The film documents the annual ceremony in Bandipur in which Kami (blacksmith), Damai (tailor), Brahmin (priest) and Magar (a minor ethnic group) collectively pay homage to Khadga Devi, a revered goddess in Bandipur from the first to the tenth day of Dashain.[break]
Kshetry, who had initially reported the tradition while working at The Himalayan Times, researched it for two years and started out filming.
“I found it interesting and wanted to present it as a testimony to the irrelevance of caste discrimination so prevalent in each and every part of the country,” Kshetry said at the media screening.
Photo: Renu Kshetry
The tradition of this inclusive ten-day ceremony stems from a myth that King Mukunda Sen II had spent a night disguised as a hermit at a Brahmin couple’s hut and when he was offered delicacies, he mixed it all together and started eating it. Seeing what the king had done, the couple started talking among themselves and compared what the king in disguise had done with the food to King Muknda Sen II’s inefficiency as a ruler despite having conquered many states.
The king, after overhearing the conversation, is believed to have gone to Devghat and killed himself in the Kali Gandaki River.
At midnight, a snake appeared on the roof of the Brahmin couple’s hut and after several pujas, the snake turned into a sword. The same sword is believed to be the king’s blade and is preserved inside the temple as “the house of power.”
On the seventh day of Dashain, Brahmin and Magar sword carriers take the sword out of the temple and hand it over to the Kami sword carrier who then takes the sword to the communal temple of Dalits and the sword is worshipped and taken around the village with much fanfare.
The 32-minute film does not delve into background narration but locals and sword carriers present their experiences and opinions about the 200-year-old tradition and whether or not it will fare through the next generation.
The film is open-ended and raises the question towards the continuity of what probably is the only caste-inclusive tradition in a country where caste discrimination is one of the major social problems and has given birth to other unsocial issues. Due to financial reasons and looming westernization among the local youngsters, the locals are uncertain as to what will happen to this inter-caste ceremony after them.
“The reason I didn’t prefer suggesting solutions to these problems is because I wanted to leave to the audience to think for themselves and of new ways to keep this tradition alive,” said director Renu Kshetry.
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