Lecture on Religion, Environmentalism & Health in Kerala

Since the independence and the modernization of transport conditions facilitating access to remote pilgrimage places, as well as the impact of new channels of communication on diffusion of religious values and Sabarimala popularity over South Indian states, this pilgrimage has become one of the most significant religious phenomenon as it attracts between five and ten millions pilgrims beyond cultural and Hindu cult boundaries. The popularization of Aiyyappa cult in South India through an intense circulatory regime of pilgrimage has made reconsidered contemporary Kerala as one of the most important pilgrimage destination in south Indian Hinduism.

The wide media coverage of Sabarimala activities led by the intellectual, middles classes including researchers as well as political leaders of Kerala facilitated the setting up of a wide public space, dilated and informed by a Marxist ecological language seeing the subaltern groups of tribal people not benefiting from the economical impact of pilgrimage at the local level. Sabarimala is a topic of conversation that cannot be ignored in public places of the village or towns as well as in the media and in the legislative assembly of Kerala. The media exposure of issues concerning the environmental impact of pilgrimage and sanitary conditions of pilgrims has revealed a regional sensibility rooted in colonial discourse of public health and contemporary development narratives. This ideologically centred debate reflects ongoing socio-anthropological dynamics of ecological thinking in Kerala as elsewhere in India. Several authors have also shown the implication of middles classes in driving popular movements of peasants and adivasis in the name of ecological values and environmental conservation. These movements are based on the newborn ’traditional’ environmentalism, invented and reproduced by urban middle-classes before infusing it in tribal-dominated areas, and efficiently relayed and appropriated by neo-Hindu ideological forces.

This paper explores the case of the Sabarimala pilgrimage in Kerala through two major angles. Firstly through a comparative and critical analysis of the concepts that define gradients of the relation of nature and religion as well as that of ecology and pilgrimage. Secondly, an overview of the history of deforestation in Kerala and its subsequent legislation and management provide a multifaceted context through which the regional debate about environmental impact of pilgrimage on pilgrims’ health is assessed. In conclusion, this paper sizes up the modern transformations of Hinduism through a political ecology of pilgrimage, which reshapes gradients of power and authority among different sets of actors.

Speaker

Remy Delage, School of African and Asian Studies, London

Organizers

Department of Social Sciences (IFP)

Venue

Jawaharlal Nehru Conference Hall
French Institute of Pondicherry
11, Saint Louis Street
Pondicherry - 605 001

Time

16:30 hrs