A Sense of Belonging and Exclusion: ‘Touchability’ and ‘Untouchability’ in Tamil Nadu

Abstract

In India, touch is a prime marker of status and social relations. Those who are impure are ‘untouchable’,1 but those who are of a relatively higher purity are also, depending on the context, either ‘untouchable’ or ‘touchable’ only under certain fixed rules. In this paper, I will explore the contexts in which body contact and touch can be part of personal relations. I describe how these body contacts signify important social relations and establish community identity. Further, I will analyse how patterns of body contact on the one hand change during childhood, and on the other hand produce changes in the status of a social persona. The last point to be investigated is the meaning of touch as a sign for public representations.

Keywords:

• India
• Tamil Nadu
• senses
• touch
• body

Acknowledgments

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Oxford seminar series Senses of Identity in 2006. I would like to thank the organisers of this seminar series, Elisabeth Hsu, Shirley Ardener, Lidia Sciama and Ian Fowler as well as the audience for their many stimulating and helpful comments and suggestions. I would also like to thank the editor and anonymous reviewers of Ethnos, who offered very useful suggestions for revision, further Chris Gregory and William Sax for their comments and criticism, and I am especially grateful to Bob Parkin for reading earlier drafts of this paper. Professor Y. Subbarayalu, Mr. M. Kannan and Mrs. R. Srilatha from the French Institute in Pondichery contributed to my understanding of the topic in many ways, thank you so much. Finally, special thanks to all my informants who shared their knowledge with me. The writing up of this paper was supported by the University of Heidelberg and the French Institute of Pondichery; I would like to thank both institutions for their support.

Notes

The terms ‘Untouchable’ and ‘Untouchability’ have been abandoned due to the humiliating meaning these terms confer, therefore I use them in inverted commas. The politically correct and common terms today are Scheduled Castes, in short sc, or Dalits, or sometimes Harijan. I use them here synonymously.

Richard Gere had embraced and kissed Shilpa Shetty at a public charity event in April 2007. Following complaints from citizens, which accused the actors of inappropriate and obscene behaviour, several lawyers filed complaints against Shilpa Shetty and Richard Gere, who were then ordered to appear in front of the court, but finally not sentenced. In some parts of India the public reacted in a rather drastic way to this incident, in a number of cities angry crowds burnt publicly effigies of Richard Gere and Shilpa Shetty.

In Andhra Pradesh the Vagri fall officially into the category sts or Scheduled Tribes, but in Tamil Nadu they are classified as mbcs or Most Backward Castes. The Vagri association in Tamil Nadu is currently preparing a petition to achieve recognition of st status.

Today the majority of births take place in hospital, and accordingly this seclusion is not practised any more as stringently as it used to be even ten years ago. I have, however, seen a number of women returning from the hospital and then staying in seclusion for a few days afterwards.

The puja room is a room or sometimes just a corner in the house where a picture and idols of one or more deities are kept and where the puja, the act of Hindu worship, is performed.

These marriageable/non-marriageable categories operate systematically throughout South India and form the main frame of reference for an Ego's classification of kin (see also Yalman 1969).

Sexual joking among unmarried young adults is not that uncommon and has been reported by, e.g., Osella and Osella (1998) and Gough (1959).

The equation of contagion and contamination with the lower strata of society is, of course, also a European phenomenon (see Stallybrass & White 2005).