Buffaloes at the Mahanavami: Mysuru Dasara and the Politics of a Borrowed Pedigree

Borrowing Vijayanagara: A

400-Year-Old Move, Made Again In 1610, Raja Wadiyar I took control of Srirangapatna and formally began Dasara there. Vijayanagara had declined and the Wadiyars were a rising house. Staging the Mahanavami, the great autumn festival of the fallen empire, was a way of announcing who had inherited its authority.

This is not new: from its first day, Mysuru's Dasara has been a festival that legitimises itself by pointing back to Vijayanagara. This year the same move has been made again, by a different patron and for a different purpose.

Defending the addition of Kambala to Dasara 2026, Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar said the Vijayanagara kings brought buffaloes to their celebrations. Historian N.S. Rangaraju of the University of Mysore responded that no record establishes this.

Three Kinds of Change, Not One

The festival has changed many times before. It helps to separate the different kinds of change.

• Substitution (1970): After the Presidential order against privy purses, the Maharaja stopped riding the golden howdah. The idol of Goddess Chamundeshwari took his place. The ritual kept its form; only the sovereign at its centre changed.
• Expansion (post-2000): Yuva Dasara concerts, an IAF air show, the Ahara Mela and separate Dasaras for farmers, women and children were added beside the core rituals. They change how people experience the festival. They make no claim to be ancient.
• Importation with a pedigree (2026): Kambala is a coastal tradition brought inland. It is the first addition defended on the ground that it was there all along. Earlier additions never needed an alibi. Drones over Bannimantap did not need a Vijayanagara precedent, because no one claimed they were old. Kambala is different because its defence rests on a historical claim and a historical claim can be checked.

Where the Record Actually Points Here the

story becomes stranger. In the sixteenth century, the Portuguese visitor Domingo Paes described Vijayanagara's Mahanavami and his account does include buffaloes. They appear as sacrificial animals in the ritual, alongside sheep.

The CM's claim is therefore half-right in a revealing way. The animal was present, but its role was devotional, not sporting. Read that way, the evidence argues against continuity, not for it. The 1610 parallel also breaks down at an important point.

Raja Wadiyar I was inheriting a living ritual practice and he paid for it from royal resources. The 2026 claim invents a continuity the record does not show and the event is paid for from a public exchequer. Officials estimate the cost at ₹5 crore to ₹8 crore.

It falls in a year when 226 of Karnataka's 240 taluks are declared drought-affected. Rangaraju has pointed out that folk artistes at the same festival receive modest pay and are lodged in marriage halls. None of this makes Kambala illegitimate in Mysuru.

Congress leader S. Rajesh has a fair point: the festival already hosts Kathak, Kuchipudi and Kerala's Chenda drums and Kambala is Karnataka's own heritage. A festival of the region can reasonably show the region. Innovation, however, defends itself on its merits.

An invented pedigree is a different act. It spends the credibility of history to avoid an honest argument about value and cost.