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Mahishi's rage: Communitas and protest at Sabarimala, Kerala
Author(s) -
VADAKKINIYIL DINESAN
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
anthropology today
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.419
H-Index - 24
eISSN - 1467-8322
pISSN - 0268-540X
DOI - 10.1111/1467-8322.12529
Subject(s) - pilgrimage , communitas , liminality , pentagon , state (computer science) , history , sociology , ancient history , gender studies , rage (emotion) , religious studies , law , political science , anthropology , psychology , social psychology , philosophy , algorithm , computer science
In September 2018, the Supreme Court of India lifted the ban on females of menstrual age entering the sacred site to Lord Ayyappan at Sabarimala in the Indian state of Kerala. Violent protests, for and against, engulfed Kerala throughout the main festival and pilgrimage season of 2018–19. This article explores the major sociopolitical and cultural forces that underpinned the violent protests at one of India’s (and also the world’s) major centres of religious pilgrimage. The central argument extends Victor Turner’s thesis in The ritual process to show how the dynamics of liminality and communitas created an intense vortex of crisis of potentially sociocultural transformational effect.