town ordinance.
Very perturbing were the anti-festival
sentiments that Mr. Engel holds, and that he injected into the
conversation. Dispute resolution is dependent on mediator
impartiality—a function we understood that you were to provide at
the meeting. Mr. Engel several times brought up the fact that he
had voted against the festival each time it came to the Council
floor. We did not take issue publicly at the time, but would like
to know why Mr. Engel is against the festival. Shocking was Mr.
Engel’s insinuation that we negatively effect the neighborhood and
the “homes that people have worked so hard for.”
Lastly we were subjected to fifteen people
including the Council President each taking turns to say when the
festival should close for the night. We wonder if there is any
awareness in Edison of freedoms of assembly and religion. We are
immigrants to a democracy that provided the model for the
constitution India adopted less than fifty years ago. We wonder how
the folk who inspired our struggle against colonialism can
arbitrarily dismiss our rights.
Ridiculous is the assertion by some that the
festival be held at a different time of year. Navratri’s timing is
dictated by our religious calendar in much the same way as the
Jewish and other religious calendars make for changeable holidays
during the Christian calendar year. It would be insulting to
Christians to have people suggest that Christmas be celebrated more
conveniently in July.
As we pointed out time and again, we will be
happy to comply with appropriate and measurable sound level
requirements. We are glad to be finally appraised of something that
has existed for the three years for the few weekend nights we
celebrate every fall. We consider it strange that such venom about
our celebration is only expressed now when we are applying for a
permit and never during any of the festivities for the past three
years. This year, as you know, we have curtailed celebrating our
festival on Sunday nights.
We look forward to your early reply so that we
can appraise our two thousand festival goers and voters in Edison of
the true sentiments of their neighbors and elected leaders.
Sincerely,
Vivodh Z.J. Anand, Ph.D.
Director of Communications
cc. Pradip (Peter) Kothari
Jerald Baranoff, Esq.
Township Fax: 908 248-3738 on 6/21/95
Original mailed
Following this disastrous meeting, the Township Council met on July 8th
and passed a new ordinance specifically aimed at the Indo-American
Cultural Society. About two hundred and fifty Gujarati residents of
Edison attended this meeting. TV Asia did a broadcast of the meeting via
satellite around the world and other ethnic media, both radio and print,
reported as well. Let me read you the letter the Society wrote the
President of the Township Council a week later.
July 14, 1995
Hon. Raymond Koperwhats, President
Township Council of Edison
100 Municipal Boulevard
Edison, N.J. 08817
Mr. Koperwhats:
The Indo-American Cultural Society
anticipating possible difficulties in obtaining the permit for the
1995 celebration of Navratri was forced to mobilize some two hundred
and fifty Edison residents of Indian origin to attend last
Wednesday’s Council meeting. Fortunately the council seeing
resident support of this very important festival did grant the
permit.
The reason this letter is coming to you is to
register our protest of the way the permit was handled by the
Council. First, the permit was finally granted over 90 days after
date of application instead of the 30 days required by town
ordinance. The delay caused by bureaucratic snafu, perhaps willful,
and council indifference to our need for an early start to a large
and complex project is typical of the pattern in this and our former
applications.
We believe that in this election year matters
were made even worse through political stirring of some residents’
inability to deal with our cultural, and ethnic difference.
We regret that those supporting the Navratri
festival were stifled by you during the Council meeting. Mr.
Baranoff, our attorney was interrupted and as was Mr. Kothari our
president, neither were these two individuals permitted the courtesy
of rebuttal. Some of those opposed spoke long and more than once in
their often vituperative opposition to the permit. We heard our
most important religious and cultural festival compared among other
things to a carnival and to bars that close at 2.00 a.m.. Even
Edison’s permit process under an entertainment rubric is all ready
unpalatable making our religion invisible.
What hurt most was the “Three strikes and
you’re out” threat that dominated the entire proceedings and remains
as an item on the resolution for us to ever wear as a “Scarlet
letter” of disgrace for practicing our religion and culture. Our
constant reiteration that we always have, and always do insist on
meeting all legal, sanitary and safety requirements have been
drowned out in a political atmosphere that marginalizes and
trivializes us through questioning our integrity and veracity.
Lastly Edison’s bureaucratic ineptitude kept
us uninformed of any complaints by neighbors. In addition to being
burdened with legal expenses and volunteer time and effort to
protect our simple rights, we have the added expense of sound
monitoring. Because of the shortened interval, we are managing the
festival project in a crisis mode.
Sincerely,
Vivodh Z.J. Anand, Ph.D.
Director of Communications
cc. Pradip (Peter) Kothari
Jerald Baranoff, Esq.
Township Clerk for distribution to
Council and Administration
The Society realized that it was unlikely that the festival would be
held unless drastic action was taken. The Law Firm of Loughlin and
Latimer was retained as counsel. Unsuccessful in negotiating terms for
the celebration with the Township of Edison, Steve Latimer and
Michaelene Loughlin were forced to file a complaint on September 13,
1995 just weeks before the festival seeking an injunction against the
Township’s unfair ordinance. The injunction they sought to hold the
festival was granted with a proviso that much to chagrin of the devotees
required the festival to close at 2.00 each morning.
The Festival was held diligently closed at 2:00am
each day and each night rigorous sound monitoring was conducted by
myself and several other members of the Society who had been trained by
Dr. M.G. Prashad, head of sound and vibration engineering at Stevens
Institute of Technology. Independently the Edison Township engineer and
the Edison police force also conducted sound monitoring that revealed no
infractions of any local, State or Federal code of noise standards. In
this Navratri season, a few spurious complaints of noise were filed by a
few residents – some before the festival’s music had even begun.
At election time the entire Township Council was
voted out, some think by the Indian community that showed up in greater
numbers than usual at the polls. As an aside, I would like to add that
it may be useful to explore voter turnout as it is reflected in a desire
to express individual and communal personal concerns over and above
strategic political manipulation of public opinion.
In a July 10, 1996 landmark ruling, and a
precedent setting historical first for Hinduism in America, John C.
Lifland, United States District Judge upheld the constitutional rights
of Navratri. In 1997 the Township tried to impose further restrictions
on the festival only to be rebuffed by Judge Lifland in mid-September.
On October 3, 1997 the first day of the festival that year, Edison
sought injunctive relief against Judge Lifland’s ruling by filing an
appeal in the Third Circuit Court of Philadelphia. The motion was
denied and the festival music and dance continued until 4:00am.
In carrying forward the Navratri metaphor of the
tenth day or vijayadashami the day of victory, a final settlement
between the Indo-American Cultural Society and the Township of Edison,
New Jersey was signed on June 19, 1998. While all the requirements
sought by the Society were met in the settlement, the following July
7th, 1998 letter to the Edison Home News Tribune under the heading Keep
public money away from festival is a grim reminder of the reality that
communal conflict continues to simmer:
It is reprehensible and a slap in the face of
every resident of Edison that taxpayers must fork over $95,000 to a
group of Asian Indians who have shown disdain for the people of the
United States by making horrible caricatures of Americans at its
festival at Middlesex County College.
This group has thumbed its nose at the curfew
laws in Edison, and despite petitions to quiet its members at a
decent hour, the Edison Township Council and Mayor George Spadoro
are paying them to break the law so they could bang their heathen
drums in obeisance to their heathen gods until 4 a.m. on the
Sabbath.
By paying $95,000 to this undeserving group,
the Edison leadership is breaking the so-called “Separation of
church and state” by funding a religious festival. If there is but
one copy of the vedic Scriptures present or one statue of Brahma,
Vishnu or Shiva, then it is a religious festival and no government
money is allowed to be given to it. Edison opens itself to a
lawsuit.
If the mayor and council want to give the
money away so badly, let them give it out of their own pockets, nit
stealing from taxpayers. I can guarantee that if I played “Amazing
Grace” or “Rock of Ages” out of my window at 4 a.m., I would be
arrested for disturbing the peace and the mayor wouldn’t be running
to my aid with a checkbook.
The Rev. Kenneth Matto
Edison
On October 19, 1999, when in a telephone call I had an opportunity to
talk to the Rev, Kenneth Matto, I found that he refused to talk or
comment on his letter, only asserting that his views had not changed.
As a New Jersey State Civil Rights Commissioner I
have since my immigration in 1963 at the height of the American Civil
Rights movement, personally struggled for equity. I can report that the
courts seem to be the only venue available to resolve vexing communal
conflicts. While advocacy groups for a wide spectrum of social issues
exist, the onus of resolving issues of religious freedom and rights, and
in this case the more complex conflation of religious and racial
“otherness,” seems to rest only on those who are wronged and whose
rights have been compromised.
Other than Eric Neisser, then Professor of
Constitutional Law at Rutgers University, and some students from the
school’s Newark Constitutional Law Clinic, there was no outside support
for the Indo-American Cultural Society. In Edison, no religious group,
ethnic or community leader supported the Society in its well publicized
case. In our democracy there is a paucity of institutions to study,
educate, arbitrate, and promote the credence of the religious “other.”
Yet for a democracy to flourish, it is imperative that both individuals
and groups be enabled through a recognition that their own stories may
be found in the stories and lives of fellow citizens who may appear
dissimilar to themselves.
To maintain and preserve our democratic
institutions, those of us involved in the study religion could perhaps
be even more vocal, responsive, concerned and actively involved in
institutional and community innovation that promotes a national agenda
of inter-religious arbitration and conciliation. In our commitment to
the rights of all citizens, we must continue to support religious
pluralism for both individual believers and for groups. This is the
bedrock of our religious and democratic freedom. We must be vigilant
and protect the rights and beliefs guaranteed by the Constitution of the
United States.
References
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York, 1993
Eck, Diana. “Neighboring Faiths” Sept. 1996,
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Melwani, Lavina. “The Indian American Family:
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Nankani, Sandhya. “Bride Shopping on the Net.”
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Pettys, Gregory L and Pallassana R. Balgopal.
“Multigenerational Conflicts and New Immigrants: An Indo-American
Experience.” Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Human
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Schlegel, Jeff. “To Iselin: Iselin is the hub for
Middlesex County’s growing Indian
Business community.” The Home News 10 April, 1994: E1+.
Swanson, Tia. “Life in U.S Series of Losses and
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Takaki, Ronald. A Different Mirror: A History
of Multicultural America, Little Brown, Boston 1993
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Shore, Penguin, New York 1989.
If you have any comments
about this paper Vivodh Anand may be reached via email at: vivodh@nyc.rr.com
or
vanand@communityknowledge.net
The above was presented at the "Symposium on Civil
Society and Multireligious America" at Harvard
University, November 1999.
For more info on the symposium go to:
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~pluralsm/html/cvlsoc.html
For more info on the Harvard Pluralism Project go to:
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~pluralsm/