It is important to remind ourselves that all Hindu festivals and rituals do not have Vedic claims. In fact, most practices in different parts of India are of local origin with no doctrinal basis, probably rooted to old tribal practices. Hook swinging is a case in point.
Across India there are festivals where men and sometimes women do hook swinging. Here, an iron hook is passed through the back of the person and they are hung from a pole that either rotates around a pillar or is attached to a pillar of a cart that is pulled by buffaloes. This is not acrobatics. The person performing the ritual fasts for many days, remains celibate, isolated in the temple usually, surviving only on water, preparing himself for the ceremony which connects him to the gods.
This is seen in Bengal, it is seen in Maharashtra, it is seen in Karnataka. It is known as Charak Puja in Bengal, Bagad in Maharashtra and Siddhi in Karnataka. But there are variations here.
The Charak Puja from the word Chakra is seen in Bengal and it involves ascetic practices where for one month the men who perform these rituals and other men are identified as Shiva for a year and are even venerated by Brahmins as being the embodiments of Shiva. This may have some Buddhist roots.
In the Deccan region, similar rituals are linked to the goddess. Wherever there is a goddess association or a temple association, there is often a buffalo sacrificed to the goddess. The buffalo has to be slaughtered in a single swoop of the knife or the axe and the blood offered to the deity. While the hook swinging ritual is done to make the goddess happy who enjoys other painful rituals such as piercing the tongue and cheek with iron rods or walking on fire or walking on sharp objects or lying on a sharp bed. These rituals which gather the local agricultural community are said to make the earth happy may have agricultural roots. Some people have argued that this is only performed by low-caste communities and is done deliberately to oppress them but this kind of Marxist reading has been challenged by communities who practice it to see it as a way of pleasing the goddess.
Violent rituals are often seen in agrarian communities as a form of atonement and appeasement as they are very aware that the agricultural activity is violence against nature but necessary for the establishment of culture. These rituals are supposed to make the goddess happy, calm her down so that she doesn’t attack the village with epidemics and disease.
We know from Ashoka and edicts that communities had Samaj festivals where people gathered. These were fairs and carnivals where they were singing, dancing, animal sacrifice and rituals like hook swinging, fire walking. Ashoka seems to not like it perhaps because it involved violence. The British also tried to ban it. Laws were used to classify all such subaltern rituals (including fire-walking, trance) as superstitious and all things elite (prayer, chanting, and singing) as religious. However, we find it survives in post-Buddhist Bengal as well as in the agricultural belt of the Deccan region indicating its widespread popularity.
