Kali

Summary

In Our Time: "Kali" Episode Summary

Released on March 27, 2025

Introduction to Kali

In this episode of In Our Time, hosted by Melvyn Bragg, the discussion revolves around Kali, one of the most formidable and revered deities in Hinduism. Kali is often depicted as fierce and powerful, embodying both destruction and protection. She is a complex figure who defies simplistic interpretations, representing the multifaceted nature of divine feminine energy in Hindu theology.

Geographic Spread and Worship

Professor Jessica Fraser provides an extensive overview of Kali's worship across the Indian subcontinent and beyond. She emphasizes Kali's universal reverence, noting her presence from the Kaligat Temple in West Bengal to temples in Nepal, Malaysia, China, Thailand, and even in North America and contemporary England.

"She's really a global deity." ([02:05])

Kali's worship is not confined to India alone; her temples and devotees are spread worldwide, reflecting her universal significance within the Hindu pantheon.

Origin and Myths

Bihani Sarkar delves into the elusive origins of Kali, tracing her roots back to ancient indigenous goddesses who personified misfortune and natural calamities. Julius Lipner expands on this by discussing her association with Vedic goddesses like Neriti (Chaos) and Ratri (Night), highlighting Kali's role in helping devotees overcome adversity and find peace amidst chaos.

"Kali is about helping us overcome misfortune... facing unexpected chaotic disturbances." ([05:41])

Jessica Fraser further explores Kali's origins through various myths, including her depiction in the Devi Mahatmya. She narrates the tale of Kali's battle against the demon Raktabija, illustrating her role as a destroyer of evil.

"Kali is meant to be a deity who really takes responsibility for all of it..." ([16:37])

Symbolism and Iconography

Kali's imagery is rich with symbolism. She is often portrayed with multiple arms holding weapons and severed heads, representing her power over life and death, creation and destruction. Julius Lipner explains the significance of her dark complexion, relating it to her namesake—kala, meaning both time and darkness.

"She is always depicted as very dark in some form." ([06:12])

Bihani Sarkar and other scholars discuss the symbolism behind Kali's severed heads and hands, interpreting them as manifestations of conquered passions and the purifying of karma.

"Her girdle of severed hands is often described as having control over and abolishing the karma..." ([08:17])

Worship Practices

Early texts like the Harivanksha and the Chilapatti Karam illustrate the intense and often ritualistic nature of Kali worship, which included animal sacrifices, alcohol, dance, and singing. The consumption of alcohol, symbolizing celestial liquor, plays a significant role in her worship.

Jessica Fraser describes contemporary worship in West Bengal's Dakshineshwar Temple, where rituals involve flowers, lamps, incense, and the evocative sounds of drums.

"The worship is accompanied by drums, creating a really heightened and powerful primal experience." ([11:50])

Julius Lipner adds that Kali is both a personal and communal deity, worshipped in homes and temples alike, highlighting her omnipresence and protective nature.

Cultural and Historical Significance

Kali's influence extends beyond religious worship into cultural and political spheres. She became a symbol of the Indian independence movement, particularly in Bengal, representing revolution and liberation from British rule.

"She represented revolution. She represented the breaking of conventional molds." ([38:54])

Additionally, Kali has inspired countless poets and artists. Bihani Sarkar cites medieval Sanskrit poetry that portrays Kali in both terrifying and sublime aspects, demonstrating her enduring influence on Indian literature and art.

"Kali... can express an active, revolutionary power." ([43:35])

Modern Interpretations and Feminist Symbolism

In contemporary contexts, Kali has been appropriated by the Western feminist movement as a symbol of female empowerment and resistance against patriarchal oppression. Julius Lipner notes that early Western feminists embraced Kali for her defiance and strength.

"Kali represented emancipation, liberation. She represented a challenge against the established order." ([49:08])

Within India, discussions about Kali also reflect broader conversations about femininity and societal roles. Bihani Sarkar highlights Kali's representation of the marginalized aspects of womanhood, empowering women by embodying traits often repressed in societal norms.

"Kali represents aspects of womanhood that women find difficult to express." ([37:28])

Conclusion

Kali stands as a profound representation of the divine feminine, encapsulating the dualities of creation and destruction, benevolence and fierceness. Through her worship, myths, and cultural significance, Kali offers devotees a pathway to understand and embrace the complexities of existence. Her role in historical movements and contemporary feminist symbolism underscores her enduring power and versatility as a deity who transcends cultural and temporal boundaries.

Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

• "She's really a global deity." – Jessica Fraser ([02:05])
• "Kali is about helping us overcome misfortune... facing unexpected chaotic disturbances." – Jessica Fraser ([05:41])
• "Kali is meant to be a deity who really takes responsibility for all of it..." – Jessica Fraser ([16:37])
• "She is always depicted as very dark in some form." – Julius Lipner ([06:12])
• "Her girdle of severed hands is often described as having control over and abolishing the karma..." – Julius Lipner ([08:17])
• "The worship is accompanied by drums, creating a really heightened and powerful primal experience." – Jessica Fraser ([11:50])
• "She represented revolution. She represented the breaking of conventional molds." – Julius Lipner ([38:54])
• "Kali represented emancipation, liberation. She represented a challenge against the established order." – Julius Lipner ([49:08])
• "Kali represents aspects of womanhood that women find difficult to express." – Bihani Sarkar ([37:28])

This episode offers listeners a comprehensive exploration of Kali's multifaceted nature, her significance in Hinduism, and her impact on both historical and contemporary societies.

Transcript

[Melvin Bragg]

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[Julius Lipner]

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[Jessica Fraser]

Clouds are wholly unable to support the weight of an adult human.

[Julius Lipner]

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[Jessica Fraser]

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[Bihani Sarkar]

Ew.

[Jessica Fraser]

GEICO assumes no liability for any indigestion that may occur from a clover cricket at dinner. GEICO expertise for your motorcycle.

[Unnamed Speaker]

BBC Sounds.

Music Radio Podcasts this is in our.

[Bihani Sarkar]

Time from BBC Radio 4 and this is one of more than a thousand episodes you can find on BBC Sounds and on our website. If you scroll down the page for this edition, you find a reading list to go with it. I hope you enjoy the program. Hello. The Hindu goddess Kali is often shown as dark blue, fierce, defiant, reveling in her power and holding in her forearms or more arms, a curved sword and a severed head with the cup underneath to catch the blood. She may have her tongue out to catch more blood spurting from her enemies, be wearing a garland of more severed heads and a skirt of severed hands. And yet she's also a nurturing mother figure, known in West Bengal as Makale. She's fiercely protective and can be conventionally beautiful and haggardly so, defying any narrow definition while inspiring deep devotion. With me to discuss Kali are Bihane Sarkar, Senior Lecturer in Comparative Non Western Thought at Lancaster University, Julius Lipner, Professor Emeritus of Hinduism and the Comparative Study of Religion at the University of Cambridge, and Jessica Fraser, Lecturer in the Study of Religion at the University of Ox, Fellow at the Oxford center for Hindu Studies. Jessica, can you give us an overview of where Kali is revered and in what forms?

[Unnamed Speaker]

So Kali is really a universal deity who's revered throughout the Hindu world because she represents universal beliefs in Hindu theology to do with the power at the root of the cosmos, to do with the idea of a fundamental truth of reality that, if we understand it, will bring a kind of wisdom and enlightenment to all of us. She actually pervades worship of almost all of the deities that we find within the Hindu pantheon, and that means she's found across the Indian subcontinent. So from the depths of the south all the way up to the Kaligat Temple in West Bengal, up into the foothills of the Himalayas, in Kamakia N Assam or in Nepal at the heart of Kathmandu, you'll find different temples to Kali. But even beyond that, if you go to Asia from Malaysia, where the Kali Aman temple sits in the center of this urban city, I've even seen Kali inscribed on the wal small temples in Buddhist China and in seaside temples to the Goddess in Thailand. And of course, worshippers of Kali are very much present in North America and contemporary England. And there are temples to Kali all around us now. So she's really a global deity.

[Bihani Sarkar]

Do we know anything about her origin?

[Unnamed Speaker]

The origins of gods are always very hard to trace. So we have to kind of look for roots that seem to suggest what might have been the sources of the idea. One of those roots I think probably lies in indigenous belief in goddesses of misfortune that we find throughout the temples, tribes, villages of very ancient India. So if we go back about 3,000 years to the India of 1001 and a half thousand BC, clearly there were tribes villages across the subcontinent and this is a global pattern. People almost certainly revered goddesses who represented all the difficulties and dangers that nature brings. Illness, drought, famine, weather problems, all of these things that can come at any time, you local goddesses to help bring you protection. So Kali seems to inherit that older kind of non pretextual ancient heritage. But we can also maybe see two other goddesses who contribute to the meanings of Kali. If we look at Vedic literature. So these are the ancient hymns written in Sanskrit from around 1000 BC we hear of two goddesses who perhaps feed into what we know about her. One is the Goddess Chaos, neriti, disorder. She's described as associated with everything, world fall apart, sort of danger, difficulty, weather problems, etc. And the hymns to her ask, please keep these dangers away from us, please protect us. And one says, when we fall, may we rise again and step forward. So there's a sense of recovery from what is difficult. The other goddess is the Goddess Night Ratri. And you might think Night would be a negative or dark goddess, but actually she's prayed to as someone who brings peace, an indiscriminate blessing of rest to all beings. It's night that brings comfort and generation. And we get two quite telling messages in those hymns. One is Goddess Night, please protect us from attackers who may come. And Goddess Night, please show us the way through the dark forest paths so we can reach our home. These three sources give us three meanings of Kali. One, that she's about helping us overcome misfortune. Two, that she's about helping us face unexpected chaotic disturbances, but still recover from them. And finally, three, that she's about the idea that darkness can bring a kind of wisdom, rest and peace.

[Bihani Sarkar]

And by praying to her, you can get some satisfaction from one of these sources.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Later, these goddesses stop being revered as much. But what appears to take up these meanings is Kali, who's then prayed to by Hindus across the whole of India thereafter in the centuries following. And the prayer to her exactly brings a kind of a peace and a resilience to all of these problems that life can bring.

[Bihani Sarkar]

Thank you very much, Julius. Julius Nipner, how would you know it was Kali in the way she's depicted?

[Julius Lipner]

That would be quite distinctive. As Jessica hinted, she's associated with darkness, with night. And Kali is the feminine form of kala in Sanskrit, which means both time and blackness, darkness. So she's always depicted as very dark in some form, either deep blue or black. She therefore lives up to her name in that respect. The annual festival of Kali is an autumnal festival in Bengal, and she is often depicted in pavilions or pandals, as they are called, where she is standing on the supine body of her spouse or consort, Shiva. And she has a number of hands, as the listener may be familiar with. Hindu gods and goddesses are given multiple hands, not because they're actually supposed to have them, really, but because this is an artistic device in which different ayudhas or implements or weapons are placed in the hand in order to identify that particular God or goddess and their attributes. So Kali can have anything from four to, in some rare cases, 24 hands. And each one holds an ayudha, or weapon or implement expressing her power, expressing stories from the myths and so on, where she plays a prominent part. She's often depicted as having a garland of severed heads, which are usually described as the different passions which she has conquered. She is depicted as having a girdle of severed hands, which is often described as having control over and abolishing the karma, the effect of good and bad deeds of human beings so that they can be actually purified. So Kali in that sense is a great liberator who can conquer the things that keep us chained to our lower natures and to the world through devotion to her.

[Bihani Sarkar]

What ought we to know about Hindu ideas of the Supreme Being and Shakta in particular?

[Julius Lipner]

Well, traditionally, Hindu religious traditions are divided into three major strands, two of which regard the male form as representations of the Supreme Being, the Vaishnava and the Shai white strands. But the third strand called the Shakta strand, which a term that derives from the Sanskrit word shakti, which means power or energy. The third strand has the main representation of the Supreme Being in female form. And you see that Kali is very often associated with that strand, the Shakta strand, the power, the energy of the Supreme Being.

[Bihani Sarkar]

Bihani. Thank you very much, Bihani. Talking about the worship of Kali, how was she worshipped at first? Do we know that?

[Unnamed Speaker]

There are several early texts in Sanskrit that give us an idea about how Kali was worshipped in the early period. In a very ancient text called the Harivanksha, which might have been composed around the 3rd 4th centuries A.D. kali is said to be worshipped with animal sacrifice. She adores alcohol. Those are the two things that she requires in worship. It is also said in that work that if a person wholeheartedly prays to her that she would protect him or her in situations of grave danger. Say you were lost in the. You were trapped in a cave, you were swimming out in the sea, you were trapped by a brigand. Those are the situations that Kali will come to you and protect you. In a southern text called the Chilapatti Karam, which is an old Tamil text, Kali is worshipped by a raider community before they set off on raids. And it is a lady, a lady, a woman votary who's said to be possessed by Kali, who dances a wonderful dance and then asks the raiders to feel the energy of the goddess and then go off into battle. So there would be bacchanalian elements in her worship as well. With dance, with singing, with drink, and certainly animal sacrifice. The offering of blood to placate or calm her hot blooded nature is a key feature of worship.

[Bihani Sarkar]

I think my ears pricked up a little bit when alcohol was mentioned. What place did that play?

[Unnamed Speaker]

If you look at the early myths, particularly in this early text, the Hari Vanksha Kali is said to be nocturnal. She dances in the night sky surrounded by a throng of ghosts. A very beautiful woman who is also one and the same with the sky and the monsoon. She flashes like lightning. She is blue, black like the monsoon clouds. And she always carries a cup that is filled with this divine liquor. So it's liquor that is celestial liquor and it's the liquor that she loves to drink and which gives her the joy and freedom to dance as she wills.

[Bihani Sarkar]

We've heard that West Bengal is a center for Kali worship. What do we see a bit there?

[Unnamed Speaker]

Kali is the most important goddess for Bengalis. Kali is the queen of all Bengalis. Hearts in one of the most important temples to Kali, which stands in Dakshineshwar. If you go for an evening aarati illustration, you will find many, many pilgrims gathered outside. And once you enter the sanctum sanctorum, it's really a mesmeric experience. There are flowers everywhere, there are lamps, there is the smell of incense. And there in the middle is the magnificent goddess draped in beautiful sarees, in brocade, but of course in beautiful jewelry, diamonds and golds, but of course a glorious queen. And as the worship begins, the worship is accompanied by drums, creating a really heightened and powerful primal experience.

[Julius Lipner]

This is very true Kali worship. And I've attended many occasions where Kali is worshipped either in a makeshift pavilion or in a temple, because I grew up in West Bengal and my wife is Bengali. So you see there the beating of drums, as Bihani has said. You see the ringing of bells, the clashing of bells. You see where quite often, ululation. And it wakes up, as it were, the Goddess, and it wakes yourself up. It brings her attention to you. She is what they call in Sanskrit a jagratha goddess. That is, a goddess who is awake, a goddess who's not sleepy in any sense. She's attentive to her worshippers. She's always awake to whatever needs her worshipers have. And she is, as has been indicated, a protectress. She protects the devotee.

[Bihani Sarkar]

Can I come to you then, Jessica? There are several origin stories for Kali. Can you tell us about Raktabija?

[Unnamed Speaker]

As Julia said, the goddess is addressed in the presence of people. It's a bit like the Eucharist. She can enter into a physical form and be present for people. But all of this is given a kind of theological meaning, particularly in relation to a series of texts, a whole genre of texts that arose in India in around 500 to 700, 800, 900 B.C. sorry, CE, called the Puranas, which tells stories about the gods. And each God in these stories is depicted as the ultimate reality. And their theology is unpacked through these wonderful narrative tales. Now, the tale about the Goddess tells us in some ways what she's about. So one of the most famous ones was called the Devi Mahatmya, the Glory of the Goddess. And it tells a story where a king who's lost his kingdom and a merchant who's lost his fortune, both are depressed, hopeless, desolate, and they go searching for consolation. So it's a bit like the consolations of philosophy with Boethius, but actually what they're shown is the Goddess. And when they ask who this goddess is. They were told a story. The goddess is all the light of reality, but also all the darkness. The goddess is creation, but she's also destruction. The goddess is the delusion that we suffer from, but also the key to enlightenment and wisdom. And we find that she's stronger than all the other gods put together. So we have a very particular vision of the divine, which CG Jung talked about, the idea that if you shine a bright light, the shadows become darker. And he pointed this actually at Western thought. He said, if you have a God who's meant to be only the good, then you have a problem with explaining the darkness in the world. Kali is meant to be a deity who really takes responsibility for all of it and says all of this is the world we live in and the conditions of life and existence itself. So this sets the scene for a fabulous story about the Goddess where she's shown to be strong because she's the only one who can conquer the demons who attack the gods regularly. This is kind of the legend of the Goddess. She conquers many demons, but the worst of them is a bit like the hydra in Greek myth. It's a demon who, when you try to kill it, it gets stronger. So as the hydra grew new heads, when you lop one off. So this demon, Raktabija, as soon as his blood hits the ground, it becomes a new demon. What are they going to do? Every time they start to kill him, more demons grow. The only thing that can defeat them is this extreme form of the Goddess, this wild, uninhibited form of the goddess, which is Kali. She's able to drink the blood. And as a result of this, in her fierce, wild, uninhibited frenzy, the demon is defeated. And this allows this kind of strength and holism that is there in all the gods to be released and to conquer all evil and darkness.

[Bihani Sarkar]

Can you come in here, Bihar?

[Unnamed Speaker]

This entire Rakta Bij myth is so rich in symbolism because to add to Jessica's point, Kali appears as an embodiment of the goddess's anger at this point. So the demons, at the stage when Rakta Bija is described, threatens the Goddess, the main goddess of the Devi Mahatmya, with terrible acts of violence, redolent of rape. And at this point, the goddess is said to become so angry that her face becomes black. And out of this blackness steps forth the goddess Kali, who is her anger embodied. So this particular origin myth symbolizes Kali as an embodiment of anger at violence, especially patriarchal violence. But there are Two other origin myths as well, one which I mentioned, which was in the Hari Vamsha, where she. She is the sister of the Hindu God Krishna, and she rescues him just as he is about to be killed by his wicked uncle. And there she is associated with the night, with everything nocturnal. Not just the night of worldly existence, but also the final night when the entire universe is destroyed. So in that particular myth, she is celestial and aerial. But there's another origin myth, lesser known, where she is the black skin that is sloughed off the goddess Parvati. The Goddess Parvati is the goddess of sexuality. She is the consort of the great Hindu God Shiva. And one day, it is said in an old text, the old Skandha Purana, that Shiva teases Parvati because she is dark. And Parvati also wants to gain a son. So to acquire a son and to become fair, she performs penances, at the end of which she cries happy tears because her penances have been successful. She jumps into the pond that has emerged out of her tears and washes off her dark skin. And out of that dark skin, the self that she rejects, the self that she is unhappy about, uncomfortable about, puzzled about, emerges this glorious, beautiful dark goddess who not only protects, but also symbolizes everything that one might perhaps be uncomfortable about.

[Bihani Sarkar]

Thank you, Julius. There are so many different stories about the origin of Kali.

[Julius Lipner]

Kali is the feminine form of kala in Sanskrit, which means black or dark. And so she has been often associated with that aspect of creation before, the bringing into being of all sorts of specific things. So this is the shrouding, enveloping cover of the whole universe. And that is what Kali was. And then through her, we have all the individual creations of the world. But also, as Bihani has mentioned, another story. I mean, Hinduism has so many origin stories in order to add different aspects in different times and for different needs of our own particular and community needs. And so also, Kali comes from the darkened, angry brow of the Goddess Durga and so embodies her anger, but always against evildoers and evil. So Kali is really, in that sense, a liberating and freeing goddess. Her fierce aspect, I mean, she can have, and I hope we go on to talk about this much more tender and as they say in Sanskrit, saumya, benign aspect aspects, but her fierce aspect, the aspect of her anger is always directed against evil and evildoers.

[Bihani Sarkar]

Thank you, Jessica. What other deities have Kali's qualities?

[Unnamed Speaker]

Well, Kali is interesting because in some ways she fits into this big Hindu theology of divine energy. There's a notion of Shakti, which Julius mentioned, a kind of a power that's in everything. Shakti literally means the power comes capacity. And that power is understood in almost every Hindu theology to flow through all of us and through all of nature. And when people talk about it in itself, in the abstract, if you like, the divine power, they think of it as this feminine energy. And it expresses itself in different texts in everything, but particularly in women. So, as Bihani says, there's an interesting notion here of power is something that women have in a way that men don't, and particularly where it's able to fight against oppression. So it's kind of a brilliant counterpoint, if you like, to political, social power, even physical strength, that the female power is something that can oppose that. And that idea expresses itself in Kali, but also in a range of other goddesses, famously in the Tantric tradition, which is a kind of a antinomian, unorthodox, slightly subversive tradition of very important kind of ritual and theological beliefs in India from the medieval period on. In Tantra, Kali is one of a range of goddesses, some of whom are more obviously benign. There's 10 mahavidyas, great wisdom females. Some of the one is the beautiful maiden, the kumari. But one is even more extreme than Kali Chinna Mastar, for instance, who is often depicted beheading herself, drinking her own blood, standing astride a couple who were involved in sexual union, surrounded, more naked, more radically expressed, expressing sexuality, the body, uninhibited power, the fundamental forces of nature. So we see Kali kind of on a spectrum. She embodies all that nature can be, the bright, beautiful spring and the beautiful creatures of it, the parts of it which are to do with darkness, death. But it's interesting, the focus on blood. When Westerners saw blood in images of Kali, they assumed it meant violence. But blood can mean many things. It's what keeps us alive. It's in childbirth, there's going to be blood. For women, blood is part of fertility. So there's a sense in which Kali is part of a much larger set of symbolisms to do with female power, to do with the margins fighting back against elite power, and to do with nature itself, encompassing a range of realities, from blood to birth to death, all of which have to ultimately be affirmed as part of life.

[Bihani Sarkar]

You want to come in again, Bahani?

[Unnamed Speaker]

I'd like to expand actually on Jessica's wonderful point about the symbolism of blood, because in Kali's case, it's deeply redolent of the female. Women encounter blood at a creative level. I feel that men encounter blood in violent contexts, but women encounter of blood every month and it's a symbol of their fertility. So in Kali's case, blood is a profoundly female symbol of fertility, of sexuality, of creativity. And again, Jessica mentioned life. I think this, in Kali's case, it is a symbol not of violence, but of life.

[Bihani Sarkar]

Julius, you want to come in?

[Julius Lipner]

And just a tiny little addition to what Jessica and Bihani have said. Kali is also associated quite often with war and with the destruction, as I said, of evildoers in and through battle and through war. And there again you have the association with blood. So Kali is associated with all these things and yet there are so many gentle aspects to her. The other side of Kali, which sort of completes the figure. She's not only a one sided goddess, but she is also one who is. The Sanskrit word is saumya, benign, kind. And the first form of Kali is Ugra. So you have the two combinations of fierceness and gentleness and kindness. Both of them married into Kali.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Sorry, sorry, one more thing. But just I think that question about how she fits into the wider range of goddesses can also be seen on a global scale, comparatively, across cultures. So many cultures have an image of a wisdom goddess. We see it in the Greek mythology, in Athena, who's also a warrior, also represents wisdom of some kind. We see it in Isis in Greek mythology. We see it in the Hebrew Bible in the figure of wisdom, in the wisdom literature and Proverbs and Job. That's a very common thing. And it probably comes from an ancient Indo European root. Probably there's a source that they share. But what happens in India is this image of wisdom kind of comes through and merges with the existence of indigenous goddesses who represent small scale tribal culture, who represent everyday women's experiences, and who represent misfortune, suffering and difficulty. And we get something new, a kind of wisdom which is about a one you experience suffering. Some of it you can fight, but some of it cannot be conquered. Illness cannot always be conquered. Kali has strongly associated many images with death as the, the suffering you can't get away from. So in the end, Kali is about the wisdom it takes to face the reality of life unfrightened. She also, in a sense, because she's in her imagery, she's surrounded with, with parts of corpses, she's surrounded with blood. She partly signifies a willingness to be able to face death, but she's also shown as a woman who's probably of low caste, a woman who is not to do with the cities she's to do with the villages. She's darker skinned, so she's not the North Indian urban elite. She's something else. But she's strength in that context. And that comes up later when she's harnessed almost politically against the colonial establishment. She becomes a symbol of the power that is there, lurking in a minority, ready to show itself and fight for the good.

[Bihani Sarkar]

Vihaan, I understand she's been inspiration for many poets. Can you develop that?

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yes. Kali from the early medieval period in India right down to the 18th century has been a muse for the greatest of poets. I have in fact, in exaltation with me from a 12th century collection of Sanskrit poetry. And I selected it for today because it's, in a way, it's very atypical of Kali. We find that the stereotypical image of Kali, with lots of ghastly cut off heads and blood. But in this particular verse, she is treated as the knights sky in full glory. So I'll read that out as an example. Shikhande Khandendu, Shashi Dina Karaokarna Yugale Gale Taraharas Taralam UDU Chakram Chakuchayoh Tarit Kanchi Sandhya Sichaya Rachita Kali Tadayam Tava Kalpah Kalpa Viuparama Vidheyu Vijayate. On your crest the sliver of the moon. The moon and the sun on your ears, Round your neck a necklace of stars and on your breasts the constellations glimmering. Your girdle the lightning arranged on a raiment of the dusk. O Kali supreme, are these your ornaments ordained thus during the end of the universe?

[Bihani Sarkar]

Thank you. Jessica, can we come to you here? Caring and mothering and gentle side has been hinted at more than once in this conversation. Can you develop it?

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah. I mean, as Bihani said, there's a movement that arises in medieval India which wants to focus on emotional devotion to the gods. Love of all kinds, deep and intense, is encouraged on a wide scale. It's called bhakti, and it affects everything. Suddenly, poets spring up and compose beautiful songs to the deities across the subcontinent. Now, in some ways this is easy with gods like Krishna, who's about beauty and love, or gods like Vishnu, who's about governance and sovereignty. But what are they going to say to Kali? And exactly as Bihani says, they develop a beautiful poetry that's about that benevolence of the protectress. But maybe it's also worth saying it doesn't hide or elide the dark sides as well. So we get for Instance, there's a wonderful poet called Ramprasad Sen, and he talks about Kali as the mother. He says, mother, Mother, you are the beauty of darkness, a luminous darkness, a darkness that inspires and brings brightness to us. So there's a kind of a play with opposite imagery, which means that there's a darkness that actually can bring a benevolence to us. He also talks a lot about suffering, but where we see protection from suffering. So he says, we're sitting in the lap of the cosmos, the lap of the mother. And yet we seem to think we're in a prison made of suffering. So there's a sense that we're being exhorted to shift our attitude and see the benevolence of the universe around us, even when we're facing difficulty. And a lot of this is aimed at being able to deal with death. So that he says, kali, Kali. When death comes and grabs you by the hair, which God will you call to? Kali. Kali, I will call to you. And then what can death do? So we have an interesting situation where Kali is depicted almost as a slightly volatile, charismatic, complicated, but loving mother, right? The mother who loves you but is honest with you about the circumstances of the world. So while other gods are being worshipped as a lover, a lord, a friend, this is a deity who's being worshipped as someone who acknowledges the difficult sides of reality, but helps you to have the strength to go through it in your own right.

[Bihani Sarkar]

Julius.

[Julius Lipner]

Well, this is just a hymn to Kali by a great devotee of Kali, Bengali devotee of Kali called Kamalakanta Bhattacharya. And Bengal, of course, as you know, has been associated particularly with Kali. And she has been called the presiding deity of West Bengal. And Kamala Kanta's dates are 1769 to 1821. And he was, as I say, a great devotee of Kali. And many of his poems and hymns to Kali continue into the Bengali culture and Bengali consciousness till today. And here's a short hymn from him to the dark Goddess is my black mother Shamma, which means dark or black in Bengali. Really black people say Kali is black, but my heart doesn't agree. If she's black, how can she light up the world? Sometimes my mother is white, sometimes yellow, blue and red. I cannot fathom her at all. My whole life has passed trying to do so. She is matter, then spirit, then complete void. It's easy to see how Kamalakanta, thinking these things, went crazy when that was recited to.

[Bihani Sarkar]

We talked about the time when a lot of British people, people from Western in India at the time. How do they react to a poem like that?

[Unnamed Speaker]

So I think when the Brits and the other European powers came to India, they were already predisposed to think of it as an uncivilized place that needed to be governed. And Kali sort of confirmed that to them. They didn't understand it. They looked at. They didn't actually. They didn't read, I think most of that poetry. They saw the pictures, and what they saw looked like some kind of Indian image of the devil, but female. So even worse in their minds, right? Everything that was being hidden and elided from culture, the body, feminine power, sexuality, class, was being kind of brought to the foreign Kali imagery and blood, of course, and, you know, severed limbs. And they think, well, it must. She must mean violence and malevolence. And you can see traces of that if you look at things like Rudyard Kipling's poem Ganga Din. He writes this. He's a wonderful writer, but he writes a poem which is basically about Kali representing the evil of Hindu religion, sort of worshipped by violent thugs. And the only good character is Ganga Din, who's basically a turncoat who betrays his people and becomes a good supporter of the British, you know. And that story is taken up in the Hollywood version with Cary Grant, and it finds its way into Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, where the ultimate bad guy is Kali. It really has a modern kind of message. We still find that prejudice, really, that rather uninformed picture making it swirl into modern consciousness. However, there is a happy side of the story. There are also those who tried to say there's much more going on here. One of the most famous was a man called Sir John Woodruff. He was born in Kolkata, sent back to England for a schooling. He went to Oxford. Oxford, but came back to India again and became a lawyer. He did have an encounter with Indian Tantric religion, the beliefs in the goddess there, and ended up devoting much of his life to writing books which were about explaining the deeper philosophical background. He collaborated in this with a Bengali intellectual called Atul Bahari Ghos, and the two of them kind of became a combined writer called Sir Arthur Avalon, a name meant to appeal to all the esoteric theosophical interests of the time, explaining how there is a much deeper insight into the nature of reality and the potentialities of the mind and the body. And that kind of Western will to understand more clearly what's going on here carries on into the modern period with scholars like David Kinsley, who was one of the people who brought back the study of Kali in a book called the Sword and the Flute. He said, well, Hinduism, like other religions, has a bright picture of the divine Krishna, beauty, love, but also it acknowledges this other side of the peace and wisdom that come through acknowledging dark and difficulty. So that's Kali. Kinsey wrote many books and towards the end of his life, when he was diagnosed with terminal cancer, he taught almost until the end. In his very last class apparently was on healing and the transformative vision of Kali. And he made it clear to his students that he felt able, better able to deal with the realities of life and mortality by having spent his life dealing with a goddess who was about the wisdom that comes of understanding these things.

[Bihani Sarkar]

Mihali, in what way does Kali seem to empower women?

[Unnamed Speaker]

I think there are things in the myths themselves, when we learn about the stories of Kali's birth, that there is a vital connection with womanhood. The story about her jumping out of Parvati's rejected black skin always, for me at least, always represented a kind of duality within ideas of femininity that while Gauri Parvati represents the good, dutiful consort, Kali is the consort, less free, slightly mad, other half. So Kali represents aspects of womanhood that in normal day to day life, I think women find it difficult to express. Another thing that Kali is associated with is hunger. For instance, she's always a very hungry goddess. She manifests herself at the time that the universe is completely destroyed, swallowing all creatures into her mouth. Hunger is something that, you know, during most of historical time in India, women and hunger were not really. You could express your hunger as a woman when you're pregnant, but otherwise it's not really the appropriate thing. Dancing in the skies, completely naked, joyful freedom. I think all the aspects, aspects of womanhood that society condemned and in a way still feels uncomfortable about. Kali represents and I think in that sense there's always been a strong connection.

With womanhood just, just agreeing with that. And there's this extraordinary sense in which you see in Kali and the goddesses around her expression of aspects of femininity. You see almost nowhere else in world history and you see it as a positive. So for instance, one of the Mahavidyas is Dhumavati. She's an old woman, she's a poor woman. And if you go to India, to poor areas, you'll see old women who perhaps are widowed and have no one who can take care of them and they're facing a difficult life. These people are often at the bottom of society. We're talking about from A class perspective, the absolute margins. And yet this woman is elevated into being a form of the divine right and has a kind of power and insight to give that you don't find anywhere else. And Kali, it's interesting because in Bengal, often she's seen as the same as Parvati, who's a mother, who's married, but actually in images of Kali, she's always autonomous. If she's with her husband, he's not her husband. He's actually her consort. She's the dominant one. He does not control her. And she's almost never pictured with children. She's a very unusual, striking image. Where often the west expects a nature goddess to be somehow simply affirmative and posit, Kali represents a kind of freedom, fierceness, strength that you see almost nowhere else.

[Bihani Sarkar]

Julius, you see a link, as I understand it, between Kali and the Indian independence movement. What's that?

[Julius Lipner]

Well, Kali played a very important role in the Indian Indian independence movement, starting already in the latter part of the 19th century and going into the 20th century. And she, of course, was made a very important symbol and figure of the independence movement, mainly in Bengal because. But not exclusively so, also in Kerala, because she was really associated as a very Bengali goddess. Now, the fact that she was revolutionary in character as Jessica's, indicated that she went against convention, that she was an independent goddess. She's often shown in a superior position to her consort Shiva, if he's ever portrayed with her. In fact, she's often portrayed in Bengal as standing upon dynamically one foot forward, the supreme form of Shiva. And so she is the dynamism of the Bengali culture and consciousness. And during the independence movement, you had great devotion to Kali. She represented revolution. She represented the breaking of conventional molds. She represented going against the British rule, the shackles of British rule. She was often regarded as the symbol of liberation and revolution and freedom. And many Bengalis resorted to Kali as a symbol of independence.

[Bihani Sarkar]

Thank you, Bihani. We're coming towards the end now. Can you tell me what aspects of Kali are most valued now and why?

[Unnamed Speaker]

Kali is a boon giver. Now, if you. You go to her temple in Dakshineshwar, mostly, you will have a wish, a deep wish. And it is believed that if you ask the Goddess there, she will grant you that wish. Kali is also a fierce protector. A mother who will protect you in a primal way, like a tigress, will fight all battles to protect you. Kali is also a symbol of non duality in that much of orthodox Hindu beliefs is based on divisive practices of pure and impure. Which is why in many ways, substances like alcohol are used in Kali's worship because they're interdicted substances in conventional Hindu worship. They are brought into Kali's worship because Kali translates, transcends these dichotomies of pure and impure. And in her, these divisions and binaries are combined so that she is transcendent, absolute, non dualism.

[Bihani Sarkar]

Last word, Jessica.

[Unnamed Speaker]

I think sometimes in the Western theologies, you think of God as being about good at the expense of bad. If you look back to Kali, some of the imagery of her as the creation, but also the void goes back to very old Indian hymn which says, before any existence existed, there was an absolute nothingness. Kali is both. And it reminds us that in a way, if you prefer life over the void, if you prefer existence over non existence, you have to accept that the whole process will be there. There will be birth, there will be death, there will be suffering and struggle as well as happiness. And so a kind of holism that is important is embodied in Kali's theology.

[Bihani Sarkar]

Thank you very much. Thanks, Jessica. Jessica Fraser, Julius Lipner and Bihanis Hakar. Next week, pollination, the interplay of flowers and insects that ensures the survival of plant life and of our life. Thank you for listening.

[Unnamed Speaker]

And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests.

[Bihani Sarkar]

Right. So thank you all very much. What we're going to do now is more, if you don't mind, for the podcast, you're going to do the talking this time. And the idea is start by saying and continue by saying, are there things that you would like to have said you didn't have time to say?

[Unnamed Speaker]

Just adding to the lovely points that Jessica made and that Kali in the esoteric literature is the starting point of everything. She is a source in which all life, everything really dissolves, but also the point at which from which everything erupts and emerges. So she is the void that swallows all, but also creates all.

[Bihani Sarkar]

Jessica.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Just one wonderful image of her power as a rebel was that there was a brand of cigarettes produced while independence movement was ongoing, called Kali Swaraj. Swaraj, of course, was the phrase that meant independent self rule against the Brits. And in that image, you saw Kali with the heads. In, I think in one version, one of the heads she has around her neck, if you look closely, was the head of a British officer. So there was a real sense that Kali could express an active, revolutionary power.

[Bihani Sarkar]

When you pray, do you give gifts in the prayer or do you have to pray in a temple. What's the procedure?

[Julius Lipner]

No, in that sense, perhaps unlike the Abrahamic faiths, Hinduism has two forms of worship. There's a great stress on personal worship, on the individual's worship, and then sometimes temple worship. And it's very common for Bengali Hindu homes in particular, to have their own shrine to the deities or to the forms of the deity. Because there's ultimately only one supreme being in Hinduism which appears in different forms. And in that sense, it's a kind of polymorphic monotheism. It's a belief in one God, but appears in different forms. And so Kali is in some Hindu minds, a manifestation of the Supreme Being. And many other Hindu minds, she is a representation of the Supreme Being itself. So you pray at home, you have your shrine at home, but you also have temples to Kali, or you have temples to the Goddess where Kali has her own shrine. So there are different ways of doing it. But I suppose above all, since Hinduism, a very personal religion, you pray to Kali in your heart, you pray to Kali in your. In your soul. So she's omnipresent, she's everywhere. And you can pray to her at any time you feel you need. She removes obstacles. She is the great protectress. She protects her devotee. And so whenever there's danger, whenever there's a problem that looms on the horizon, the heart goes to Kali.

[Unnamed Speaker]

And I think there's a lovely image. So back to the Western interpreters, but the Germans love to explore Indian culture. One of the people who was interested in this and went to India was an old writer called Hermann Hesse, who, in his book Siddhartha, has this vision at the end where he says, look, the insight that he gets from India seems to be, you have to either love it all, all that life entails, ultimately accept it, or none of it will really mean anything. And sometimes I think Kali Accept expresses this idea that if you want to be born, you're going to have to take the whole go of what that entails. So Kali brings a kind of wisdom. It's interesting where a lot of other theologies are about escaping from the world, she's partly about being able to face it and to be able to accept, or that it involves as the kind of the gift of existence that we're benefiting from at each moment.

Bihane I would like to say that in. In a lot of the early theology, Kali is also called Kalaratri, the night of destruction, and she is an eschatological goddess who is associated with the final night of destruction. That is to say, with Sanghara, the idea of time in Hindu belief is three phase. There's a point of there's creation, then there is stability, and then there is destruction when everything is destroyed, and then the whole process starts again. So Kali emerges at that final phase when everything needs to be destroyed in order for the cosmos to be reborn. So death in the Hindu imagination is not a negative idea. It's needed for life to go on. It's natural. And Kali is part of the idea of natural death, so that new things can be born.

[Bihani Sarkar]

Would you like to say anything?

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah. I love the idea, and I think it's really interesting that in some ways, as Kinsley point out, to get involved in a deep love of Kali is to try and find that psychological space where you yourself can face these things in the world. There's something quite existential about Kali in a weird kind of way. I think of this in the poems. As I said, the other gods, you might worship Krishna as your love, you might worship another God as your dear friend, you might worship a God as your Lord or even as your child. But this particular imagery of, like, love for a mother, a mother who can be difficult, a mother who is teasing, a mother who has had to force you to deal with difficult things, but who actually is helping you grow, who is helping you to learn and to become wise, a mother who is going to tell you the truth and you're going to have to take it in. There's a kind of an interesting psychological journey, I think, that people go on in the literature of Kali, the imagery of Kali, about what it would look like to face the whole of reality, the whole of life, in some way. So there's, I think, a profound psychological aspect to it.

[Julius Lipner]

Julius, what I want to say a little more about is the ways that Kali was appropriated, not always with attention to her cultural roots, by the Western feminist movement. The. The way that Kali represented rage against the oppression that women had to suffer in the west from patriarchal forces and powers. Kali represented emancipation, liberation. She represented a challenge against the established order. And there didn't seem to be much in Western tradition as a symbol to turn to. So quite a number of the early feminists, in particular, chose Kali as that symbol because she broke up Western platitudes about freedom, about equality and so on, and she challenged the way that women were being felt themselves to be repressed. So she played an important symbolic role in the feminine feminist movement of the West.

[Unnamed Speaker]

It's also interesting, I think, that India has had to go on a long journey of figuring out how it feels about Kali so that you see some image. If you go to Nepal, she's Bhairavi, she's fierce. She has fangs, she's terrifying. If you go to the deep south, you might find her Kali as the goddess, but also the maiden covered in flowers, in love with her husband. And if I go, she often has a tongue. Tongue lolling as a kind of a beyond all boundaries expression. If I go to certain regions, friends will say, oh, no, no. She's. She's always scared that she's going to disobey and embarrass her husband, which is a domestication of what was actually a much wilder image. So I think even within Hindu culture, you get some who want to see her as more of a mother figure, more placid, more calm. Some who want to see her as wild and unbridled and unbound. And actually, if you look at the broader outline of history, particularly in India, it doesn't have to be all one thing. You know, that's true, I think, in every religious tradition that God can be sometimes the dispenser of justice and sometimes the dispenser of mercy. So too, Kali can be fierce and wild and loving and gentle. So there's a kind of a complex conversation within the culture about what Kali means.

[Bihani Sarkar]

Do you have anything guy in the way she's depicted? Jessica?

[Unnamed Speaker]

Images of Kali are very different in different regions of India. So that in some regions you'll have an image, old images of Kali where she may be gaunt, haggard, terrifying. She clearly is. She's poor, she's suffering, she's homeless, and she'll be old. And those are often meant to show Kali as really outside the pale, outside the norm in other areas. And you'll see art which shows her as a beautiful woman, still fierce, still with this wild, naked, dark skin, her lolling tongue, her red eyes, but actually quite lovely. Is a famous picture by, I think it's Raja Ravi Varma, which makes her into this kind of lovely creature who is also frightening at the same time. And in some regions you get very abstract images of Kali, certain Bengali images. She's almost an aniconic and abstract image of the goddess, which is really meant to represent the energy of the divine itself. So there's a whole range of different ways that she'll be depicted, some of the more explicit in their imagery of the stories, some of them much more abstract. So you can kind of pick and choose which theology you want to address.

[Bihani Sarkar]

How would you know so far, everybody that you've referred to has been a woman. Is that the case always, Julius, with.

[Julius Lipner]

Regard to Kali, yes. Well, Kali really emerged from a male God in ancient tradition. So that's where the male God comes in. And sometimes it's the great God Vishnu, and sometimes it's the great God Shiva. She is regarded as emerging from the forehead of Vishnu in order to get the better off to kill, to destroy certain demons. So she is a destroyer of evil. And her dark visage, her dark form, her fearsome form, actually reflects the fact that she is, as Jessica hinted at, the destroyer. She is a destroyer of evil, of bad things. So she is somewhat somehow, you know, Hindu tradition has a lot of patriarchy in it, and therefore even the goddess emerged from Vishnu in some stories. In other stories, however, she emerges from or is a change of form of the Goddess Durga, the great Goddess Durga. So there are a number of origin stories about Kali, some accentuating the male and some the female.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Linked to empowerment. Kali, it was very important for the empowerment of royalty and royal power. So Kali and politics have a long story in Indian history. Indian rulers, before they went off to battle, would worship Kali for success in battle, as they did with Durga, another warrior goddess. And sometimes special incantations of the Goddess Kali would be written in pieces of paper, tied up in amulets, and the amulets would be worn around the soldier's arm. And the soldier would go into battle thinking or believing that the goddess is on his arm protecting him. So there is a link between martial power and the Goddess in Indian history.

I think linked to all of this is an interesting question about the extent to which Kali is empowering to women. And it's a really interesting question, actually. It's one of the questions we often set students when they study the Goddess traditions. Does this have a direct impact on the way that women themselves are treated to have an image of the female divine as the ultimate reality, the source of everything? And the question is a difficult one in some ways. In some regions, you do seem to see that women have a greater power in society. On the other hand, overall, in Hindu cultures, in the past at least, it's not always necessarily the case. So there are interesting questions about the ways that Kali may or may not actually impact on women's lives. But you do see some cases. One nice example is a female saint called Mahadeviyaka from the medieval period, who left her husband, went into the forests of the south and became a female devotional poet. And she addressed her poems. She took off all her clothes, the story goes. And also, like Kali became completely naked, covered with her hair, Lady Godiva like, and was accepted by other male saints and poets for her great devotion. But it was partly because she was devoted to Shiva and took on, if you like, the role of a consort of Shiva that she was able to be this independent female who is going beyond social taboos and partly through a kind of a religious vision, was able to carve a place for herself in society. So I think there's different stories about the ways in which her actual impact on women in society worked. There is some evidence that she could be empowering, but it's still perhaps a work in progress.

[Bihani Sarkar]

Well, thank you all very much. I think. I think Simon's got enough in his plate now.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Coffee, Melvin, do you want tea?

[Bihani Sarkar]

I'm all right with this, thank you very much.

[Julius Lipner]

Tea or coffee drinks, if it's not an inconvenience.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Oh, it's not.

[Julius Lipner]

Okay. I'd love some tea, please.

[Unnamed Speaker]

It feels so bad that you have to say that, but don't worry, I'll have some. If you're making something, be lovely. Thank you. Some tea would be great. Yeah. Tea.

Thank you so much. Thank you.

Okay, thank you very much.

[Julius Lipner]

Thank you, Melvin. Thank you very much.

[Melvin Bragg]

In Our Time with Melvin Bragg is produced by Simon Tillotson and it's a BBC Studios audio production. Hello, I'm Robin Hinz.

[G]

And I'm Brian Cox. And we would like to tell you about the new series of the Infinite Monkey Cage. In this series, we're going to have a planet off.

[Melvin Bragg]

We decided it was time to go cosmic. So we are gonna do Jupiter versus Scepter.

[G]

That's very well done, that, because in the script, it does say in square brackets wrestling voice, question mark. And once we touch back down on this planet, we're going to go deep.

[Melvin Bragg]

Really deep.

[G]

Yes. We're journeying to the center of the Earth with guests Phil Wang, Chris Jackson and Anna Ferreira.

[Melvin Bragg]

And after all of that, in intense heat and pressure, we're just gonna kind of chill out a bit and talk about ice.

[G]

And also in this series, we're discussing altruism. We'll find out what it is. Exploring the history of music recording with Brian Eno and looking at nature shapes.

[Melvin Bragg]

So if that sounds like your kind of thing, you can listen to the Infinite Monkey Cage first on BBC Sounds.