Every year, Bengaluru is home to one of the most spectacularly curated cultural festivals in the country, Gudiya Sambhrama. The brainchild of Smt. Vijayalakshmi Vijayakumar, the festival aims to revive the former role of temples at the core of the dharmic ecosystem, as a center for all divine activities, encompassing the social, religious and cultural.

Heritage Trust was founded in 1994 with the intent of imparting knowledge through workshops, lectures, and demonstrations showcasing our culture and its various artforms. Initially, the workshops were geared towards better informing and familiarizing classical artists with the itihāsa-purāṇas which form the source of narrative content. Later on, an increased recognition of the gaping lacuna left by the lack of state (and temple) patronage for the arts led to the ideation of the festival, celebrating our temples, the Gods, and the vibrant culture surrounding them. The temple venues that subsequently have hosted the festival have been those that come under the Muzrai department, now renamed as the Hindu Dharmika Samsthegalu Mathu Dharmadaya Datti Ilake in Kannada, in other words, the Hindu Religious Institutions & Charitable Endowments Department.

Our temples have slowly morphed, from being the cultural epicenters of the Dharmic community’s ecosystem into being solely religious, becoming increasingly transactional to the extent of being distastefully focused on the generation of revenue for the State and its bureaucrats. So many passionate temple goers and connoisseurs of the arts have witnessed this change, yet are helpless — something Gudiya Sambhrama aims to address and set new standards for. It is made more crucial by the fact that Bengaluru boasts some of the most ancient and beautiful temples, some with over 1200 years of tradition.

The festival has been taking place for over a decade now, only magnifying in splendor and elaborateness year after year. What comes through from the organizers is their sincere attempt to gradually change the way communities regard temples, by reinstating temples to core of the cultural landscape and the arts, using a framework of Dharma: by curating activities that fulfill the pañca mahāyāgas: pitṛ, serving the ancestors and a common heritage; deva – serving the deity; brahma, in the service of śāstras and ṛṣis who gave us all knowledge; manuṣya, serving the community; and bhūta, serving the five elements, all other living beings, and the environment.

With intergenerational and intercommunity links to guru paramparas and hereditary knowledge of the arts and the śāstras being lost, the moment is opportune to revive the centrality of temples for cultural activities. Using the existing infrastructure, Gudiya Sambhrama is an attempt at the revival of this linkage between the arts, artists, and temples, situated against the broader backdrop of Indian Knowledge Systems as a whole. Lamenting the lack of access to a proper cultural education amongst today’s youth, the festival draws local communities, children and elders alike, in order to impart religious knowledge and exposure to the classical arts. Creating interest, wonder, and curiosity in the next generation in order to keep these beautiful traditions alive.

Speaking with Vijayalakshmi garu, she reflected on the festival growing in scale year after year: as the team took on increasingly unique challenges each time, it helped them grow as people, enriched by the experience, which inadvertently reflects in their work. She also remarked on how special the yearly festival has been to her, due to which she has been thoroughly immersed in our saṃskṛti on so many planes. Last year’s theme of Devi, in her view, brought about a greater understanding of what Śakti is, the divine feminine and channeling feminine energy — not just by women but as seen everywhere in prakṛti, nurturing yet fierce. She asserted that the festival is special because each year they all get the opportunity to learn so much through the study of the theme, speaking to and learning from scholars, reading, etc, the creative exercise molding them as they grow along with the festival itself. One major challenge for her role in organizing the festival has always been the funding — given the lack of state patronage and the reluctance of corporate companies to support “non-secular” activities, small-time patrons are never able to contribute enough to run the entire program in toto. INDICA’s support and patronage through this process has been invaluable.

I was blessed to have the opportunity to attend a portion of last year’s festivities, whose theme was ‘Devi: Celebrating the Goddess’ in January 2023 on behalf of Bṛhat, and the experience has stuck with me since. The festival was magnificently orchestrated, bringing together some of the nation’s most incredible classical artists, scholars, and Dharmagurus at the Varaprada Sri Venkateshwara Devasthana in Devagiri. Whether through an insightful pracaraṇa by Dharmagurus or through music, dance and painting or by way of intricate kolams, everything that takes place in the sacred space of the temple is viewed as Dharma, as a service of the divine. The theme combined natural and cultural heritage — where ecologists and traditional scholars delivered lectures on the sthala vṛkṣas of the various Devi temples in India and the vāhanas of the Devi, emphasizing the entwining of religion and ecology. I was incredibly blessed to watch beautiful Bharatanatyam performances - by the famed Smt. Rukmini Vijaykumar, Harinie Jeevitha and Shreema Upadhaya - and one of the most exquisite Odissi performances I’d ever seen, by the lovely Prithvi Nayak, a disciple of the well-known Śrīmatī Bijayini Satpathy. The headliner was an elaborate dance production titled ‘The Goddess’ presented by Raadhakalpa Dance Company. Apart from the multiple dance performances, including by budding artists at 18 temples across Bengaluru, the festival also included workshops like kolam, storytelling, chanting, garland weaving, and other activities for children and adults alike; talks by traditional scholars, Harikathā performances, and a heritage walk through Bengaluru’s ancient temples. Gudiya Sambhrama 2023 was a massive success and drew so many rasikās and bhaktas to come together and participate, learn and grow together.

It is seminal to the Hindu community-building process that we must undoubtedly cultivate, if a large-scale project of cultural revivalism is to flourish in the coming decades.

This year’s festivities promise to be equally scintillating, themed around the concept of ‘Srishti, Sthiti, and Laya’. A note on the theme:

The Trimurti: Brahma, Viṣṇu, Maheśvara and the Tridevī: Sarasvatī, Lakṣmī and Pārvatī are ever present, performing their divine functions – Srishti, creation; Sthiti, preservation; and Laya, dissolution. The three aspects guide the bhakta’s expression of devotion and the expression of that devotion in the arts.

Beginning on the 20^th of January with events taking place around the city almost every day until 11^th February, the scheduled events are wide in their variety and culturally rich.

The full schedule can also be viewed on the website, here.