Vakratunda Swaha - A Performative Ontology for the Ritual

Aug 21, 2026

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Vakratunda Swaha presents Ashish Avikunthak’s celluloid treatment of ritual, tracing how repetitive sacred and everyday actions become performative scenarios with new meanings. The essay links the film’s Ganapati immersion shot—made amid heavy rain after artist Girish Dahiwale’s death—with themes of loss, death, and regeneration. By invoking sacrificial fire (swaha) and the tantric form of Vakratunda, the work excavates wellbeing through annihilation while framing devotion’s final immersion as ritual and real death.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryReligion & Spirituality

FormatPDF

Pages15

Reading Time38 min

AccessFree to download

A Performative Ontology for the Ritual

Ritual as repetition and cyclical temporality

The Ganapati immersion and memorial memory

Swaha, annihilation, and regeneration

Immersion, ritual death, and tantric Vakratunda

Untitled from the series Vakratunda Swaha Film still on archival paper 11 X 14.75 in Edition 5 + 2APs Ashish Avikunthak Vakratunda Swaha Untitled from the series Vakratunda Swaha Film still on archival paper 11 X 14.75 in Edition 5 + 2APs Untitled from the series Vakratunda Swaha Film still on archival paper 11 X 14.75 in Edition 5 + 2APs 2 Ashish Avikunthak Vakratunda Swaha 3 Untitled from the series Vakratunda Swaha Film still on archival paper Triptych (each 11 X 14.75 in) Edition 5 + 2APs 4 Ashish Avikunthak Vakratunda Swaha 5 Untitled from the series Vakratunda Swaha Film still on archival paper 11 X 14.75 in Edition 5 + 2APs Untitled from the series Vakratunda Swaha Film still on archival paper 11 X 14.75 in Edition 5 + 2APs 6 Ashish Avikunthak Vakratunda Swaha 7 A Performative Ontology for the Ritual A lone voice would trickle out of a black box-speaker fixed above the classroom door. Vakratunda Mahakaaya, Suryakoti Samaprabha, Nirvighnam Kurumedeva Sarvakaryeshu Sarvada1. Far from saccharine shlokas floating on the internet, this one, recited by one of myschool teachers, was temperamental, unpredictable and changed through time. It would go off-key, skip words in between and slip in and out of audible range. All of us school girls sang along—with no understanding of what these multi-syllabic Sanskrit words meant—before the national anthem and our school song. It was a morning ritual, the necessity of which remained a mystery to me. I returned to this popular invocation with Ashish Avikunthak’s Vakratunda Swaha, a celluloid ritual for the tusked god. Since his earliest films, Avikunthak has been concerned with rituals—secular and religious—but also the ritualising of daily, mundane acts. In this case, ritualising is not the sanctifying of an objector an act within a religious framework. At a formal level, Avikunthak borrows from the ritual its repetitive occurrence and recreates this cyclical temporality in film. At a conceptual level, he engages not only with the prescribed and grandiose acts of religious devotion, but also the mundane ones that surround them. He uses familiar images and acts associated with Hindu religious practice to create performative scenarios in which they acquire new meanings. He periodically returns to his personal footage archive and often, images shot at one event show up indifferent films. He treats his footage with the reverence an archeologist might have for his excavation site and culling out images for one film is no reason for the footage to be banished from the editing table. Symbols, acts and preoccupations also appear across his body of films giving us the impression that he is moving along the edge of the infinity symbol (∞), always returning to its centre (its beginning and its end) before branching out again into the new. Vakratunda Swaha opens with the late artist Girish Dahiwale (1974-1998) immersing a Ganapati idol into thesea on Ananth Chaturdashi, the tenth day of Ganesha Chaturthi. Avikunthak, a close friend of Girish’s, had initially meant for this two-minute shot to be longer, a film unto itself, and part of his Et Cetera series of structuralist, one-shot films. The attempt fell through because of heavy rain and Avikunthak’s crew, standing knee-deep in the Arabian Sea, was only able to record a short take. Girish committed suicide on September 18, 1998 and, in retrospect, Avikunthak has described this footage as “a friend who I had in my cans…a real memory”. While the footage certainly preserves the memory of Girish, almost in real time, the film, as whole, extends beyond the project of memorialising. On first viewing, one might be tempted to think that Vakratunda Swaha is a film about Ganesha, the rituals performed in his name or his manifestation as Vakratunda. This religious and ritualistic landscape certainly informs the film but its kernel lies elsewhere. Avikunthak’s placing of himself within the frame underlines his

FAQs

What concept of ritual does Vakratunda Swaha explore?

It treats ritual as repetitive occurrence that produces cyclical temporality, extending beyond religious sanctification into the ritualising of mundane daily acts.

Why is the Ganapati immersion shot significant in the film’s context?

It preserves Girish Dahiwale’s memory while also expanding beyond simple memorialising, linking loss and regeneration with the ritual event.

How does the title Vakratunda Swaha connect to Hindu practice?

“Swaha” invokes the sacrificial fire mantra, where offerings lead to wellbeing and recovery through annihilation.

Aug 21, 2026

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