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On October 14, marking the Mahalaya Amavasya and the beginning of Batukamma, women from the colony gathered around 8PM at a regularly defined street corner to celebrate as a practice every year. Bathukamma is the icon of cultural identity and the state festival of Telangana.
Unexpectedly, a neighbouring Christian pastor and his followers arrived, angrily shouting at Hindu women to stop the celebrations near their homes and church. They went so far as to pour water on the Batukammas and mock the sacred Hindu festival.
Local Hindus, who belong to the SC community and are referred to as Dalits, tried to get Christians to understand despite the intolerant Christian pastor and his team’s rigidity and their loud, abusive shouting. These Christians asserted that they are not just regular people but actual prophets.
Police came to the scene after two hours of intense argument. Rather than taking legal action against the Christians, they asked Hindus to make peace and allow the problem to be settled without going to legal action.
Kavitha, CM KCR’s daughter who began her political career in the context of the Batukamma festival, has not yet responded to this.
It is remarkable how the mainstream media and political parties like TRS and Congress have ignored this terrible religious hate crime that has emerged in the Muslim-dominated Old City of Hyderabad and is being represented by the AIMIM party, which claims to be in an open unofficial affiliation with the ruling BRS party.
Hindus from the neighbourhood arrived to the colony and complained against Christians and the authorities for their inaction.
Speaking to local YouTube channel Rashtriya Vanarasena, the Hindu women explained how they experience problems with Christian pastor. They accuse the pastor of trespassing on government property and erecting an unregistered church.
The women said that the same pastor pressured the local AIMIM MLA, Balala, preventing them from acquiring the government-registered land certificates that were addressed to them.
Bathukamma is celebrated for nine days and corresponds to the festivals of Sharad Navratri and Durga Puja. The festival begins a week before the grand ‘Saddula Batukamma’ (the grand finale of the Batukamma festival), which falls two days before Dussehra. During the entire preceding week, women make ‘boddemma’ (a deity of Gowri – mother Durga – made with earthly mud) along with Batukamma and immerse it in the pond.
Batukamma is a beautiful flower stack, arranged with different flowers, usually in seven concentric layers in a conical mound. By evening, women gather in large numbers along with their bathukammas, place them in the middle and dance around while singing soul-stirring songs. After singing and dancing, bathukammas are set afloat in a lake or river.
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