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Dancing the Goddess: Possession and Class in Tamil South India
Abstract
Religion in India has always been profoundly politicized, which is why it has remained of enduring importance, instead of ‘withering away’ as in the West. Though its presence is somewhat hidden in parties that profess a secular view, it is of vital importance, at the local village level, as a focus for the organization of political factions. More precisely, even if local political parties in Tamilnadu do not organize around religion, they use religion and ritual events for their political purposes, in their struggles to dominate local politics. The fact that this politicization of religious ritual is implicit, not explicit, only testifies to the fact that power-relationships—and struggles—exist in all aspects of life (as Foucault often noted), including apparently ‘innocent’ rites such as religious possession.
... The subordinated masses identify their own culture as powerful with their own perceptions and constructions and regard those practices as 'aboriginal' and the Brahmins culture as non-aboriginal. 'The Bahujan castes see these rites as being an important proof of the supposedly fundamental difference between them and Brahmins' (Kapadia, 1996). 'They are seen as a demonstration of the truth of 'aboriginal' religiosity as against Brahmin religious ethos' (Kapadia, 1996). ...
... 'The Bahujan castes see these rites as being an important proof of the supposedly fundamental difference between them and Brahmins' (Kapadia, 1996). 'They are seen as a demonstration of the truth of 'aboriginal' religiosity as against Brahmin religious ethos' (Kapadia, 1996). The film gave a warning of cultural invasion by the Brahmanical forces in particular scenes. ...
... On retrouve donc ici cette hétérogénéité des discours et des pratiques déjà constatée au sein de la tradition du muṭiyēṯṯu', mais, comme nous le verrons, elle paraît ici exacerbée. La formalisation de la possession n'est ici pas non plus incompatible avec un certain aléatoire, puisque les muṭiyēṯṯukar 20 Pour des exemples de possessions institutionnalisées en dehors du Kerala voir par exemple Kapadia (1996), Carrin (1999), Schömbucher (1999) ou Nabokov (2000b), et Tanaka (1997, Berti (2001), Bernède (2001) ou Côté (2007) pour la possession dite médiumnique. 21 Sur les distinctions possibles des diverses formes de possession voir Nambiar (1996: v), Uchiyamada (1999), Osella (1999) ou Côté (2007. ...
Cette étude porte sur le mudiyēttu', un théâtre rituel présenté dans certains temples situés dans le centre du Kerala, dédiés à la déesse Bhadrakāli. Ce travail se penche sur les divers aspects de cette forme spectaculaire rituelle pratiquée dans le cadre du culte à cette déesse, à la fois actrice et bénéficiaire des performances. Il analyse le statut de ses praticiens au sein de la société locale et du culte dans les temples brahmanes, et le rôle et les modalités d'exécution du mudiyēttu' dans son contexte religieux traditionnel. Il rend aussi compte des dynamiques qui parcourent la tradition et des modifications récentes de son contexte d'exécution dans le cadre de la segmentation des familles jointes, de l'extension des réformes agraires et de la restructuration de la gestion des temples. Pour les familles, qui appartiennent à des castes d'officiants de statut intermédiaire ayant le monopole du mudiyēttu', ces bouleversements ont entraîné une nouvelle situation qui les met en compétition, chacune essayant de s'adapter selon sa vision de la performance. Elles sont également confrontées à de nouveaux types de patronages et à de nouvelles audiences profanes, dont les intérêts divergent de ceux des dévots qui, eux, viennent d'abord voir leur divinité et paient pour organiser les performances qui deviennent des offrandes votives. Au-delà des changements de fond et de forme, les praticiens ont toutefois une manière de concevoir leur office qui garantit en tout lieu et en tout contexte la présence de la déesse, et qui préserve la ritualité du mudiyēttu'.
... The first genre of singing and dancing by possession -seen in story number 55 where kaniam pey possesses the exorcist and starts to sing through him -is a possession. Brought about by pey, a dual spirit that is not categorized as pure, the possession is a malign spirit possession (Kapadia, 1996). The second genre of singing and dancing where the pey sings and dances on its own is seen in four instances, twice in story number 32 where the pey begins to sing and dance on seeing the Aiyyannar eat the bananas and when it begins to wail when Anjādhān pokes it with a trident, in story number 37 when it dances and sings with Gomathi's diamond necklace and in story number 55, the amorous song and frenzy that the pey is about to enter into when it gets the scent of the new bride. ...
... Therefore, the reasons for the suspension of the festival given by Jeyakumar, that is, the widowed status of his mother and his inability to perform as a cāmiyāti do not tell the entire story. In her study of possession and caste in Tamil Nadu, Kapadia (1996) similarly notes a case where the ADMK faction argued that a man of the Mutturājā caste automatically became a cāmiyāti for his father, but in the end, he was not allowed to perform the ritual because he was unmarried. The same marriage rule applied to the main officials at the Tamil Kannapuram Māriyamman festival written about by Brenda E. F. Beck (1981: 110). ...
In an examination of the interdependent relationship between narrative and ritual, this article discusses a ritual dilemma solved through narrative to explore how narrative sustains authority usually enacted, validated, and supported by ritual practice. In the Tamil village of Nagamalai Pudukkottai, Jeyakumar, the pañcāyat president, must perform as a cāmiyāti (“god dancer”) possessed by the village’s most powerful form of divinity, Taṭātakai Ammaṉ, to substantiate his family’s long lineage of traditional authority. For seventeen years, however, Jeyakumar was unable to substantiate his authoritative claim through ritual; instead, he and his constituents relied on narratives, including a migration myth. Narrative did not replace the importance of ritual in Nagamalai Pudukkottai, but rather, the usually obligatory tie to the goddess was deferred and his legitimacy was maintained through narrative. Village claims to authority depend upon negotiating the connections among the village migration myth, the local goddess temple myth, personal experience narratives, and everyday conversational narratives and stories. Each of these narrative genres claims authority differently but works as part of an interdependent folklore system to confirm the village’s sacrality and leadership. Jeyakumar’s authority is further strengthened by local folk mythologies that integrate nearby Madurai’s more formalized Mīnākṣī tradition into local religiosity surrounding Taṭātakai Ammaṉ.
... Cf. Apter (1992), Comaroff (1985), Das (1982Das ( , 1987, Davis (1975), Dirks (1991), Gold (2002), Gold and Raheja (1994), Hardiman (1984), Kapadia (1995Kapadia ( , 1996Kapadia ( , 2000, and Lan (1985Lan ( , 1989. Studies of popular 'rituals of reversal' (for example, Gluckman 1963Gluckman , 1965 often suggest that such rites affirm elite institutions and worldviews even as they seem to contest them. ...
In this paper, I examine a birth ritual practised by a community of low-status entertainers from the Indian state of Rajasthan known as Bhats. On the birth of sons, but not daughters, Bhats offer gifts to the Hindu god Bhaironji, a pan-Indian boss of the underworld. Specifically, they sacrifice a goat, extract its stomach, slice it open so that it forms a gaping slit, and pass their wailing newborn through the dripping opening seven times. This ritual, which I interpret as a symbolic child sacrifice, would seem to exemplify 'Sanskritisation'--the low caste copying of elite life-styles--in the way Bhats imitate dominant Hindu ideals implicit to a kingly tradition of blood sacrifice. However, I contend that this feast is unique in the way that Bhats simultaneously mimic and appropriate, subvert and contest, as well as rework and combine ritual traditions associated with both kings and priests.
The article, based on field data collected by the authors, analyzes the modern sociolinguistic situation of the Sora language (South Munda languages, Odisha, India) in various religious communities. The religious communities such as Baptists, Catholics, Vishwa-Hindus, Animists, Mattar Banom and Alekh are analyzed. The data on the use of various languages in the religious practices of these communities is considered, accompanied by rich illustrative material. According to the findings of the authors, the preservation of Sora is most successful in the Baptist and Mattar Banom communities.
The article deals with the life experiences of a Dalit woman Viramma, who hails from an interior rural locality of Tami Nadu bordering Pondicherry. In course of her daily conversations with Josiane Racine, a French ethnomusicologist, Viramma shares the different facets of her life, which is conditioned by her own caste and class locations. Viramma’s narrative is very different from the version of the Western-educated or the English-educated Indian feminist activists and scholars who often rule out the compromises which seem to be favoured by Viramma and many of her generation. As the wife of a Dalit agricultural worker and herself also employed in the same sort of labouring occupation, Viramma seems to come out often with two apparently contradictory sets of responses, one of protest and the other of reconciliation. She makes it amply clear that as a Paraiyar woman living on the wages offered by the powerful Reddiar landlords, it is difficult to think of creating a situation of the world being turned upside down. This possibly encourages her to look into the other sides of life whether it be that of developments in familial life, ceremonies, rituals or that of popular beliefs centring around ghosts and goblins. Viramma also talks of politics and proves beyond all doubt that the Dalit women do not always need the agency of feminist activists belonging to the privileged groups to voice their protests.
This article discusses in historical-anthropological perspective the transformations of social networks over the past four decades of urban transition in Pondicherry (South India). To grasp the specificities of these changes, it focuses on the history of the temples of the Tamil goddesses named Amman in a recently urbanized neighborhood. The cult of the goddesses offers a very interesting case of a cultural and social institution in the process of moving from rural areas to the cities and can therefore be used as a key to understanding the urban transition. By referring to the concept of "subaltern urbanization", the article shows that in South India there is no single dominant model of urbanization, but rather a variety of ways in which social groups use their agency and a repertoire of ideas and symbols partly of rural origin to bring order into social relations.
Migrant women constitute a growing reality in Italy, also with reference to violence among family members. In particular, violence endured by the foreign female takes on a character of ‘dual violence,’ the violence experienced within the relationship is supplemented by the violence from the social context, which often isolates her, or even expels her following her ‘coming out into the open.’ The article presents extensive reflections emerging from the results of research carried out in 2012 in Sicily, aiming to explore the experience and perception of family violence and the possible influence of the migratory experience on changes in the forms and implications of family violence. The reflections emerging from the research are presented to the reader in a form integrating data about the phenomenon with relative scientific material, so as to provide a broader understanding of the dynamics observed and the general phenomena influencing them. In this article the essential features will be dealt with, including the opportunity and risk emerging from contact with the host culture, the role of national or cultural communities, the perception of violence and the inclination to react, and the intergenerational conflict. The final reflections will be derived from these, with regard to possible plans of action and prevention of the phenomenon.
Commercial music videos of possession rituals are a central part of the burgeoning vernacular music industry in Uttarakhand, North India. This article explores how a range of producers and consumers experience these video albums as authentic (or inauthentic) in multiple ways, depending upon their position in relation to the production, as well as how the representation semiotically evokes the ritual context. Expanding upon Erving Goffman’s frame analysis, I demonstrate that many Uttarakhandis frame (organize their experience of) possession videos as both media and ritual, and I propose the concept of dual framing as useful for unpacking the multiple senses of authenticity often present in contexts of musical performance.
Astrology plays an important role in Indian social life. Indian astrologers' claim to have accurately predicted the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, or the Asian Tsunami, was an effort to legitimize astrology as a full science. This effort demonstrates a difficulty in knowledge categorization, for in India, astrology is neither classified as a science nor as a religion. This is a result of the idea of an Indian nation-state, which rests upon both science and religion as foundations, but at the expense of expelling astrology from religion for not being scientific. However, as astrology continues to be important in India, the astrological interpretation of the Indian Ocean Tsunami drew substantial public attention. Astrology's significant presence in Indian society shows the role of a mature civil society in India as well.
La possession (divine ou maléfique) conjoint toujours l'individuel et le culturel, la psychophysiologie des corps, les jugements moraux, les rapports sociaux, les relations à l'espace. Les études réunies dans ce volume consacré à l'Inde montrent l'impossibilité de réduire la possession à l'un ou l'autre de ces termes, ce qui en fait un lieu privilégié pour tenter de saisir la façon dont société et individu négocient constamment leurs frontières, dans une approche intégrée de faits souvent séparément traités.
Dumont argues that the opposition between higher vegetarian and lower meat-eating deities is a structuring principle of the Hindu pantheon, and that Hindu divinity is ralational. However, the opposition is rather between deities offered only vegetarian food in worship and those offered sacrifices. Data on south Indian village goddesses show that they are internally segmented into higher and lower forms, and this relational aspect is homologous with that between distinct higher and lower deities. But the relational divinity of village deities is largely replaced by substantial divinity for purely vegetarian Sanskritic deities, whose quality of highness is dissociated from a complementary lowness. Thus Sanskritic deities symbolise a Brahmanical ideal wherein relationships with inferiors are denied, whereas the cult of deities mainly worshipped by low castes legitimates the caste system. The significance of this result for analysis of Hindu religious ideology is highlighted by a comparison with black American Christianity.
Data collected in a major Hindu temple in South India show that the religion of the Hindu gods cannot be explained in terms of the social (or caste) order and must first be understood in its own right. The gods, whose crucial attribute is great power, are worshipped by Brahman priests. The entire temple environment should be kept very pure, and purity and pollution define and idiom by which priests (and devotees), the gods' servants, show them respect. The gods themselves cannot be polluted. Food-offerings, like other rituals, please the gods when made respectfully, but their pattern does not replicate inter-caste food exchange. The competence of Brahman priests, ranked below non-priestly Brahmans, is primarily defined within a religious tradition, rather than by caste rank. Purity and pollution embody more than high and low status, and have ethical and spiritual aspects, expressing the proper relationship between men and gods. In sum, the relation between man and god is not a simple transposition of hierarchical relations between men.
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This article reports a south Indian case of anti-female bias among the propertied elite in a relatively advanced agrarian economy that is increasingly differentiated. Women have become the vehicles of capital transfer. Expenditures on daughters' marriages have been rising as dowries have been introduced. A discussion of the costs and benefits of daughters to natal households makes it clear that daughters have become serious liabilities. ‘Son preference’ or ‘daughter antipathy’ is reflected in the presence of substantially more sons than daughters among surviving offspring. The article suggests that daughters may be increasingly at risk as the agrarian economy develops. Further research is required to test this hypothesis.
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