At dawn in Thirunavaya, before the Bharathapuzha stirs, Muslim lotus growers step quietly into the shallow ponds close to the river. Their movements are careful and practiced. Stems are cut, flowers gathered, mud washed away. By mid-morning, bundles of pink and white lotus are loaded onto autorickshaws and small trucks. They will travel to temples across Kerala—to Guruvayur, Sabarimala, Kodungallur—and also to several shrines in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.

Traders here say that when Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the Guruvayur temple two years ago, the lotus offered to the deity likely came from these very ponds in Thirunavaya. No drama here. No speeches about harmony. No statements on coexistence. The lotus simply moves from Muslim hands into Hindu ritual life, as it has for decades. This unremarkable continuity is the everyday reality of Thirunavaya. It is also the reality that sits awkwardly with the controversy that has now engulfed this riverside town.

The Maha Magha Mahotsavam (18 January to 3 February) in Thirunavaya was projected as Kerala’s first ‘Kumbh Mela’ by organisers and sections of the political class. Even before the first ritual bath was taken, the festival triggered a storm: an administrative stop memo was framed as proof of Hindu faith being threatened in Muslim majority Malappuram. Repeated often enough, the claim sounded plausible in distant television studios. On the ground, it quickly collapsed.

Thirunavaya is not an accidental venue. It occupies a distinctive place in Kerala’s cultural memory. Situated on the banks of the Bharathapuzha, also known as the Nila, it was once the site of Mamankam, a medieval assembly held every twelve years. Mamankam was not a ‘religious’ festival, in the narrow sense of the word. It was a grand convergence of ritual, commerce, politics and spectacle. Pilgrims, traders, poets and warriors from across South India gathered on the river’s wide sandbanks. The Bharathapuzha was the axis of this gathering. It did not divide communities. It brought them........

© National Herald