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Paper short abstract

This paper analyses the Bengali Hindu festival Nabanna as a case of Hindu Plant Spirituality where paddy/rice is the embodiment of the Absolute and functions as a ritual co-agent. Through ecomusicology and ethnobotany lenses, it explores how agrarian religious practices resist commodification.

Paper long abstract

Louise Fowler-Smith, based on her fieldwork in India, in her book Sacred Trees of India (2022), has emphasised that cultural reverence towards trees can stop the deforestation and commodification of nature. and the tradition of veneration towards plants in the Buddhist, Indian Muslim, Hindu, and Adivasi traditions. Drawing from this premise, this paper proposes the Bengali Hindu festival Nabanna (New Rice) as a case study of Hindu Plant Spirituality. Hinduism asserts, all beings, living and non-living, are manifestations of Brahman; hence, Plants are the embodiment of the Absolute. So, the Hindu approach towards Plants can be gauged by analyzing Nabanna, which is a paddy harvesting festival celebrated in the Sankranti (last day of the month) and Pahela (first day of the month) of Kartik and Agrahayana, (October and November) in West Bengal, Assam and Tripura. The core argument of this paper is that in Nabanna, Paddy/rice functions as an active ritual co-agent whose consecration, address, and redistribution organise social, spiritual, and ecological relations across a more-than-human community. This research explains the Kinship framework where paddy/ rice is both Goddess Laxmi and Annapurna. Methodologically, the paper combines ‘Ecomusicological’ analysis of the traditional Bengali harvesting song “Notun Dhaner Khoi”, ‘Ethnobotanical’ mapping of cultivation stages, and multispecies ethnography of ritual practice. Within the Nabanna framework, newly harvested rice is treated not as a mere commodity, rather as a sacred and spiritual agency. The paper argues that agrarian religious practices model resists commodification and offers insights for rethinking sustainability in the Anthropocene.