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

Abstract

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.