Anand Akhada

At a glance

• Family — Shaiva Sannyasi — Dashanami order; allied to the Niranjani Akhada
• Iṣṭa-devatā — Surya, invoked as Bhuvan Bhaskar Suryanarayan
• Tradition holds — among the oldest of the seven Shaiva akhadas — the akhada's own parampara
• Known for — the richness of its ceremonial and its standing alliance with Niranjani

The order and its deity

Ānanda means bliss — not pleasure, but the third term of the classical description of the absolute as sat-cit-ānanda, being-consciousness-bliss. An akhada named for it is naming the goal rather than the path.

Its deity is Surya, addressed in the akhada's usage as Bhuvan Bhaskar Suryanarayan — the sun as the illuminator of the worlds. Among the seven Shaiva akhadas, each of which holds a different tutelary deity, Anand is the house of the visible light: the deity that the Gayatri itself contemplates, and the one before whom the arghya of water is offered at dawn by every practising Hindu regardless of sampradaya.

Alliance with Niranjani

Anand is traditionally allied to the Niranjani Akhada and moves with it at the Mela — processing in its bloc, camping alongside it, and taking its place in the Amrit Snan order in that association.

These alliances among the seven Shaiva akhadas are old and stable: Atal with Mahanirvani, Anand with Niranjani, and Avahan and Agni with Juna. Learning them is the quickest way to make sense of what otherwise looks like a bewildering multiplicity of camps and flags at a Kumbh.

At the Kumbh

Anand's Peshwai carries its deity at the head like every akhada's, and its camp keeps the ceremonial richness for which the house has long been known. Between the snans, as in every akhada, the camp is where initiations are conferred, appointments confirmed, and the internal business of the order transacted — the things that can be done validly at a Kumbh and at no other time.