Between 30 December and 1 January every year, Varkala fills with people in yellow walking up a hill. It is the Sivagiri pilgrimage, it is one of the largest annual gatherings in southern Kerala, and its content is not what a visitor watching the crowd would assume.
The eight subjects
The pilgrimage was proposed to Sree Narayana Guru by Vallabhasseri Govindan Vaidyar and T. K. Kittan Writer, and he sanctioned it in January 1928 — the last year of his life. He did not simply agree to it. He specified what it was to be about, and fixed eight subjects.
The eight subjects of the Sivagiri pilgrimage
| # | Subject |
|---|---|
| 1 | Education |
| 2 | Cleanliness |
| 3 | Devotion to God |
| 4 | Organisation |
| 5 | Agriculture |
| 6 | Trade |
| 7 | Handicrafts |
| 8 | Technical training |
One of the eight is religious. The other seven are a development programme — schooling, sanitation, collective organisation, farming, commerce, craft and vocational skill. The Guru’s position was that a community without education, work and organisation would not be lifted by devotion alone, and he built that argument into the structure of a pilgrimage rather than leaving it in a speech.
It is worth sitting with how unusual that is. Pilgrimages are ordinarily organised around a deity, a relic or a site. This one is organised around a syllabus.
The yellow, and why it is cheap
Pilgrims wear yellow, and the Guru gave the reason: it is the colour of the garments the Buddha wore. He also gave an instruction that says as much about him as the choice does. Pilgrims were not to buy new clothes for it. A white garment dipped in turmeric water and dried would serve.
That is a deliberate closing of a door. Pilgrimage dress is one of the standard ways that a religious observance quietly becomes an expense and then a marker of who can afford to participate — and the Guru’s whole life’s work was against exactly that sorting. Turmeric costs almost nothing and every household has a white cloth.
What is on the hill
Sivagiri holds the mutt the Guru established in 1904, the Sarada temple where he installed the goddess in April 1912, his samadhi, and the buildings that have grown around them. The Sarada temple is worth looking at carefully: it is plain, bright and unusually open, and its plainness is the argument. The Guru consecrated temples across Kerala for communities excluded from existing ones, and the architecture is part of the point.
The Guru died in September 1928, months after sanctioning the pilgrimage, and the first one was held after his death. It has run since, and the eight subjects are still formally the framework: the pilgrimage days carry sessions and addresses on them, alongside the worship.
- 30 December to 1 January, corresponding to Dhanu in the Malayalam calendar. The dates are fixed, unlike most Kerala festivals.
- Accommodation in Varkala is at its tightest of the year across those days, which coincide with the peak tourist season on the cliff.
- It is a serious observance rather than a spectacle. Yellow is worn by participants; visitors watching should dress modestly and stay out of the processions.
- The mutt is open through the year and is a short auto ride up from the town and the railway station.
The two halves of Varkala rarely meet — the cliff strip and the hill are a couple of kilometres and an entire worldview apart. The last days of December are the one week they are in the same town at the same time, and if you are here then, walking up is the more interesting of the two things on offer.