Folk rituals
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While menstruation has long been considered a taboo topic in India, ancient Hindu traditions recognise women as a representation of Mother Earth. In certain parts of the country, menses is equated with the ritual of regeneration and fertility, and is thus celebrated. We look at two such festivals—…
in Article
The short video is on one of the associated rituals of Poorakkali, the nine-day long festival that is celebrated in temples in North Kerala in April-May. Coconuts are broken against a slab of stone to appease the Mother Goddess. Then follows a tightly fought scuffle for coconut, and the one who…
in Video
To the people of northern Kerala, the Poorakkali festival is a ritualistic penance as well as a celebration of love. This video documents the ritual of worshipping Lord Kama. The festival starts with the ritual of kamane veykal or creating Kama. On every morning, throughout this nine-day festival,…
in Video
Pooram or Poorakkali festival of northern Kerala is a spring festival that celebrates the spirit of love. It is a nine-day festival observed in March and April. The ritual bathing of the idol or pooram kuli is the final ceremony of the festival where the priests carry out the idol to the temple…
in Video
Poorakkali festival is celebrated in parts of northern Kerala in March and April. It is a spring festival that celebrates the spirit of love. During the festival, devotees sponsor meals in temples as an offering to the deity. The community gathers in the temple to prepare and distribute the meal.…
in Video
Following are samples and translations of different songs sung to various folk and ancestor deities across Rajasthan. These songs were collected over the years in the Thali-Shekhawati region of Rajasthan from a cross-section of communities. Performed by women, they form part of occasions such as…
in Video
Ann Grodzins Gold has spent many years living and researching in Ghatiyali, a town in Tonk district, Rajasthan. Her fieldwork and writings concern diverse topics— pilgrimage, women’s rituals and expressive traditions, environmental history, and most recently landscape and identity in a small…
in Interview
What is 'folk' about 'folk gods and goddesses'? What makes them 'folk'? Remember what I had said about Pabuji—he is no great god in the Hindu pantheon, but a bhomiya god who has the power to intervene in the problems of everyday life, faced by nomadic communities like the Rabari of Rajasthan….…
in Module
Women’s voices in South Asian history can be hard to come by. Even when written genealogies and histories, epics and religious treatises mention women, they treat them as ‘subjects’ or plot devices furthering male narratives. If one turns to oral traditions, however, one finds abundant presence of…
in Overview