Folk traditions
Displaying 11 - 20 of 29
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
The Ramnami community of Chhattisgarh is a low-caste religious movement whose followers tattoo their bodies, including in some cases eyelids, with the name of Lord Ram. The movement, which is more than a century old, started as an act of peaceful resistance against the practice of untouchability in…
in Article
Gasshi is an agricultural festival celebrated in Assam on the eve and the first day of the Kati/Kartik month. While Kati Bihu is the Assamese festival usually associated with the arrival of Kartik and is celebrated by the majority of Assamese population, Gasshi is celebrated by the Bengal-origin…
in Module
Assam is a land of many peoples. Through the centuries several communities and tribes from Myanmar, Thailand, Nepal and Bhutan, and other Indian states such as Bengal, Odisha, Bihar and parts of Northeast India made this state their home. Over time, these different cultures commingled to give rise…
in Overview
An acclaimed writer and public intellectual, Dr Ahmed is the founder president of the Char Chapori Sahitya Parishad, an organisation that works towards promoting the literature and culture of the char chapori (river islands and river banks) residents of Assam. Although he writes poetry, fiction and…
in Interview
As the first president of Padumlal Punnalal Chair for Creativity, he was associated with the Department of Culture of the Chhattisgarh government. He was awarded the Statesman award for rural reporting for two consecutive years in 1994 and 1995. He has researched extensively on the Ramnami…
in Interview
The Ramnami Samaj of Chhattisgarh found a rather unique and peaceful way of opposing the caste system in India. Not allowed to enter temples, the community members tattooed their entire bodies, in some cases even eyelids, with the name of ‘Nirgun Ram’ as a way of peaceful defiance against the…
in Module