Naga Panchami

Naga Panchami is a day for the worship of serpents (nagas), kept on the fifth day (panchami) of the bright fortnight of Shravana (July-August), in the height of the monsoon, when snakes, driven from flooded burrows, are most in evidence. Serpents hold a large and ancient place in Indian religion, feared as bringers of death yet revered as guardians of the underworld's treasures and of water and fertility, associated with Shiva, who wears the cobra Vasuki, and with Vishnu, who rests on the cosmic serpent Shesha. On this day devotees offer milk, flowers and vermilion at snake images, anthills, and living snakes where they are shown, and pray for protection from snakebite and for the family's wellbeing.

The observance blends classical mythology with deep-rooted folk and agrarian religion, and its forms vary widely by region: in Maharashtra and the south images or live snakes are honoured; in the north snakes are drawn on walls or modelled in clay. Modern animal-welfare concern has fallen on the older practice of parading captured cobras and feeding them milk, which is harmful to the animals, and many observances have shifted toward images and symbolic offerings. As a rite addressing a real and seasonal danger through reverence rather than only fear, Naga Panchami preserves one of the oldest strands of Indian religious feeling.

India's Wildlife Protection Act of 1972, and stricter enforcement of it in subsequent decades, made the capture, possession and public display of cobras and other protected snake species illegal, directly outlawing the traditional practice, once common around Naga Panchami, of snake charmers parading captive cobras through streets and temples for public veneration and donation, a practice the law now treats as wildlife crime regardless of its religious association with the festival.

The enforcement has had a direct economic effect on the Sapera community, traditional snake charmers in North India whose livelihood depended substantially on this seasonal display work around Naga Panchami and at other times of year, and various state and NGO programmes have since attempted to help Sapera families transition to alternative livelihoods, with mixed success reported by researchers studying the community, so that a law intended to protect wildlife has also required a specific traditional occupational community to abandon a religiously connected trade practised for generations, a tension between animal welfare law and the livelihood of a specific marginalised community that receives less public attention than the animal welfare side of the story alone.