Kheer Bhawani is the popular name of Rāgnyā Devī, the principal goddess of the Kashmiri Pandit community, worshipped at Tulmul, a village among streams and chinar trees in Ganderbal district north of Srinagar. The name comes from the offering most associated with her: kheer, rice cooked in milk and sugar, presented to the goddess and shared as her blessing. Her shrine is not a conventional sanctum but a spring, a heptagonal pool sacred to the goddess, beside which a small marble temple was raised under the Dogra maharajas early in the twentieth century.
The tradition
In Kashmiri tradition Rāgnyā is a gentle, vegetarian goddess, exacting in her purity: no meat is brought near her precinct, an austerity that distinguishes her among the fierce goddesses of the wider Shakta world. Legend carries her from Lanka, where she was worshipped, tradition holds, in the household of Ravana, until, revolted by the demon king's conduct, she had herself borne away to Kashmir, in some tellings by Hanuman, and settled at Tulmul among the springs. The spring itself is her presence, and its waters are believed to change colour: shades of milk, green and blue are read as auspicious, while a darkening of the water is taken as a warning of calamity. Devotees recall that the spring darkened before great disturbances, including, in community memory, the troubles of 1990 that drove the Pandits from the valley.
Worship
The great festival of the shrine falls on Jyeshtha Ashtami, in May or June, when the mela at Tulmul gathers Kashmiri Pandits in their thousands. Since the exodus of 1990 the mela has carried a second meaning: it is the chief occasion on which the displaced community returns to the valley, and the annual gathering at the spring has become an act of continuity as much as of devotion, with Muslim neighbours of Tulmul commonly assisting the pilgrims. Swami Vivekananda's visit to the shrine in 1898, recorded by his companions, is remembered in the tradition of the site. For a community scattered across India and beyond, Rāgnyā of Tulmul remains the fixed point: the goddess of the home valley, still at her spring.
Further reading
- Doniger, Wendy. The Hindus: An Alternative History. Penguin, 2009
- Flood, Gavin. An Introduction to Hinduism. Cambridge University Press, 1996
- Klostermaier, Klaus K. A Survey of Hinduism. State University of New York Press, 2007
- Lipner, Julius. Hindus: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices. Routledge, 2010
- Sax, William S. Mountain Goddess: Gender and Politics in a Himalayan Pilgrimage. Oxford University Press, 1991
See also
This entry was last revised on 31 July 2026.