Beyond subjugation and subversion

Spectatorship, shifting practices, and the evolving politics of the Kodungallur Bharani festival in Kerala, South India

Bibliographic Data

ID6451827
AuthorsGayatri Balu (0000-0003-4201-3582, O. P. Jindal Global University, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume72
Issue4
Pages533-550
Publication date2025-11-26
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocial Compass (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0037-7686 • E-ISSN: 1461-7404
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/00377686251387810
OpenAlexW4416723740
LanguageEN
References cited12

This article explores the Kodungallur Bharani festival of Kerala, South India, a prominent non-Brahmanical tradition; sexually suggestive songs and the ritual enactments of velichappads , ritual specialists who embody the goddess through possession, unsettle homogeneous understandings of Hindu devotion. Moving beyond binaries of subversions and subjugation that have dominated scholarly interpretations, the study examines the festival as a living tradition. Drawing on ethnographic research, it traces contemporary shifts: the widening spectatorship, intensified by digital circulation and heightened visibility; the institutionalisation of ritual authority and altered kavu practices. These shifts reveal simultaneous processes of commodification, fossilisation, and politicisation that increasingly structure contemporary religious practices. By foregrounding the multiple spatial worlds of Bharani festivities, the article shows how religious practices continually renew themselves in dialogue with their conditions, shaped by broader social, technological, and political contexts. The analysis underscores that non-dominant religiosities must be understood not as aberrations, but as traditions situated within a continuum, revealing their interconnectedness with the wider structures in which they are embedded

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