Paper short abstract:

Through an ethnographical analysis of the “Tandava Case”, this paper questions the way legal adjudication affected Ananda Marga’s own religious identity and contributed to its institutionalization after its founder’s death.

Paper long abstract:

On 10 August 1979, disciples of Ananda Marga - a Hindu sect founded in 1955 by a Bengali civil servant - carried a procession within the city of Kolkata during which they performed a dance with skulls, which they call 'Tandava'. A long case followed about the right to practice this dance in public, opposing the sect's General Secretary to Kolkata's Police commissioner. In 2004, the Supreme Court eventually rejected the sect's plea. Considering that tandava's performance in a procession was not an essential religious rite for every Ananda Margi, it prevented its practice to be protected by the Constitution of India.

Though this verdict constitutes a setback for Ananda Marga, followers believe, on the contrary, this judgment to be the one that the sect's had been waiting for since their guru's death in 1990. As a matter of fact, the Supreme Court, in its judgment, declared that Ananda Marga could be appropriately treated as a "religious denomination" and that it belonged to the "Hindu religion", thus giving - unintentionally - a place in the broad real realm of Hindu religion.

Through the analysis of the trial's proceedings, the sect's internal literature and interviews with main protagonists (disciples in charge, judges, solicitors and Kolkata's Police Commissioner), this paper questions the way legal adjudication affected Ananda Marga's own religious identity and contributed to its institutionalization after its founder's death.