A story of Bagwaal, by Frederique Lacraz

We left Dhikuli village with Sumantha Ghosh, Paramveer Singh Hayer, Oli Gray-Read, Pascale, Eric and Sarah-Eve Longsworth and myself and headed to the mountain areas to reach the village of Devidhura. The village is situated at the trijunction of Almora, Pithoragarh & Nainital districts. A unique feature of the fair is the image of the goddess, kept in a locked brass casket. This casket is taken in a procession to a nearby mountain spring where a blindfolded priest ritually bathes the image and replaces it in the casket.The “goal” of our journey was to go to see the festival of Bagwaal. It is devoted to the goddess of the village, Varah Devi and lasts about one week. Many cultural events like kumaoni singing and dances, prayers and fairground attractions are happening. A particular event takes place during approximately 10 minutes, in which two teams of boys and men exclusively are fighting against each other with stones. The story of this festival is that the goddess of the village used to demand (human) blood on this special day for the soil’s thirst to be satisfied. In order to do so, human and animal (buffalo, goat) sacrifices were made. The person selected for the sacrifices was the eldest son of the family. But at one point, the ladies of the village started protesting saying that families and lineage were being lost since the number of men dramatically decreased. It was then decided to hold a fight instead of the human sacrifices in which men would throw rocks at each other, in order to give the soil its fill of blood.

As we got up in the mountains, the air became fresher and drier, the vegetation slowly changing from Sal into pine forests. We arrived in Devidhura on the 4^th of august 2009 and the first impression was that the festival brings many people from far away, bringing a lot of life to the village during this period. A market of clothes, jewelries, food and many other things was in place along the main street. We walked down towards the temple, there was a volley-ball game happening. We reached a spot where we were blissfully surprised to see about ten vultures sitting in trees below us, Himalayan Griffons, Lammergeier and Red-headed vultures. They were looking over to the place where the carcasses of buffalos are thrown, after each sacrifice. They were certainly waiting for the right moment to access the carcasses.

During the evening, we saw a show of local singing and dances, with the beautiful girls of kumaon wearing their traditional dress.

The day after, we went looking for a place with a good view overlooking the “battle field”. As we waited for the fight to begin, hundreds of people were arriving from almost everywhere, taking seats on the slopes of the hill, in anticipation of the fight.

When it began, we saw the teams that were about to fight arriving one after the other, in a ceremony of dances, drums, shouting and running, some men carrying large wicker shields. It looked very disorganised. There are actually four teams coming from four different villages, and they end up as two teams fighting against each other. While the teams were arriving, two massive clouds converged over the battle field, giving a mystic feel to the arena. After that, the fight began! As it did, the rain started falling heavily, too. The rain didn’t dampen in the atmosphere, everyone was very excited and the drums kept pounding on. Men were throwing rocks in the air to hit the other team, which is the goal of Bagwaal! In the middle of the field, a group of men carrying shields, covering themselves, were fighting with sticks.

The sight of the many stones flying through the air was astonishing but also scary since they could have hit us. The whole battle was absolutely incredible to see. To announce the end of the fight, an old man carrying a small copper shield runs among the men, waving a sort of plume around his head. After few minutes the men stopped throwing rocks and started embracing each other, the two teams mixing together. They would go to see the persons injured and congratulate them, with big smiles on their faces and also exchange their scarves. A great feeling of joy was palpable. We ended up drenched but so amazed at what we just had seen.

This festival was unbelievable and we could feel an astounding strength among all those people.

Being in Devidhura and especially during this astonishing festival could only bring us to one of Jim Corbett’s hunt for a man eater, as described in The Temple Tiger. In his story, he headed to “Dabidhura” (called nowadays Devidhura) in order to shoot a leopard man-eater that had tried to killed a man close to the great temple of the village. But when he reached the place, he decided to track and kill a tiger that was slaughtering cattle quite often in the area, a huge cause of concern for the local villagers who have very little possession. A strange thing that Jim was taught by the local priest was “I have no objection, Sahib, to your trying to shoot this tiger, but neither you nor anyone else will ever succeed in killing it”. What was so special about this tiger? A mystic feeling, once again, was covering the village.

In his many attempts to shoot the tiger, Jim faced several problems. First, he was not able to fire because of a new riffle that he didn’t know how to use properly. The next time, he shot at the tiger’s back but did not kill him or even seemed to injure him. After that, he missed the tiger by a few inches. Finally, the tiger went to Jim, while he was sitting up in a tree, waiting to shoot the cattle killer. But at this stage, Jim could not shoot him, and by firing in the air, he made the tiger disappear down the hill. After that, Jim left Dabidhura, hoping that the tiger, “this old warrior, like an old soldier, just faded away”.

Finally, the old priest was right; no one can kill the Temple Tiger.