Dalits, Hindutva and the Spectacle of Religious Harmony: An Exploration from Kerala, South India

Abstract

This paper ethnographically explores the religious world of Dalits in the Malappuram District of northern Kerala, India, where they begin their annual temple procession after visiting the prominent Muslim Dargha in Mamburam. The Dalits use this procession to reaffirm and celebrate the mythological connection between the temple goddess and the Muslim saint interred in the Dargha. While the temple committee, mostly comprised of upper castes, vehemently deny this connection and attempts to provide a sanitised version of the temple, these processions by Dalits have only increased in magnitude and scale, with the generous help from the Muslim community in the vicinity. Muslims financially contribute to the procession, and many Muslim youth participate until the temple compound.  These carnivalesque processions also display multi-religious symbolisms and make communal harmony a public spectacle, much to the chagrin of the Hindu right wing that aims to create the temple and the procession, a sanitised, exclusive Hindu space.