The Sweetening of Death

The Sweetening of Death
Bamakhepas Visualization of Tara

at Bengals Tarapith Temple
Imma Ramos
University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
ABSTRACT Tarapith in West Bengal is regarded as one of the most powerful holy
places in India. This paper explores the ways in which the many facets of death
have been articulated and conceptualized in Tantric ritual through an analysis of
its local goddess, Tara. In particular it will examine the relationship between this
deity and the sites most famous Tantric practitioner, Bamakhepa (1837-1911).
This will reveal a major development in late nineteenth-century understandings
of Tara, as he fundamentally sweetened this once terrifying goddess through
his interactions with and visualizations of her. Her reimagined role as a fierce
mother would appeal to the Bengali nationalists who hailed India as Bharat Mata
(Mother India) and, as her sons, were willing to sacrifice their lives to obtain her
freedom from British colonial rule.
INTRODUCTION
A plaque inside Tarapith temple (Fig. 1) explains that it was constructed by
businessman Jagannatha Ray and completed by 1818. The original, however,
was much older its foundations are believed to date back to the ninth century.
Despite its status, there has not yet been an adequately comprehensive study
of Tarapith apart from informative introductions by Gangopadhyay, Morinis, and
Banerjee.1 Its fame today can be largely credited to the charisma and popularity of
Bamakhepa (1837-1911), a Tantric practitioner or sadhaka who became a pujari
or priest there during the late nineteenth century and gave the site its spiritually
1 Bipula Kumara Gangopadhyay,

Mahapith Tarapith (Kolkata:
Jaytara Publishers, 2010); Alan
Morinis, Pilgrimage in the
Hindu Tradition: a Case Study
of West Bengal (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1984); Sumanta
Banerjee, Logic in a Popular
Form: Essays on Popular Religion
in Bengal (London: Seagull,
2010).
journal of the lucas graduate conference
| 127
powerful reputation. Biographers of Bamakhepa stress his intimate relationship

with the temples resident deity: the inner sanctum enshrines a three foot tall
2 According to the temples
pujaris, the murti dates to the
early nineteenth century.
3 Surprisingly little has been
written about Bamakhepa,
despite his major role in modern
Bengali history. Some of the
more important events of his
life are discussed by Morinis
(Pilgrimage in the Hindu
Tradition), Banerjee (Logic in a
Popular Form), Gangopadhyay
(Mahapith Tarapith), and by
Malcolm McLean, Eating
Corpses and Raising the
Dead: the Tantric Madness of
Bamaksepa, in In the Flesh:
Eros, Secrecy and Power in the
Vernacular Tantric Traditions
of India, ed. Hugh Urban et al.
(Albany: University of New York
Press, forthcoming), as well as
by June McDaniel, The Madness
of the Saints: Ecstatic Religion
in Bengal (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1989). These
details are gathered from oral
sources compiled by Bengali
biographers including Sushil
Kumar Bandopadhyaya, Tarapith
Bhairava (Calcutta, 1376 B.S.),
Gangescandra Cakravarti,
Banglar Sadhaka (Calcutta:
Nabendu Cakravarti, 1387 B.S.)
and S. K. Banerjee, Sri Sri Bama
Ksepa (Calcutta: Sri Byomkesh
Bysack, 1971).
128 | journal of the lucas graduate
metal murti or divinely embodied icon of Tara, a fierce goddess closely associated
with mortality and destruction (Figs 2 and 3).2 However, scholars have largely
overlooked the complexity of this relationship, and its accompanying Tantric
rituals.3 Bamakhepas esoteric practices included meditation on corpses and
skulls in cremation grounds, symbols of mortality which revealingly accompany
images of Tara. Such rituals were deliberately shrouded in secrecy and were
often misunderstood by Orientalist scholars and colonial missionaries. One late
nineteenth-century writer commented:
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Fig. 1
Tarapith temple
(Imma Ramos)
2012
Imma Ramos
[Tantric][Tantric]
worship assumes
worship wild,
assumes
extravagant
wild, extravagant
forms, generally
forms,
obscene,
generally
sometimes
bloody. obscene,
It is saddening
sometimes
to think
bloody.
that such
It is abominations
saddening to are
think
committed;
that suchit is still
more saddening
abominations
that they
are committed;
are performed
it is as
stillpart
more
of divine
saddening
worship.
that Conscience,
they
however,
areis performed
so far alive as
that
part
these
of divine
detestable
worship.
ritesConscience,
are practised
however,
only in secret.
is
so far alive that these detestable rites are practised only in secret.4
This article will demonstrate that an examination of the indigenous reception of
the iconography of Tara in late nineteenth-century Bengal reveals and illuminates
the secret, cryptic meanings behind these rituals which are so closely tied
to emancipatory death. Focusing on this tumultuous period of colonial rule in
4 John Murray Mitchell and

William Muir, Two Old Faiths
(Delhi: Asian Educational
Service, 1996 [1891]), 53.
Fig. 2 and 3
Murti of Tara (and detail) in the inner sanctum
of Tarapith temple
(Imma Ramos)
2012
| 129
5 Particularly penetrative
definitions of Tantra, a concept
which is famously difficult to
define or categorize, have been
suggested by Hugh Urban in
Tantra: Sex, Secrecy, Politics, and
Power in the Study of Religion
(Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2003) and by David White
in Tantra in Practice (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2000).
Hindu Tantrism by Sanjukta
Gupta, Dirk Jan Hoens and
Teun Goudriaan (Leiden: Brill,
1979) also provides an excellent
introduction to the subject.
Bengal, the centre of British power in India, will also uncover the nationalistic
sentiments which the British-educated Bengali middle classes (bhadralok)
would attach nostalgically to indigenous practices, including Tantra, guru, and
image worship. Bamakhepa related to Tara as an adoring son might to a mother,
subsequently sweetening and popularizing the fierce aspect of her character,
which appealed to a widespread desire to promote India as Mother (Bharat
Mata) in response to British rule.
UNDERSTANDING TARA
Tarapith is a centre of Tantra, a body of beliefs and practices within Hinduism
that aims to sublimate material reality.5 This includes an affirmation of and
confrontation with death itself, since material reality is characterized by transience
6 Contrary to popular belief in

the West which sees Tantra as
mainly concerned with sexuality,
the sublimation of material
reality through a confrontation
with death is one of the most
important goals. Hugh Urban
offers an insightful look at the
way Tantra was deodorized and
distorted in the West during the
twentieth century in Tantra: Sex,
Secrecy, Politics, and Power.
7 McDaniel, Madness of the
Saints, 121.
and decay.6 All phenomena are considered to be the concrete manifestation of

divine feminine energy, which sadhakas seek to ritually channel through various
practices or sadhanas, including the invocation of deities such as Tara through
rituals of visualization. Through this unity with the divine they strive to attain
moksha (liberation). In Tantric terms, this liberating union represents the ecstasy
of death of the self or the I. As June McDaniel states, there seem to be two forms
[of ecstasy] One is the realization of radical detachment from the world [] The
other form is the realization of total dependence on the Mother.7 When this union
is achieved all desire vanishes and the cycle of endless rebirths (according to the
dominant Hindu belief in reincarnation) comes to an end. As the Gupta-Chinachara
Tantra explains: Death in Tarapith immediately grants moksha. Even gods wish to
die in Tarapith. Thus, go to Tara [] with deep devotion and respect.8
8 Gangopadhyay, Mahapith
Tarapith, 110.
9 Ibid. 281. In her benevolent
manifestation, Tara is also a
Buddhist goddess and is regarded
as a Tibetan national deity. She is
generally understood
Tara is often referred to as the cheater of death; since Yama, the god of death,
is believed to preside over the gates of mortality in the south, the Tara murti
deliberately faces north, protecting her devotees from demise and granting the
blessing of a long life.9 Taras iconography exhibits her paradoxical nature, however,
and highlights the notion that she is not only the protectress against death, but is
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Imma Ramos
simultaneously death itself, just as a tenth-century Tantric text reveals that Tara is
both frightening and removes fear.10 The murti is adorned with a silver necklace
of human heads. Her unbound, wild hair suggests dissolution and chaos, in
contrast with the hair of other goddesses which is always braided, symbolic of
cosmic order.11 Her mouth is smeared with red sindoor or vermilion, resembling
blood. In the tenth-century Mundamala-tantra she is called She Who is Smeared
with Blood and She Who Enjoys Blood Sacrifice.12 To meditate on Tara is thus
to meditate on death itself. Through this esoteric ritual the sadhaka directly
confronts his fear of impermanence, and thus overcomes it. It also motivates
the sadhaka to seek a state of consciousness that is beyond life and death, and
beyond duality itself. Taras macabre iconography reveals a fundamental truth
behind Tantric ritual: the universal and inclusive nature of death breaks down
conventional social differences between practitioners, a sentiment that would
acquire political relevance during the colonial period when Bengali writers
stressed the need to unite a country fragmented by caste division.13 According
to a Tantric practitioner who was a contemporary of Bamakhepa, [i]n Tantrik
philosophy, there is no difference between castes, communities, religions, etc.
[] In this sense, [Tantra] is a protest against the Vedic and Brahmanical religion.14
Late nineteenth-century lithographs of Tara which were produced in nearby
Calcutta and subsequently circulated around Bengal and the rest of India (Figs 4
and 5) provide a more complete iconography of the goddess, as so much of the
murti is obscured beneath marigold garlands and the sari she is wearing.15 The
blue lotus she holds in one of her right hands represents her creative aspect, while
the left hands, holding a bloodied sword and a knife, represent her destructive
aspect. She thus embodies the inherent rhythm of the cosmos, which is created,
to have become prominent

in Indian Buddhism first, and
then gained greater importance
when introduced into Tibet. Her
place in the Hindu pantheon is
less central and she is usually
associated with a group of nine
other Tantric goddesses, the
Mahavidyas. For references
on the history of Tara in Tibet,
see Stephan Beyer, The Cult
of Tara: Magic and Ritual in
Tibet (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1973),
and for more on her role as
a Mahavidya, David Kinsley,
Tantric Visions of the Divine
Feminine: the Ten Mahavidyas
(Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1997).
10 Rajesh Diksit, Tara Tantra Shastra
(Agra: Sumit Prakashan, 1987), 116.
11 Kinsley, Tantric Visions, 84.
12 Diksit, Tara Tantra Shastra, 117.
16
then destroyed, only to be recreated, according to the Hindu concept of time as

cyclical. Sadhakas approach her to gain access to this immeasurable power. The
origin of Taras iconography lies in the dhyanas or icon descriptions which define
her physical form in detail for the purpose of visualization rituals. They stress her
fierce, often horrifying appearance, inviting submissive surrender by the devotee.
13 Swarupa Gupta, Notions

of Nationhood in Bengal:
Perspectives on Samaj, c.18671905 (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 311.
14 Banerjee, Logic in a Popular
Form, 166.
| 131
15 For more information on the

studio behind these
prints, Calcutta Art Studio, see
Christopher Pinney, Photos of
the Gods: the Printed Image
and Political Struggle in India
(London: Reaktion, 2004) and
Partha Mitter, Mechanical
Reproduction and the World
of the Colonial Artist,
Contributions to Indian Sociology
36 (2002): 1-32.
The dhyana mantra from the sixteenth-century Mantra-mahodadhi states that:

In her left hands she holds a knife and a skull and, in her right hands, a sword and
a blue lotus. Her complexion is blue, and she is bedecked with ornaments [] Her
In her left hands she holds a knife and a skull and, in her right
tongue is always moving, and her teeth and mouth appear terrible. She is wearing
hands, a sword and a blue lotus. Her complexion is blue, and she
a tiger skin around her waist, and her forehead is decorated with ornaments of
is bedecked with ornaments [] Her tongue is always moving, and
white bone [] She is seated on the heart of a corpse, and her breasts are hard.
her teeth and mouth appear terrible. She is wearing a tiger skin
Thus should one meditate on Tara.
around her waist, and her forehead is decorated with ornaments
of white bone [] She is seated on the heart of a corpse, and her
breasts are hard. Thus should one meditate on Tara.17
Fig. 4
Tara
Lithograph
c. 1885
Calcutta Art Studio, Calcutta
Collection of Shubhojit Biswas
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Fig. 5
Tara
Lithograph
c. 1885
Collection of Shubhojit Biswas
Imma Ramos
Dhyanas were written for the mental contemplation of gods by sadhakas to

evoke and invoke their presence by filling his or her mind with this description
of the goddess while ritually approaching her. The aim of Tantric practice is total
union or identification with the deity, or to be granted a vision of the deity, and
the dhyanas are meant to help achieve this. In the case of Tarapith, Bamakhepa
famously achieved both, and his vision granted him moksha. The combination
of written dhyanas and the murti of Tara shaped his vision. Such rituals of
visualization are insufficiently treated in the sphere of visual studies, considering
they form such an important part of Hindu iconography and image devotion.18
Most significant for this case study is the way in which Bamakhepas relationship
with and visualization of Tara shaped his followers attitudes towards her. For
example, his union with Tara led to his consuming offerings left for Taras murti
himself, before passing them on to her. This was a subversive act that not only
articulated the intimacy of their relationship as Divine Mother and adoring son,
but also represented the domestication of this fierce goddess.
UNDERSTANDING TANTRIC RITUAL THROUGH TARA
16 Symbolic interpretations of
her iconography here are based
on interviews with informants
I carried out in and around
Tarapith. Harish Chandra Das, The
Iconography of Sakta Divinities
(Delhi: Pratibha Prakashan,
1997) is also a helpful source for
understanding the iconographical
implications of a multitude of
Hindu goddesses.
17 Mahidhara, Mantra
Mahodahih, Vol. 1, ed. and transl.
Ramkumar Rai (Varanasi: Prachya
Prakashan, 1992), 179-180. Note
that Taras iconography is not
always consistent and there are
occasional variations. In contrast
to this dhyana, for example,
the Calcutta Art Studio prints
represent her with knife and
sword in her left hands, and lotus
and skull in her right hands.
In order to fully identify with Tara, Bamakhepa, like other sadhakas, partook
in certain Tantric rituals associated with her. The iconography of Tara informs
and reinforces Tantric ritual focusing on death, i.e. the setting, which is the
cremation ground, and the ritual instruments, which include skulls, weapons
and corpses. Sadhakas at Tarapith frequently seat themselves on or near five
human and animal skulls in the cremation ground in order to access the power of
the goddess (pancha-mundi-asana). Meditation while seated on a recently-dead
human corpse is also practised (shava-sadhana). These sadhanas are considered
ego-transcending spiritual practices. In depictions of the goddess, cremation fires
are visible in the background, which represent another aspect of her character:
she is recognized as the cremation fire itself, enabling the cathartic transition
from life to death and from one mode of being to another.19 According to Hindu
belief, cremation is the final rite in the course of an individuals existence and
18 This point is made by Corinna

Wessels-Mevissen in a special
issue of Marg (December
2011) entitled Visuality of
Indian Rituals in which the
relationship between image
and ritual as a subject of visual
anthropology was introduced
from a variety of perspectives.
Wessels-Mevissen refers to
such rituals as mind objects,
suggesting their importance as
iconographical artefacts in their
own right.
| 133
it ceremoniously affirms non-attachment to the body. As a threshold where

transition from life to death regularly takes place, it is a numinous space offering
unparalleled access to the spirit world and the beings that inhabit it. Sadhakas
often attempt to make contact with this spirit world in order to gain supernatural
powers, particularly through the practice of shava-sadhana. Initiation into Tantric
rites is carried out in this setting, involving the symbolic death and rebirth of
the practitioner.20 Appropriately then, the serpents adorning Tara are symbols of
transformation, able to shed their skins and become new beings. The cremation
ground also represents a polluted space. Bamakhepa is said to have practised
his meditation on the skulls of five unclean beings: a human that had died a
violent, unnatural death, as well as the skulls of a monkey, snake, mongoose,
20 Ibid. 235.
and vulture.21 This relates to the Tantric engagement with the impure which, for
a sadhaka, can be used as an instrument of auspicious power.22 The affirmation
21 This story was told to

me by several informants at
Tarapith (August 2012). See
also McDaniel, Madness of the
Saints, 127.
22 See Urban, Tantra: Sex,
Secrecy, Politics, and Power,
for more on the relationship
between impurity and the
auspicious in Tantric philosophy
and the role of transgression in
the attainment of power.
that all is sacred in the material world, including those forbidden things rejected
by society, ultimately liberates the sadhaka from the material world. Since death
represents an aspect of the polluted, Tara herself is an emblem of the forbidden.23
During the ritual, the sadhaka boldly confronts Tara and thereby assimilates and
overcomes her, transforming her into a vehicle of salvation.
Iconographically, Taras bloodied sword of knowledge symbolizes the death of the
ego, represented by her garland of severed heads, through the transformative
destruction of ignorance.24 Decapitation during animal sacrifice was and still is
common in the Tantric tradition and at Tarapith it is a daily occurrence. The khadga
ritual decapitation sword used at the temple has a curved blade commonly seen
in images of the goddess. The Tantrasara stresses the importance of decapitation
24 Interviews with informants

(August 2012). Also see Kinsley,
Tantric Visions, 108.
as the ideal form of sacrifice.25 Several goats are beheaded daily to satisfy
Taras hunger. Goats are considered symbols of greed, passion and lust so their
sacrifice is a symbolic act. The head can be interpreted as a repository of the ego,
25 Diksit, Tara Tantra Shastra,

682-683.
26 Interview with an informant
at Tarapith (August 2012).
which is then offered to the goddess to appease her or maintain favour.26 As an

enlightened ascetic or sannyasi, Bamakhepa had conquered the eight bondages
of the ego or ashta-pasha and six cardinal vices or shahra-ripu (including hate,
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shame, fear, reproach, sexual desire, anger, greed, vanity, and envy), his own
symbolic sacrificial decapitation for Tara.
Taras sacrificial heads also assumed an alternative meaning during the colonial
period. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, images of ferocious Tantric
goddesses such as Tara and Kali were very popular in Bengal, including the
widespread prints circulated by the Calcutta Art Studio, which had an explicitly
anti-British nationalist agenda. Christopher Pinney notes that one colonial
official, Herbert Hope Risley, anxiously described a chromolithographic image
of Kali as garlanded with what appeared to be European heads, a prediction of
the fall of the British Empire (Fig. 6).27 These goddess images were appropriated
by the radical nationalist movement as icons of revolutionary awakening, and
envisioned as the supreme images of Mother India (Bharat Mata) rising up
against her colonizers. As a writer for the Bengali newspaper, Jugantar, stated
in 1905:
The Mother asks for sacrificial offerings. What does the Mother
The Mother asks for sacrificial offerings. What does the Mother want? [] The
want? [] The fowl or a sheep or a buffalo? No. She wants many
fowl or a sheep or a buffalo? No. She wants many white Asuras [demons]. The
white Asuras [demons]. The Mother is thirsting after the blood
Mother is thirsting after the blood of the Feringhees [foreigners] [] With the
of the Feringhees [foreigners] [] With the close of a long era,
close of a long era, the Feringhee Empire draws to an end, for behold! Kali rises
the Feringhee Empire draws to an end, for behold! Kali rises in
in the East.28 28
the East.
The British were not the only ones to be sacrificed the envisioning of the nation
as a suffering mother was popularized through Bankim Chandra Chatterjees
1882 novel Anandamath, which called upon the nations citizens to protect and
restore her, and, if necessary, sacrifice their lives for her.29
Tara is also shown standing upon the supine, corpse-like god, Shiva, who is her
husband (Figs 4 and 5). According to Tantric ideology, reality is the result and
expression of the interaction of male and female, spirit and matter, and Shiva
and Shakti.30 In many Tantric texts, the supine figure lying below Taras feet is also
27 Pinney, Photos of the Gods,

120.
28 Valentine Chirol, Indian
Unrest (London: Macmillan and
Co., 1910), 346.
29 See Julius Lipner,
Anandamath, or, The Sacred
Brotherhood by Bankimchandra
Chatterji (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2005).
30 As Shakti, or divine feminine
energy, Tara is considered
superior to Shiva and Tantric
texts assert that without her
Shiva could not survive and the
universe would perish.
| 135
Fig. 6
Kali
Lithograph
c.1883
Collection of Mark Baron and Elise Boisante
136 |
Imma Ramos
described as a corpse.31 Fresh corpses are a powerful means of communicating

with the goddess and with the spirit world through shava-sadhana, during which
the sadhaka sits on the corpse and meditates on Tara. The Mantra-mahodadhi
states that such rituals will make a sadhaka fearless and master of various
siddhis [magical powers].32 Troubled spirits who have not yet reincarnated
and linger on in the body are the most effective.33 Once pacified they can grant
shamanic powers, including miraculous healing abilities, which Bamakhepa
himself attained.34 Throughout the nineteenth century, diseases such as cholera
and malaria ravaged the Bengali countryside. Fear of disease and death, together
with an overwhelming anxiety about the future, made Bamakhepas siddhis a
popular attraction across the region.35
Corpses and skulls are not only instruments for meditating on mortality, then,
but also instruments of power. Shava-sadhana deliberately invites extreme
peril, including ghosts and demonic forces, in order to attract the attention of
the goddess.36 Visionary experience is described most often in Tantric texts as
occurring in the cremation ground at night, not only because it is Taras residence,
but also because the proximity to death and primal fear encourage her maternal
instincts to protect her devotee. Nigamananda Sarasvati, who took initiation
from Bamakhepa, described this experience vividly. Bamakhepa left him in the
37
cremation ground at midnight with three burned bodies, and instructed him to
meditate on Tara. Demonic apparitions haunted and distracted him. Bamakhepa
would cry Tara! Tara! every time Sarasvatis focus wavered. Eventually he felt
his ego dissolve in a kind of ecstasy of death, achieving divine union with Tara
Mahodahih, 179-180; Diksit,
Tara Tantra Shastra, 116.
Mahodahih, 214.
33 Interview with an informant
(August 2012).
Saints, 133.
through a vision of her as a beautiful woman. He requested a vision of her cosmic

form, and she became vast, with thousands of heads, tongues, bodies, weapons,
grinding teeth, and eyes emitting fire. Taras transition from beautiful woman to
cosmic form in this case reflects the view that Hindu gods and goddesses can
be simultaneously represented as converging into a supreme deity, as well as
splintering into innumerable minor deities. This paradox results from the belief,
according to Hindu mythology, that the goddess is both formless (cosmic and
35 McLean, Eating Corpses, 16.

Saints, 120.
37 Nigamananda Saraswati,
Mayer Kripa (Halisahar, 1382
B.S.), 3-13.
| 137
unified) and form-bound (in her local, individual manifestations of Tara, Kali,
etc.). Each manifestation represents a rupa, or appearance, of the mula-shakti,
the original, supreme goddess.38 The transition from benevolent to terrifying
also reveals Taras fundamentally ambiguous nature. For example, Bamakhepas
contemporary, the famous mystic Ramakrishna (1836-1886), once described a
vision of the goddess in her capacity as creatress, sustainer, and destroyer of the
universe. He saw a beautiful, heavily pregnant woman emerge from the Ganges,
give birth, and begin to lovingly cradle her child. Then, suddenly assuming a
terrifying form, she devoured the child and re-entered the water.39
THE SWEETENING OF DEATH
38 Tracy Pintchman (ed.)
examines this idea of the
goddess as one and many,
regional and universal, in
Seeking Mahadevi: Constructing
the Identities of the Hindu
Great Goddess (New York: State
University of New York, 2001),
while John Stratton Hawley
and Donna Marie Wulff (eds.)
examine the concept of Devi,
the great goddess, and the ways
various Hindu goddesses are
related to her in Devi: Goddesses
of India (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1996).
Despite Taras strong connection with destruction, she is understood as a creative,

nourishing presence as well. Tara is often represented with large breasts and a
swollen belly, suggesting her maternal nature.40 In her Hymn of a Hundred Names
she is called Jagaddhitri or Mother of the World. Tara is thus the very principle of
life: she takes it, but also gives it in an endless cycle of creation and destruction.
It is this image of Tara as mother that Bamakhepa promoted in his own vision of
the goddess. It is said that in 1863 he was granted a vision of her in her capacities
as ferocious destroyer and benign creatress: dancing upon a burning corpse, he
saw a demoness with long teeth and fiery eyes, wearing a tiger skin and snake
ornaments.41 This is popularly illustrated in contemporary comics about the life
of Bamakhepa (Fig. 7). Affectionately she lifted him and took him on her lap
and he lost consciousness as she took him to her breast. He has consequently
39 Swami Nikhilananda, The

Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (New
York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda
Center, 1952), 21.
become the symbol of devotion for millions of Bengali Shaktas or devotees of the
The vision of Bamakhepa being taken to her breast echoes another form of Tara
41 Banerjee, Sri Sri Bama Ksepa,

36.
goddess and his charismatic relationship with Tara had a profound impact on the
sweetening of death at Tarapith.
presented to devotees at the temple: inside the fierce murti, which is hollow
and open at the back, is a relic which is only brought out for viewing once a day.
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This is a rough, uncarved stone with no discernible features. It is now believed

to represent Tara in the form of a mother, breastfeeding the god Shiva as an
infant. Today it is depicted in popular prints sold to pilgrims as souvenirs (Fig. 8).
Originally, however, this relic had been conceived of as the dismembered third
eye of a goddess which had fallen from the heavens.42 It seems probable that
Bamakhepas famous vision of Tara as creatress, and his childlike devotion to her
maternal aspect, helped cement the relics identification with the former legend
in popular imagination. According to myth, Shiva drank poison from the cosmic
Fig. 7
Photograph of illustration from a Bengali comic on
Bamakhepa sold at Tarapith
(Imma Ramos)
2012
42 According to several
Puranic texts (namely the
Kalika, Mahabhagavata and
Devibhagavata Puranas), the
Hindu god Shiva carried his wife,
the goddess Sati, across India
after her death. His grief risked
the destruction of the world so
Vishnu, God of Preservation,
threw his discus and cut Satis
Fig. 8
Contemporary popular print of Tara breastfeeding Shiva, considered
to be the image represented on the rock inside the Tara murti
(Imma Ramos)
2012
| 139

body into pieces; these pieces
fell to earth, scattered across
the Indian subcontinent, and
temples were built to enshrine
them. Pieces of Satis corpse
sacralised the earth. The
temples became known as
Shakti Pithas, or Seats of Power.
Satis third eye is said to have
fallen and been enshrined in
Tarapith. The most extensive
work on the Shakti Pithas has
been done by Dinesh Chandra
Sircar in a very short but
nevertheless comprehensive
overview of the varying listings
of pithas as found in a selection
of Tantric texts written for the
Journal of the Royal Asiatic
Society of Bengal (Calcutta,
1948), 1-108.
43 This story was told to me by
several informants at Tarapith
(August 2012), as it was to
Morinis, Pilgrimage in the
Hindu Tradition, 167.
44 Rachel McDermott, Mother
of My Heart, Daughter of My
Dreams. Kali and Uma in the
Devotional Poetry of Bengal
(Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2001).
45 Ibid. 212.
oceans to save the universe and Tara breastfed him to relieve his burning throat.43
The 1989 Bengali film Mahapith Tarapith includes a scene dedicated to this story:
temple priests reveal the concealed image to devotees, cutting to a re-enactment
in which Tara comes to Shivas aid. Shiva is simultaneously the goddesss son and
husband precisely because her role as creatress implies that everyone is her child
and devotee, including her own spouse.
According to local tradition, Bamakhepa was believed to be an incarnation
of Shiva, and his relationship with Tara expressed the same dynamic tension
shared by the deities. Rachel McDermott argues that Tantric goddesses such as
Tara were domesticated during the nineteenth century, particularly through
Bengali Shakta poetry.44 Bamakhepa was very much influenced by the early
nineteenth-century Bengali poet Kamalakanta Bhattacharya (c.1769-1821)
who was also a Tantric practitioner at Tarapith. Bamakhepa used to recite
Kamalakantas poems, which included verses such as: Who else but the
Mother will bear the burden of Kamalakanta? Ma! Give me shelter at Your feet;
take me home.45 Kamalakanta was a product of a poetic literary movement
in Bengal that described the goddess in devotional terms, beginning with
Ramprasad Sen (c.1718-1775) in the mid-eighteenth-century. Both poets
were influenced by Vaishnava bhakti poetry, which spread throughout India
from the twelfth to the eighteenth century. Bhakti poetry expressed the love
felt by the devotee towards a personal deity, usually associated with the god
Krishna. Often that love was described in terms of pangs of separation and
euphoric union, and this lover-beloved relationship was in turn articulated by
poets like Kamalakanta in relation to Tara.46 It is likely that the softening of the
goddess was also for the benefit of Bengali religious sensitivities that stemmed
from the impact of colonialism and Victorian taste. As Hugh Urban suggests,
46 As a movement it was
stimulated by the court poet
Jayadevas twelfth-century Gita
Govinda, a poetic text about the
love between Krishna and his
lover, the cowherdess Radha.
[the] sanitization of Tantra was tied to a specic political agenda: namely,

the construction of a new Indian national and cultural identity in the face of
two centuries of British colonialism.47 Bengal was the ancient homeland of
Shaktism and the Tantric cult of the mother goddess remains popular today.
conference
Imma Ramos
In order to protect as well as promote this cult during the late nineteenthcentury, it became necessary to make Tantric deities such as Tara palatable
to colonial tastes, not only amongst the British but also amongst many of
the Western-educated Bengali bhadralok. Bamakhepa was one of those who
popularized Tantra and turned Tara from a terrifying esoteric symbol into a
devotional goddess (Fig. 9), making her more accessible to a larger audience.
Her horrific side was softened and tamed, thereby making her easier for an
ordinary devotee to relate to. In this way one could argue that Bamakhepa
contributed to the sweetening of death itself by transforming Tara into a
47 Urban, Tantra: Sex, Secrecy,

Politics, and Power, 164.
Fig. 9
Photograph of a contemporary pilgrim souvenir of Bamakhepa and Tara from Tarapith
(Imma Ramos)
2012
| 141
maternal icon. Members of the Bengali elite, coming from the increasingly
48 Parimal Kumar Datta, Tantra:
its Relevance to Modern Times
(Calcutta: Punthi Pustak, 2009),
263.
Form, 181.
50 Panckori Bandyopadhyay,
Sahitya (Calcutta, July-August
1913).
51 Tanika Sarkar, Hindu Wife,
Hindu Nation: Community,
Religion and Cultural
Nationalism (Indiana, 2001),
252.
52 Gupta, Notions of
Nationhood, 78. Such a
sentiment would result in
the invention of a new Hindu
goddess: Bharat Mata (Mother
India). A nationalist construct,
she was meant to inspire
patriotic sacrifice. Sumathi
Ramaswamy has studied the
cultural and visual phenomenon
of Bharat Mata in The Goddess
and the Nation: Mapping
Mother India (Durham: Duke
University Press, 2009); Maps
and Mother Goddesses in
Modern India, Imago Mundi 53,
(2001), 97-114, and Visualising
Indias Geo-Body Globes, Maps,
Bodyscapes, Contributions
to Indian Sociology 36 (2002):
151-189.
urbanized and by extension rationalized environment of Calcutta, came

to pay their respects to the famous sadhaka, including the following Hindu
reformers, driven by spiritual yearning: Debendranath Tagore (1817-1905),
Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902) and Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar (18201891).48 On a trip to the city during the 1890s Bamakhepa was also hosted by
Jatindramohan Tagore (1831-1908).49 According to Panckori Bandyopadhyay
in a 1913 article for Sahitya, study of the Tantras was confined to a certain
section of the educated in Bengal. Maharaja Sir Jatindra Mohan alone
endeavoured to understand and appreciate men like Bama Khepa. 50
More pertinently, Bamakhepas popularization of the Tantric goddess also
appealed to a wider nationalist agenda. By the late nineteenth century the
concept of Mother India had assumed an explicitly political role in Bengal.
Reacting against British rule, Hindu nationalists gendered the nation in literature
as well as visual culture by borrowing the mythicized concept of motherhood
from the prevalence of the Hindu mother cult in Bengal. The personification
of India, subjugated by foreign rulers, was a rhetorical device designed to
inspire patriotism amongst the indigenous population.51 The goddess-devotee
as mother-son relationship subsequently took on patriotic overtones. Bhudev
Mukhopadhyay, the Bengali nationalist and writer (1827-1894) identified
the country as a mother goddess, who always provided her children with
nourishment and water to drink.52 One of Bankims poems, Bande Mataram
(Hail, Mother), which became the main slogan of the nationalist movement,
begins by describing Bengal as a mother that nurtures the population as her
children. Tantric goddesses also came to be identified with the land: Kali, for
example, was regarded as Bengal personified. Bamakhepas maternal treatment
of the goddess was informed, therefore, not only by the tradition of bhakti poetry
and colonial taste but also by the nationalist movements attempt to rally Hindu
citizens together by maternalizing the nation. Simultaneously, Tara, like Kali,
was a martial goddess that could be used as a symbol of revolutionary violence,
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Imma Ramos
as articulated by the Bengali poet Mukunda Das (1878-1934): Mother, come

with your fierce aspect/ Come with your awful spirits/ Come and dance on this
vast cremation ground/ Which is Bharat [India].53 In this context she could thus
be envisioned as both fierce warrior and enslaved victim, both aspects inspiring
maternal devotion. In 1921 the colonial administrator Charles Eliot described the
murti of Kali at Kalighat temple in Calcutta and its role as a nationalist emblem:
is] adorned
with
and
horrid emblems
of destruction.
[She is][She
adorned
with skulls
andskulls
horrid
emblems
of destruction.
Of her four hands
Of her
four hands
two carryhead
a sword
andother
a severed
head
but the to give
two carry
a sword
and a severed
but the
two are
extended
two are extended
to give blessing
andisprotection
toenthusiastic
her
blessingother
and protection
to her worshippers.
So great
the crowd of
worshippers.
So great
crowd ofthe
enthusiastic
that party
suppliants
that it is often
hardistothe
approach
shrine andsuppliants
the nationalist
it iswho
often
hard toforapproach
the shrine
and theare
nationalist
party
in Bengal,
clamour
parliamentary
institutions,
among the
goddesss
55
in Bengal,
who clamour for parliamentary institutions, are among
devotees.
the goddesss devotees.54

Though there is no evidence that Bamakhepa was involved in revolutionary
politics, one of his principal followers certainly was. After Bamakhepas death,
the position of high priest was inherited by his disciple Tarapada Banerjee,
who went on to become a Tantric saint known as Tara Khepa. Before coming
to Tarapith, Tarapada had been a member of the Jugantar group of anti-British,
armed revolutionaries in Bengal. According to some reports, the revolutionary
came to Tarapith in order to be initiated into Tantric practices.55 Condemned by
the British, such indigenous practices could be harnessed for their nationalistic
potential. The worship of the Tara murti was also significant: the very act of
53 Jayadev Goswami,
Charankavi Mukunda Das
(Calcutta, 1972), 218.
54 Charles Eliot, Hinduism and
Buddhism: An Historical Sketch
(London: Routledge and Kegan
Paul, 1921), 287.
image worship assumed nationalistic importance during the colonial period.

In 1882 Bankim was engaged in a debate in the pages of the English Calcutta
daily, The Statesman, with Reverend William Hastie. Hastie claimed, like many
other missionaries and colonial officials of the period, that idolatrous worship
[is] sucking the life-blood out of the very hope of their community. Bankim
56
responded in support of image worship, stressing its importance as an intrinsic

part of Hindu ritual and, by extension, Hindu identity:

Form, 157.
56 William Hastie, Hindu Idolatry
and English Enlightenment:
Six Letters Reprinted from The
Statesman (Calcutta: Thacker,
Spink and Co., 1882), 10.
| 143
[Hasties] arguments are simply contemptible [] There is

[Hasties] arguments are simply contemptible [] There is nothing I am more
nothing I am more desirous to see than the most competent
desirous to see than the most competent explanation and defence of Hinduism
explanation and defence of Hinduism possible [] nothing is
possible [] nothing is a more common subject of merriment among the natives
a more common subject of merriment among the natives of
of India than the Europeans ignorance of all that relates to India [] The image
India than the Europeans ignorance of all that relates to India
is simply the visible and accessible medium through which I choose to send my
[] The image is simply the visible and accessible medium
homage to the throne of the Invisible and the Inaccessible.
through which I choose to send my homage to the throne of
the Invisible and the Inaccessible.57
His reply can be interpreted as a patriotic promotion of indigenous practice, in
reaction to the colonial presence.
CONCLUSION
Bamakhepas visualization of Tara at Tarapith has revealed the nuanced layers
of meaning underlying Tantric ritual. Taras role as the embodiment of death,
simultaneously protecting devotees from it while urging them to confront it,
became a significant source of empowerment for Bengalis struggling under the
colonial regime. Tantric rites deliberately rejected Brahmanical (Hindu orthodox)
rules concerning caste and dichotomies between the pure and impure, and this
radical transgression through sadhana attracted great power to the practitioner.
These rites also assumed revolutionary potential in their assertion of resistance
and personal freedom, making Tantra a veritable counterculture. Many of the
Bengali elite sought to reinforce national Hindu identity through the protection
of traditional practices and valorization of Shaktism, and were nostalgically
drawn to sites such as Tarapith. Bamakhepas own reputed divine madness
(khepa literally translates as mad) signified resistance against the established
social and religious order, instead of the British presence. Through an analysis
of the relationship between Tantric ritual and iconography in the worship of
Tara, as well as the relationship between Bamakhepa and the temples murti,
this article has sought to reveal late nineteenth-century perceptions of the
57 Ibid. 8, 133, 140, and 149.
goddess as both martial and maternal.
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Imma Ramos
In 2007 a Bengali television series about the life of Bamakhepa (Sadhok

Bamakhyapa) became an instant hit and ran for 1,500 episodes, testifying to
this sadhakas lasting popularity and resonance. Tarapiths cremation ground,
a site of Tantric sadhana for generations, continues to be used today. Several
sadhakas dwell more or less permanently there, and wandering sadhakas often
visit it for extended periods. Today the temple has become a popular centre of
devotional worship rather than a site of traditional transgressive rites, which are
largely practised on the margins. Pilgrims approach the Tara murti as a benign
matriarch, kissing her silver feet and leaving her offerings of coconuts, white
silk saris, incense sticks, bananas and, perhaps more in line with her Tantric
aspect, bottles of whisky. To have darshan or sacred vision of the murti is the
ultimate incentive for pilgrimage, a1nd pilgrims are referred to as darshaniyas,
those who come to see.58 Despite this, the significance of the macabre in her
iconography as well as in contemporary Tantric practice continues to rest on
the relationship between mortality and power, entailing the invocation of ones
greatest fear, that of death, in order to give one strength.
58 The concept of darshan has

been discussed in detail in Diane
Eck, Darsan: Seeing the Divine
Image in India (Colombia: Anima
Books, 1981) and Lawrence
A. Babb, Glancing: Visual
Interaction in Hinduism, Journal
of Anthropological Research 37
(1981): 387-401.
This article is the product of research carried out for a doctorate thesis funded by the Cambridge
Home and European Scholarship Scheme (CHESS). Interviews and fieldwork took place in Tarapith
during the month of August 2012, as part of a research trip funded by the Kettles Yard Travel Fund
and the Pembroke Scholarship Trust Fund. I would like to thank the following people for their
guidance, advice and support: Professor Jean Michel Massing, Professor Deborah Howard, Dr Sona
Datta, Professor Hugh Urban, Professor Julius Lipner, Shubhojit Biswas, Mark and Elise Baron, Alex
Wolfers, Atish and Koel Chakraborty, Debarati Basu, Saurav Banerjee and Soumi Dutta.
| 145
Imma Ramos is a PhD student at the University of Cambridge, specializing in

indigenous responses to alien rule in India and its manifestation in visual culture
from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. Her PhD thesis examines how
the Bengali population reclaimed traditional Hindu practices during the British
colonial period. In particular her current research explores the reception of places
of worship consecrated to the Hindu goddess Sati, known as Shakti Pithas, during
the late nineteenth century period of cultural nationalism: Kalighat and Tarapith
in West Bengal and Kamakhya in Assam.
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Bamakhepas Visualization of Tara

1 Bipula Kumara Gangopadhyay,

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