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ABSTRACT
Scholarship on faith healing and spirit-possession often overlookssignificant influence of caste and its diverse expressions.Through ethnographic study, we explore how Muslim faith healers in Kerala’s Malabar region integrate caste notions into healing practices, and also normalizing them as an effective strategy for healing. Caste’s role in healing rituals and at faith healing sites is located within the context of lived Islam, lacking ritual legitimacy from institutional religion. This prompts us to consider how caste ideology extends beyond human material conditions into the spiritual realm, notably on sites of healing, with long-term implications on the political Islam in the region. It further explores how the caste has been altered temporarily on healing sites in terms of categories of spirits, types of healers, social categories of possessed people and how political Islam have approached caste and faith healing in the context of reformist and revivalist movement in the region.
Acknowledgments
I express gratitude to my interlocutors and informants in the field whose assistance provided valuable data for this research article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. Dirks, “Castes of Mind Colonialism and the Making of Modern India.”
2. The term Malabar is used to denote the six northern districts of northern part of Kerala which includes Kasaragod, Kannur, Kozhikode, Wayanad, Malappuram and some part of Palakkad.
3. Cohen, “India: The Social Anthropology of a Civilization.”
4. Ghurye, “Caste and Race in India.”
5. Desai and Dube, “Caste in 21st Century India: Competing Narratives.”
Jodka, “Caste and Democracy: Assertion and Identity among the Dalits of Rural Punjab.”
Srinivas, “Caste in Modern India.”
6. The ancient Hindu social code or manusmriti (laws of Manu) believed to be developed between 200 BCE and the second-century C.E by a Hindu lawgiver called Manu who introduced the varna model of the caste system. Brahmins positioned at the top of caste ladder with the highest status are confined to the priestly class, Kshatriya has the second position in the varna model; generally, warriors/rulers followed by Vaishya primarily merchants, and Shudras castes engaged in caste-based traditional professions such as carpentry, pottery, agriculture, fishing, washing and barbershop and so forth….Outside of this verna system, there is a social category of people called avarnas or untouchables, who came to identify themselves as Dalits in modern India, who were once forced to do all kinds of menial works such as sanitation, cremation, and other menial works.
7. Srinivas, Caste in Modern India.
8. Osella and Osella, “Islamism and Social Reform in Kerala, South India.”
9. Mappilas, largely the lower caste converts. The term Mappila is, sometimes, used to integrate the whole community into one umbrella term that avoids the bitter reality of internal differences.
10. Al- Qudra is the Arabic name of divine power and the term largely used by Muslims of Malabar.
11. McIntosh, “Reluctant Muslims: Embodied Hegemony and Moral Resistance in a Giriama Spirit Possession Complex.”
12. Jafar is the 50 years old faith healer situated in the village of Kadachira in Kannur district. He has been performing the healing past 20 years with the help of spirit he called shuhadakkalI. He learned the act of healing by his mother as she learned it from her mother. This transmission was interesting to us since the healing performance was conducted by matrilineal way until Jafar took over it. To him, his mother asked him to do the practice since there were no other women to take over the practice in his family. When I visited him on 15/05/2021 evening, he was preparing his healing room by arranging the table, setting up the green flag in his room and burning incense. He lives with his family as they usually support by manging the visitors.
13. See note 8 above, 329.
14. See not 8 above.
15. Santhosh, “Contextualising Islamic Contestations: Reformism, Traditionalism and Modernity among Muslims of Kerala.”, 25–42.
16. The Quran explains jinn as the spirit created by fire for serving the God, Allah. The belief is that Jinn was created before humans.
17. Lang, “Trick or Treat? Muslim Thangals, Psychologization and Pragmatic Realism in Northern Kerala, India,” 51.
18. Thangals, also known as Sayyids, the direct descendant of Prophet Muhammed, similar to Brahmins in social status, are positioned at the top of the social hierarchy in Muslim communities. Thus, thangals command higher social status and respect among Muslims.
19. Raheem in his mid-60 set up a clinic at the centre of Thalassery town. Apart from healing practices he also performs Kuthiratheeb, a form of devotional ritual which conducted during auspicious days.
20. Gulikan is the god of death according to Hindu mythology. But some believes gulikan is the lower caste spirit that can possess human body and make sufferings to them. Gulikan theyyam a form lower caste festival performed across Malabar each year.
21. It is the demon spirit of Hindu mythology. The belief is that when as Brahmin dies accidentally or unfortunate ways, they become demon spirit and haunt human beings.
22. See note 7.
23. Ranganathan, ‘A Space to “Eat, Trance, and Sleep”: The Healing Power of Mahanubhav Temples in Maharashtra (India)’, 185–95.
24. Sharma, “Symbols of Empowerment: Possession, Ritual and Healers in Himachal Himalaya (North India),” 196–208.
25. Pfleiderer, “The Semiotics of Ritual Healing in a North Indian Muslim Shrine.”
26. Ossans (barber community), amongst them male members, follow the ritual of circumcision, and the women members traditionally practiced the midwifery. Therefore, their occupational association with blood is viewed as unclean or impure, which turned out to be the reason for the discriminatory practices exerted on them by other Muslim communities.
27. Pusalans are the converts from the fisherman community (Mukkuvans) placed at the lowest strata of social structure. Discrimination against them derived from their traditional profession of fishing and their geographical separation (coastal area) from the general population.
28. Santhosh, “Islamic Activism and Palliative Care: An analysis from Kerala, India.”
29. Devji, “The Equivocal History of a Muslim Reformation,” 4.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Muhammed Hussain Arakkal
Muhammed Hussain Arakkal is a doctoral research scholar in the department of sociology, school of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Indore. His area of research is faith healing and political Islam. He has completed his post graduate degree from Pondicherry University in Sociology. His other research interests include, gender studies, medical sociology and political philosophy.
Ashok Kumar Mocherla
Ashok Kumar Mocherla is an Assistant Professor of Sociology in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Indore. He received his doctorate in Sociology from the IIT Bombay. His areas of academic interest include, not confined to, Sociology of Religion, Caste, and Indian Christianity; Sociology of Faith Healing and Public Health. He is the author of ‘Dalit Christians in South India: Caste, Ideology and Lived Religion’ (Routledge: 2020); editor of ‘Democratization of Indian Christianity: Perspectives on Hegemony, Accessibility and Resistance (Routledge: forthcoming 2022); He has held visiting positions at Harvard University, USA (2022 - 2023); at Drexel University College of Medicine, Philadelphia (2013); at University of Bielefeld, Germany (2010). His research has been funded by ICSSR (Indian Council of Social Science Research), INSA (Indian National Science Academy), and AHRC (Arts and Humanities Research Council), UK.