Stone-Throwing an Annual Bash in India Town

To most of the 45,000 seemingly normal residents of this sleepy little town on the banks of the River Jam, Anil Sambare is nothing more than a spoilsport.

To some, he is something worse. A troublemaker, some say. An idealistic radical, according to others. Some even think him a traitor to his hometown.

And all because the 27-year-old high school teacher has dedicated his life to stopping his entire town from going completely berserk once a year in a frenzied festival of destruction--a daylong event in which thousands of people try to stone each other to death in the name of fun, tradition and, now, stardom.

The annual event is called the Gotmaar Festival--literally, “stone-hitting”--and it is an ancient Pandhurna tradition, unique and brutal even by Indian standards.

No one here remembers exactly how ancient it is, although older people say that it dates back at least three centuries. And no one knows exactly why they do it every year, year after year, despite scores of deaths and thousands of injuries, although the myth behind it is a compelling one.

All the Pandhurnans really know for sure is that once a year, on the day of the new moon in the Hindu month of Sharawan, when the drums start beating along the River Jam, the time for the madness has begun again.

Within minutes, thousands of male Pandhurnans, ranging in age from 6 to 60, many of them deeply scarred or limping from festivals of years past, divide into two groups, gather their huge piles of stones on opposite sides of the river and, for the next 6 1/2 hours, try to kill, maim and mangle as many fellow townsfolk as they can.

When sunset comes, and the drumbeat stops, the two sides drop their rocks, come together, shake hands, nurse each other’s wounds and return to the peaceful monotony of rural Indian life.

This year, the Gotmaar carnage, which took place two weeks ago, left four dead and 612 injured. But there were a few new twists this year that speak volumes about India’s struggle to enter the modern age.

First, there was Anil Sambare and his signature drive to end the carnage, which drew the ire of almost everyone. Second, this is an election year in India, which meant that Sambare’s signature campaign was doomed to failure. And finally, there was the introduction of a new evil, videotape equipment, which is likely to ensure that Pandhurna’s sadomasochistic ritual will continue for many years to come.

The story of the Pandhurnans and their bizarre, ancient rite of stoning is a living illustration of the paradoxes of a modern-day India, as well as a freeze-frame glimpse at the ironies and distortions resulting from Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s five-year-old pledge to modernize rural India.

Pandhurna No Backwater

Pandhurna, in central Madhya Pradesh state, is hardly what one would call a backwater. In many ways it is a model of Rajiv Gandhi’s rural modernization plan.

There are 10,000 television sets in Pandhurna, 340 telephones and even 100 videocassette players. More than 90% of the homes have electricity. Everyone has access to clean drinking water. Unemployment is under 5%, and there are even beauty parlors doing booming business.

“There is just this one little thing that sets us apart,” said Bhargao Pandurang Bhagwatkar, who has taught in the local high school for the last 41 years. “We all know it is barbaric. It is a kind of madness. And it has no reason at all. But it has been with us since Day 1, and, on that day every year, we just cannot help ourselves.”

Day 1, as myth has it, was sometime in the 1600s, according to local historians, police and other local officials, who say they and their predecessors have been trying to stop it every year for the last half-century.

On Day 1, it seems, Pandhurna’s brutal battle began as a love story.

Began With Elopement

“The way the old ones tell it,” town official M.M. Singh explained, “a boy from the Pandhurna side of the river eloped with a girl from the village on the other side, which was then known as Sawargaon but since has merged into Pandhurna.

“As the amorous young couple was trying to flee across the river, the Sawargaon people began throwing stones at them. The Pandhurnans heard about this and quickly ran to the river bank, where they began stoning the Sawargaons.

“The couple, of course, died in the cross-fire. And it’s on the spot where they died that the people now put the tree every year.”

“The tree?” the stranger asked.

“Oh, the tree. The tree is the main object of the game.”

The Pandhurnans who actually play “the game,” which is what everyone here except Sambare calls the annual stoning battle, explained that the tree is cut the day before the festival from a special grove of flame trees beside a temple to the Hindu god of destruction, which is where legend states that the mythical young couple first met.

Tree Is ‘Planted’ in River

The tree is then “planted” in the middle of the River Jam, and the object of “the game” is to chop down the tree with an ax, without, of course, getting stoned to death in the process.

Enter the videotape.

Unlike previous years, in which an average of two or three Pandhurnans were stoned to death during the festival, the four deaths this year were from drowning.

“These boys had climbed the tree, and were posing for the camera,” Sambare explained. “They were so preoccupied with the video camera, they didn’t see the stones coming. They got hit in the head, fell into the river and drowned.”

Sambare knows what he’s talking about. He lives on Stone-hitting Road, in a riverfront house with a view of the battle zone. And he jumped into the river and saved four other “players” from the same fate this year, getting hit in the back with stones in the process.

But that’s not why Sambare is so committed to ending the carnage of Gotmaar. It’s not even because his uncle was stoned to death 27 years ago, or because he cannot stop his own younger brother from joining in--”Imagine, my own brother bought five different outfits and changed clothes five times during the stone-hitting this year because he wanted to look good for the camera.

A ‘Perversion, Barbaric’

“No, I am fighting this because it is a perversion, because it is barbaric and because it puts all of India in a very poor light,” said Sambare, who has a masters degree in mathematics.

“This is not a game. This is madness. And now, with this videotape, there is all of a sudden a renewed interest in joining in. Everyone wants to show off their bravado.”

Enter Rajiv Gandhi’s high-tech revolution.

The videotape was the government’s idea. And the local police actually paid 5,000 rupees (about $300) in government funds to a local video contractor to film the festival this year.

“The idea was to minimize the killing,” said Krishna Kohle, the enterprising Pandhurnan who got the video contract. “It was, how do you call it, a compromise.”

Police Tried to End It

For decades, local officials said, the authorities have attempted to end the festival. Two years ago, the police even opened fire on the festival, killing two Pandhurnans, in an attempt to end it after a passing constable was accidentally stoned to death.

“I myself have seen too many deaths and very much want this madness to end,” said Dr. Ratan Singhvi, a local physician who is Pandhurna’s equivalent of mayor and the local head of Gandhi’s ruling Congress-I party.

“I have seen people with eyes bulging out, ears sheared off, noses broken, teeth shattered, skulls and legs fractured to bits. But we’ve never been able to stop it. My God, the people like it.

“Of course, an additional problem is these people are all dead drunk when they’re playing the game, and the game gives them a good excuse to get drunk. They look forward to it all year long.”

Enter politics.

“The people of Pandhurna, you see, are very sentimental about this festival,” Singhvi said. “And such things are very important to our local voters. Had we stopped the Gotmaar this year, for example, the Congress Party definitely would be sent away in the next elections. So what we did instead was try to cut down on the deaths--we banned the slingshot.”

Slingshots Tripled Toll

Called gofans, the handmade slingshots came into vogue two years ago and clearly escalated the conflict. They turned the stones into speeding bullets, tripling the death toll and ultimately forcing the police to step in. The gofan was outlawed. And, in an effort to enforce that ban, police hired the video man to film violators for prosecution.

“I guess it backfired,” said Kohle, who conceded he is now making a tidy profit renting out copies of the Gotmaar video to townspeople who want to relive their moments of bravery and endurance.