Article

Interpretation: A Journal of
Religious Encounters: Bible and Theology
2017, Vol. 71(1) 64–79
© The Author(s) 2017
Empowerment through Tamil Reprints and permissions:
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Outcaste Folk Drumming DOI: 10.1177/0020964316670860
int.sagepub.com

Zoe Sherinian
University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA

Abstract
The performance of the folk parai frame drum of South India is a site of religious encounter that syncretizes
¯
symbols and practices from Hinduism, Christianity, Tamil agricultural life, and Dalit liberation movements.
This essay analyzes three cases of religious syncretism and indigenization of Christianity to Tamil village
culture that transform the meaning of this drum from polluted to a sonic tool of liberation against caste
oppression.

Keywords
Parai drum; Dalit; Tamil Nadu, India; Religious Syncretism; Indigenization of Christianity; Hinduism;
¯
Untouchables; Caste system; Sacred Music

Introduction
The performance of the folk parai frame drum of South India is a site of religious encounter, which
 from Hinduism, Christianity, the agricultural life of Tamil peo-
syncretizes symbols and practices
ple, and Dalit liberation movements to empower the oppressed. Many at the bottom of the Indian
caste system who were formerly called outcastes, untouchables, or harijan choose to call them-
selves “Dalit.” The term, first coined in the late nineteenth century, literally means “oppressed” or
“crushed” people.1
The parai drum, an instrument still considered by many upper castes to be polluted (like those

“untouchables” who play it), has become an emblem of the Dalit cultural movement in the south
Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Its role as a symbol of empowerment in the late twentieth and early
twenty first century Dalit Civil Rights movement has contributed to building community among
the oppressed and transforming cultural identity, particularly that of the drum, the drummers, and
the music they play.
This essay analyzes three cases of religious syncretism and indigenization of Christianity to
Tamil village culture that transforms the meaning of the parai drum from polluted to a symbol and
 of Munaivendri (near Paramagudi in
sonic tool of liberation against caste oppression. In the village
southeast Tamil Nadu), where the parai drum is still considered untouchable, parai drummers,
 

1 Activists understand “Dalit” as an anti-caste term of political opposition that is used in the Dalit Civil
Rights Movement to bring those oppressed by caste, class, and gender together under an umbrella term.

Corresponding author:
Zoe Sherinian, School of Music, University of Oklahoma, 500 West Boyd, Norman, OK 73019, USA.
Email: zsherinian@ou.edu
Sherinian 65

including Christians, reclaim it as the Brahminic Hindu deity Saraswati and their drumming as life-
giving. They thereby attempt to raise their status and empower themselves against the oppression
of upper-caste villagers, as they appropriate from above, but fail to critique, the religious discourse
of upper-caste Hinduism that legitimizes their oppression.
The second case considers the Sakthi Folk Cultural Centre, a Catholic-NGO2 that unifies poor,
dropout, Christian and Hindu Dalit female students through daily song and drumming rituals of
self-esteem building. In their student-led rituals, they construct a trinity of Mother Earth goddess,
rural arts teacher, and sacred drum to reclaim the folk arts and an empowered Dalit female identity
grounded in non-Brahminical Hinduism, Tamil cultural politics, Dalit liberation theology, femi-
nism, and Marxism.
The third case analyzes how Dalit theologian Rev. Theophilus Appavoo uses the parai in song
 colonial
lyrics and at the center of Protestant liturgical performance to protest enduring elite and
Christian values. His songs indigenize Christianity by using local rural meanings, empowering
village religious elements to (re)interpret the Bible in ways often considered culturally parallel to
early Christian social contexts.

Social Function of Parai Drums and Drummers

The parai is a frame drum made of cow or water buffalo skin that is played with two sticks. The

instrument is also called tappu3 and kottu .4 In common village usage, kottu carries some negative
implications (as non-musical) and tappu, many joke, sounds (and is spelled) like the Tamil word for
“mistake.” In Tamil Nadu, the drum likely has been played for the last 700 years as a caste duty by
untouchable jātis (Paraiyars and Arundathiyars). That is, they had to perform for village rituals as a

form of indentured servitude, or slavery (adime), for fear of violent retribution by the upper castes.
The word parai means “to speak” or “announce” in the South Indian languages of Tamil and

Malayalam, reflecting the drum’s function and the drummer’s occupation as announcers of both
auspicious and inauspicious ritual occasions within the Hindu (and sometimes Christian) life cycle.
Such auspicious events have included weddings, first menses, the running of the bulls, a woman
processing to her parents’ house at the end of her pregnancy, Catholic confirmation, tēr or sappa-
ram deity/saint processions, and for deity or Sami festivals. The primary inauspicious occasion for
drumming is a funeral because of the association with polluting substances such as blood and dead
bodies. Each of these rituals is associated with a corresponding adi (beat) or genre-based rhythmic
pattern that can be aurally recognized by villagers from great distances when played on the parai.

While today many people still consider the drum to be polluted, many Hindus believe the power
of the parai’s sound will bring on possession by the deity and take the soul to the next reincarnation.
 Hinduism or Ādi Samayam religion, sounding the parai, as opposed to reciting Sanskrit
In village
slokas, is necessary to invoke the deity. (See Supplementary Video 1: “Funerals and Festivals” at
int.sagepub.com/supplemental).
While many of these functions historically gave a valued status to the parai, the drum and its
drummers continue to be commonly (and stereotypically) defined by the parai’s function to
 of the Hindu
announce death, which is a caste duty that in turn degrades its performers because
association of death with pollution. Further, Hindus consider the parai’s cow or water buffalo skin

2 Non-Governmental Organization or non-profit. In the Indian context, Sakthi is a registered educational trust.
3 The Tamil word tappu is likely taken from Andhra Pradesh/Telangana to the North where it is called
dhappu and etymologically seems to be related to the ancient pre-Islamic Iranian Pahlavi dap that is
played to induce trance in religious contexts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daf.
4 As a noun, kottu is a general term for drum, a drum stroke, or a duration of time (meter). As a verb, it
means to beat (a drum), to sound, and to utter. Digital Dictionaries of South Asia, Tamil Lexicon, http://
dsal.uchicago.edu/dictionaries/tamil-lex/
66 Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology 71(1)

polluting to the touch. The middle castes believe the parai sound will take the soul of the dead to
 to perform funeral duties. Yet, they in
heaven, and they are thus quite dependent on the outcastes
turn mitigate this ritual power through identifying the outcaste jātis with stigma and degradation,
because they are performers of the drum. In some villages, the middle castes keep the outcastes in
a state of adime or slavery.5
Dalit activists and village parai groups today are fighting against this stigma. They draw on
 political symbols to either empower themselves to survive vil-
religious, village agricultural, and
lage-based casteism in the case of the drummers, or to create social change in the case of the middle
class activists. The three examples in this study outline various strategies used through religious
and cultural encounters to create empowerment and liberating meaning for outcastes by reclaiming
the parai.

Kurinji Malar: Asserting Higher Religious and Social Status for
Drummers
Kurinji Malar is a professionalizing “drumset” group of nine parai frame drummers from the village

of Munaivendri, Tamil Nadu near the farming town of Paramagudi. The group includes five Hindus
and four Protestant (Church of South India) Christians, all from the Paraiyar caste, one of three
 the term “parai” for its
primary untouchable/outcaste jātis in Tamil Nadu.6 These drummers reject

negative association with their so-called “degraded” caste name Paraiyar, while they acknowledge

its more positive historical associations. All but three are illiterate. I lived in Munaivendri for four
months in 2008 conducting ethnomusicological fieldwork with Kurinji Malar and making an ethno-
graphic documentary about their changing status.7 I learned how to drum and dance over thirty-five
genre based rhythmic patterns and attended both Christian and Hindu funerals and festivals with my
teachers. I observed their growing sense of pride in their identity as drummers through multiple inter-
view sessions and through my developing understanding of the caste prejudice they faced in their
village. This pride and empowerment were particularly expressed through their observance of
Saraswati Puja or Ayudha Pujai (a worship to bless one’s tools of the trade).
One of the better educated of the drummers, Ramu, a Hindu whose wife is a Protestant Christian,
communicated the general religious sentiment within the group when he said that they respect all
gods and religions and move freely with members of different religions (especially among the
Dalits living in the outcaste ghetto) as they attend functions of various groups. He elaborated on
their ecumenical practices saying the following:

Here, Hindus and Christians live together. We live in harmony. You saw how we celebrated
Deepavali? Annadas is a Christian, and we are Hindu. But he also bought new clothes. He
also celebrates all the festivals. In the same way we also do everything. We buy clothes. Buy

5 In 2008 I interviewed a drummer whose ritual duty was to process the Christian cross around the vil-
lage for a Catholic church every evening for the nine days of their Mother Mary festival. He defined
himself as adime (slave) and as a “Hindu” who was tied to performing this duty for the church. (See
Zoe Sherinian, This is A Music: Reclaiming an Untouchable Drum. Documentary Film. World Premiere
deadCENTER Film Festival, Oklahoma City, 2011).
6 Since the early 1500s the Christian communities in Tamil Nadu, both Catholic and Protestant, have
recognized caste and continue to practice caste distinction within the church. These distinctions mani-
fest themselves in personal relationships among congregants (or the lack of them), positions in church
and diocesan hierarchies, marriage, and table fellowship. See Zoe Sherinian, Tamil Folk Music as Dalit
Liberation Theology (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014).
7 Sherinian, This Is A Music.
Sherinian 67

Annadas, a Protestant Christian, with Hindu symbols on his forehead. Photo Credit: Zoe Sherinian.

firecrackers and everything. But we don’t go to the temple. Mostly I don’t go. But I will send
my sons to the temple…And I also go to church on my own accord and I have been there many
times. My son goes to church. I never stop him from going to any place of worship. (Video
interview with Ramu, Munaivendri, Oct. 28, 2008)

While the Hindu and Christian outcastes in Munaivendri lived in apparent harmony, the cēri, or
rural ghetto where they were required to live, was still segregated from the main village geographi-
cally and in religious and social practice.8 The outcastes rarely if ever entered the large Murugan
temple at the center of the village, although the upper castes told me there was no rule against their
entry.9 Yet, for several years they had not been invited to drum at the yearly village Singirikudi
Goddess germination (mulaipari) festival,10 nor are members of the outcaste communities invited
to pay the tax that gives them rights to participate in activities such as communal circle (kummi) or
line (oyilattam) dances that happen at the central village ground during this festival.

8 There was socially ascribed freedom for outcastes to enter Hindu temples, yet segregated human relation-
ships in sharing food and water as well as housing even for middle class Dalits who could afford to live
in the ur or main village.
9 The first time I visited the village to determine if I would work with Kurinji Malar, they took me to see
the Murugan temple, but they all remained outside as I toured its interior.
10 Mulaipari is the sprouting or germination of nine grains or navadhanyam in baskets or clay mud pots for
nine days in the temple and then the procession of these pots on the heads of devotees to a pond.
68 Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology 71(1)

Ayudha/Saraswati Puja, Figure 1. Photo Credit: Zoe Sherinian.

Ayudha/Saraswati Puja, Figure 2. Photo Credit: Zoe Sherinian.

Sherinian 69

The middle caste land-owning Konar Hindus were the primary patrons of the Kurinji Malar
drummers within the village, who invited them to play for their community Siva Rātri festival and
for their funerals. The Konars believed strongly in the necessity of the parai to bring on possession

and to move the spirit of the dead in these occasions. Others, like the economically less advanced
Servais, rarely invited them to play, even for their funerals, as they thought the drummers, as they
were professionalizing, were becoming too self-assertive and arrogant. Further, as I directly observed
and was told by my teachers, the Servais would rarely if ever allow an untouchable to eat within the
main room of their houses or give them water or tea from a regular tumbler (as they believed their
saliva would pollute it), but only a disposable plastic one (See Supplementary Video 2: “Food and
Pollution” at int.sagepub.com/supplemental).
While the status of the parai drum is still generally negative to many village Hindus, my obser-

vation of the drummers’ celebration of Saraswati Puja on October 8, 2008, along with an interview
I conducted with the group, helped me understand how these Paraiyar drummers constructed the
drum as a deity as a means to combat internalized and externallyimposed casteism.

Description of Ayudha/Saraswati Puja from Fieldnotes

With rain clouds threatening, all the drummers and many of their children gathered in the
late afternoon when we would normally have had my drum lesson and after their day of either
shepherding, collecting fire wood, working at a nearby brick factory, or construction work.
They brought out the instruments of the drum ensemble from the house in which they were
stored and placed them near the front stoop next to the small ground where we practiced. With
lungis properly dropped to their ankles and shoulder towels around their waist in respect,
they lined up eight parais, the large bass drum, and a set of metal maracas. Then placed

sandalwood and red kunkumum powder tilaks on each of the four directions of the round frame
drums and in the center, then splattered yellow sandalwood paste throughout the surface.
Next they placed a large banana leaf near the drums and proceeded to conduct an entire puja
(ritual) consisting of offering fruits, flowers, lit camphor, incense, and coconuts (all vegetarian
offerings). At this point, the sticks used by the drummers as well as their bag of performance
uniforms were placed in the collection of instruments along with the notebook in which I had
written the various drum patterns they had taught me. Then each group member bowed before
the puja, placing his head on the ground, followed by a religiously appropriate gesture; the
Christians crossed themselves, and the Hindus brought the light to their eyes three times.
Most of them, regardless of religious affiliation, placed kungumam and sandal paste on their
third eye. Then Annadas, one of the Christians, proceeded to prepare a sort of fruit salad with
rice puffs to be shared among and distributed to the children and family members of all of
the drummers, a common village practice of sharing food during festivals. It was a joyful and
intimate time of community and celebration for the group.

In a lively participatory group interview later that month, the drummers reflected on their under-
standing of the powerful religious, social, and economic meaning the parai drum had for them.

(See Supplementary Video 3: “Ayudha/Saraswati Puja” at int.sagepub.com/supplemental).

[Statements were said quickly and some simultaneously or overlapping]

Essaiah: We treat this as our life and our God.
Pitchai: This is a God (Devam).
Essaiah: We celebrate Ayudha Pujai (worship for tools of the trade).
Ramu: For Ayudha Pujai we put the kunkumam dots.
Essaiah: Ayudha pusai.
Amul: Your foot should not touch it (the drum).
Pitchai: It gave us food. In those days, we had nothing to eat. Only this gave
us food. It allowed us to grow. I have four children. By playing this, I
made my living.
70 Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology 71(1)

Annadas: This is more than a mother.

Pitchai: This is more than a mother.
Essaiah: This is equal to our mother, equal to God.
Malaikannan: We shouldn’t play with our shoes on.
Pitchai: This is an art (kalai).
Ramu: This is a deity (devam).
Ramu: Like mother feeding the baby, it gives life.
Amul: We won’t allow anyone to step on it with their feet.
Essaiah: We won’t even step over it.
Amul: If you accidently did step over, we should touch it with our hand and
ask forgiveness.
Essaiah: Like this we will get up and touch it and pray, even in these modern
days.
Pitchai: This is an art.
Ramu: This is a God.
Ravi: With the help of this we are making our living. We are making our liv-
ing using this. I used this to get rice.11

The individual statements strongly articulated by almost every member of the group, some simul-
taneously, as well as their collective sentiment show the deification of the drum using the village
Hindu polytheistic term devam.12 They interpret the drum positively by comparing it to a life-giv-
ing mother, using the respectable term kalai or “art” that folklorists use, and expressing the general
dependence that the poorest members especially have had on the instrument as an essential eco-
nomic provider to eke out a living or provide their basic rice. Furthermore, they ascribed to the
drum many Hindu and generally Indian cultural practices of respect for instruments such as not
touching it with their feet, not stepping over it, or performing while wearing sandals.
This discussion framed their ritual as Ayudha Pujai (the term they used), or Saraswati Pujai. But
more specifically they understood themselves as participating in a mainstream Tamil Hindu cele-
bration of knowledge and musical instruments associated with the Goddess Saraswati, thus con-
sciously drawing on and associating themselves with Brahminical (upper-caste) Hinduism. Further,
they did this (perhaps subversively) in their own outcaste ghetto context, while the untouchable
jātis in this village, through social practice and informal agreement with the higher castes (kad-
amai), still did not participate in the all-village Hindu rituals nor enter the middle/upper caste
temples. I argue that their Ayudha/Saraswati Pujai was a kind of appropriation from above of
Brahminical symbols and the establishment of direct relationship (unmediated by a Hindu priest)
between the outcaste Paraiyar members of Kurinji Malar with this goddess. Indeed, in an inter-
view, Ramu defined their drum as the Goddess Saraswati.13

The importance we give to our family deity, the same importance we give to tappu and drums.
How we pray to the family deity the same way we revere it…The drum (kottu) has that much
respect as an art. It is the Goddess Saraswati, and everyone reveres and respects it. If we don’t
respect it that much, the Goddess Saraswati will not bless us and the art will not get into your

11 Translation by Chella Meenakshi Centre, Madurai.

12 Michael Bergunder, “The Pure Tamil Movement and Bible Translation: The Ecumenical Thiruviviliam
of 1995,” in Christians, Cultural Interactions, and India’s Religious Traditions, ed. Judith Brown and
Robert Frykenberg (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 212–31.
13 Saraswati is associated in the Vedas with intelligence, knowledge, education, enlightenment, music, the
arts, and power. She is worshiped to attain the divine knowledge necessary to achieve enlightenment. In
Vedantic Hinduism she is also the feminine power or Shakti. In Bengal she is the daughter of Siva, as well
as the consort of Brahma and mother of the Vedas.
Sherinian 71

head. It is Goddess Saraswati, therefore, we will know that when we play, our brain will track
it down: for this and that beat we should play using this method. All that will be running in our
heads. So if we go about without giving any due respect to it, it is Goddess Saraswati herself,
and the art will never get registered in our head. The extent to which we respect our family
deity, to that extent we should revere it.14

Ramu articulated his belief that if one does not properly respect the parai drum as the Goddess
Saraswati, the art will not be learned and understood—“it won’t get into their heads.” Further, he
asserts that she is not only the goddess of music and instruments, but the goddess of knowledge.
What one must bear in mind to fully understand this appropriation from above of symbols and
practices of Brahminical or Orthodox Hinduism, is that it is an expression of agency by those who
practice a village-based lower caste/outcaste form of “Hinduism” we can call Ādi Samayam.15 That
is, these drummers do not typically have access to use the valued upper caste symbols of
Brahminical/Orthodox Hinduism. Indeed, it was not legally possible for lower and outcastes to
publically engage in Brahminical Hinduism before the temple entry proclamation of 1936, and in
Tamil villages such engagement continues to be limited by caste discrimination .16
In a simplified way we can describe the differences between these lower and upper caste Hindu
practices as follows. Brahminical or Orthodox Hinduism (Agama—Shaivite, Vishnavite sects) is pri-
marily practiced in large temples in urban areas. Brahmin priests use Sanskrit texts and slokas (chants)
to invoke the deity and conduct rituals, typically during the day, using fire. Vegetarian food, such as
milk and fruit, is offered to the deities. Worship is of the trans-South Asian deities of Siva, Brahma,
Vishnu, and their consorts Parvathi, Sarasawati, and Lakshmi as well as Shakti in the form of Mother
Goddess Durga. These deities are constructed as murtis or in the form of human-like statues, idols, or
paintings and are often fair skinned like their Brahmin patrons and devotees.
On the other hand, Ādi Samayam is village based, lower and outcaste “Hinduism.” Many Dalit
activists, however, do not consider these practices/beliefs to be Hinduism. Indeed, the Tamil out-
caste intellectual C. Iyothee Thass made the radical declaration in 1886 that untouchables were not
Hindus.17 Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, the leader of the modern Dalit movement in the early and mid-
twentieth century preached a similar philosophy and encouraged his followers to convert to
Buddhism. More recently this perspective was argued by the low caste political scientist Kancha
Ilaiah.18 K.S. Muthu argues that the worship of Dalit deities is distinct from Brahminical Hinduism
in “location, food habits, ways of celebration/workshop, decoration, language, petitions, and the
understanding about the limitation of God’s power.”19
Thus, associating their parai drum typically used in Ādi Samayam possession and funeral rituals

with symbols from Brahminical Hinduism through the celebration of Ayudha/Saraswati Pujai has
two functions for the drummers of Kurinji Malar: (1) these Paraiyar Christians and “Hindus”
appropriate Brahminical Orthodox Hindu symbols in a continuum of practice with their upper and
middle caste neighbors, and (2) they assert a higher religious and social status in the context of their

14 Interview Ramu, Munaivendri, Oct. 28, 2008.

15 Ādi Samayam, meaning “original religion,” is a term that my teacher, Dalit theologian Rev. J. Theophilus
Appavoo, used for non-Brahmin, Dalit, and lower-caste practices such as village Hinduism. I am not
certain how commonly the term is used, especially outside of academic writing.
16 Diane Mines, “The Hindu Gods in a South Indian Village,” in Everyday Life in South Asia, ed. Diane
Mines and Sarah Lamb (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010), 226–37 (226–27).
17 Ravikumar, “Iyothee Thass and the Politics of Naming.” Sept. 28, 2005. http://www.countercurrents.org/
dalit-ravikumar280905.htm.
18 Kancha Ilaiah, Why I am Not a Hindu: A Sudra Critique of Hindutva Philosophy, Culture and Political
Economy (Calcutta: Samya, 1996).
19 K. S. Muthu, Dalit Deities (Madurai, Tamil Nadu: The Dalit Resource Centre of the Tamil Nadu
Theological Seminary, 2005), xvii.
72 Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology 71(1)

growing professionalism and decreased economic dependence on the upper castes of their own vil-
lage. In this ritual, Kurinji Malar reverses the normative cultural valuation of the parai drum as a
 with which
polluted symbol of identity and the ontological assumptions about purity and pollution
it is associated to transform the drum into a deity who provides the means to sustain life through
the devotee’s practice of the art. Tamil Anthropologist Joe Arun describes this as Paraiyar drum-

mers, “reversing the symbols of pollution that defined them as low and defiled, into positive sym-
bols of their culture and identity.” 20

I draw further on Joe Arun’s argument that “the process of collective self-assertion by Paraiyar

has three phases: conflict, symbolic reversal, and identification,” to assert that professionalizing
parai drummers, like the members of Kurinji Malar, have experienced breaking out of their “false

consciousness where they had regarded their polluted status as divinely willed.”21 Through their
symbolic appropriation (reversal), Kurinji Malar find themselves in the process of re-identifying
themselves positively with the parai drum. While this involves both a conscious association with
 history that has been constructed as the means to their “nega-
the material object and its symbolic
tive social identity, it opens up the possibility of signifying a different cultural identity and set of
social relations . . . [that] guide Paraiyars into a different future.”22 To create this symbolic reversal
Kurinji Malar uses religious strategies. They “revalorate” themselves through creating counter-
myths that construct a familial relationship with the Mother Goddess Saraswati as the parai drum

that provides physical and economic sustenance. Through this positive and intimate association of
the drum with the deity they thereby ‘de-polluted’ themselves. 23

Use of the Parai in the Dalit Cultural Movement

¯
In the last decade there has been a proliferation of Dalit NGOs in Tamil Nadu that have created folk
performance groups as a means to reclaim degraded cultural symbols, challenge internalized caste
and gender oppression, and instill pride in the oppressed. With a strong influence from Dalit poli-
tics, the mixed and single sex (and often mixed caste) parai kalai kulu (parai art ensembles) are
 this work a stigma

distinct in their refusal to play for funerals, as they consider that keeps Dalits
and the parai degraded. They also demand much higher salaries than the village professionalizing
groups to play for festivals or rallies and use choreographed performances often on a raised stage.
With their por parai war drum they engage in culture wars of musical value claiming Dalit arts as

weapons of liberation.
The folk arts group Sakthi Kalai Kulu was the first all-female parai group in Tamil Nadu, form-
ing in 1993. Sakthi performs in village festival and socio/political contexts, integrating dramatic
interludes and accompanying their dance and drumming with messages of Dalit liberation, femi-
nism, and human rights. Their performances have included the 2008 Indian Independence Day
parade in Delhi and internationally at the 2002 United Nations Conference on Race at Durban, and
the 2011 FeTNA (Federation of Tamil Sangams) conference in Charleston, South Carolina. The
training of poor Dalit female high school dropouts at the Sakthi Folk Cultural Centre over the last
twenty-six years has instilled in these young women idealized Dalit values of folklore as communal
and working people’s art that they believe should be courageously protected, held with esteem, and
used to fight for equality and justice. At the Centre, syncretic religious encounter through daily
ritual is a primary means of communicating and instilling these values in its trainees and animators.

20 C. Joe Arun, “From Stigma to Self-assertion: Paraiyars and the Symbolism of the Parai Drum,”

Contributions to Indian Sociology 41 (2007): 81–104.
21 Ibid., 82.
22 Ibid., 102.
23 Ibid., 103.
Sherinian 73

Sakthi draws primarily on Tamil agricultural religious practices (Ādi Samayam) and indirectly
from concepts of Dalit Christian liberation theology to come together as Christians and Hindus in
morning worship. They give respect to Mother Earth, their teachers, and the parai drum, and by

extension all folk arts.
The Sakthi Folk Cultural Centre was formed in 1990 by Sister Angeline Chandra of the Missionary
Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (ICM) convent.24 Sakthi’s overarching purpose is to create
an intensive leadership program using folk arts as a primary medium of communication. Sister
Chandra described the purpose of the group emphasizing Dalit women’s ownership of the parai and

its rhythm as a key factor in their empowerment through performance. (See Supplementary Video 4:
“Sister Chandra Stating the Purpose of Sakthi” at int.sagepub.com/supplemental).

The purpose of our Sakthi Kalai Kural Centre is to empower young Dalit women. It is because
it is their art. It is their instrument. By using the instrument parai we want to empower our

young Dalit women, because the rhythm of this art is in their blood. So, just to bring out their
talents, their energy and power, which is hidden in them, because as the caste system oppresses
the people, their art is also oppressed.25

Sister Chandra explained further that use of the name “Sakthi,” a term from Hinduism that explic-
itly means women’s power and energy, communicates that caste oppression also oppresses wom-
en’s power. Thus they intend the center’s method of personal self-esteem and community leadership
training for women through performance to contribute to the uplift of the wider Dalit community.
(See Supplementary Video 5: “They Can Dance and Sing” at int.sagepub.com/supplemental).

They feel that so much energy is hidden within. They do not know before that they can dance,
they can also sing, they can also act…After coming here…they feel that they have so much
talent within [them] and they realize that. In that way they are empowered and self-confidence
is built up…So that they first come out of their own fear and their own oppression…Then they
become the instrument to go to their own people and to communicate that we have such a lot of
power in us, so we have to come out…and proudly say, “I am Dalit.”26

Since 1990 Sakthi has trained fifteen to twenty village Dalit girls every year. (See Supplementary
Video 6: “I am a Dalit”27 at int.sagepub.com/supplemental). The training includes various folk arts,
including drumming. The confidence they gain from studying these folk arts along with yoga and
taekwondo, in turn helps the students achieve competency in tailoring, basket weaving, food preser-
vation (such as pickle making), terracotta figure and paper making. These skills allow them to make
an independent living when they return to their villages so they can avoid the oppressive caste
economy of agricultural work. But, most importantly, the self-esteem and leadership skills gained
from the tutoring help of the ICM sisters enable them to pass their tenth-grade exams. After success-
ful completion, some of the women return to their villages as community leaders, while others
become full time workers [or animators] who perform regularly as members of the Sakthi cultural

24 The Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (ICM) is a congregation founded in India by
Marie Louise De Meester of Belgium in the late nineteenth century. Their work primarily involves medi-
cal, educational, and social justice projects with a preferential option for the poor of all nations. Sister
Jeanne Devos of the ICM, a leader in India’s National Domestic Workers Movement, was nominated for
the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005. The Sakthi Centre was formed by Sr. Chandra and Sr. Escaline, who also
coordinates the Domestic Workers Movement in Tamil Nadu.
25 Interview Sister Chandra, Dindigul, Feb. 11, 2009.
26 Ibid.
27 From the documentary “Sakthi Vibrations” (2017), dir. Zoe Sherinian.
74 Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology 71(1)

troupe and train local children as well as elite college students in folk arts. Indeed, in the last few
years, some have finished twelfth grade and have gone on to college themselves.28
Members of Sakthi live communally, sharing their work and earnings, much like the early
Christian community described in Acts 3:44. After breakfast and morning chores, the community
hears the announcement of the parai and gathers for worship. Each member takes her turn leading
 leadership and improvisational skills in the process. The com-
her version of the liturgy, learning
munity members come from Hindu and Christian backgrounds. While each is free to worship in her
own way, Sister Chandra asserts, “Our prayer is so common. For the Boomie Tai, the earth, instru-
ments, and the Āssān, teacher.”29 Indeed these elements reflect secular, agricultural, and village
Dalit symbolic values common to most Tamils. In this socialist feminist ecumenical context, the
parai announces the community worship and in turn is venerated.


Sakthi Morning Worship

The morning worship that I filmed at the Shakti Centre in February of 2009 began with a call to
prayer played on the parai by two of the senior animators. (See Supplementary Video 7: “Sakthi
 played a fast twelve-beat celebratory pattern commonly called temangu
Morning Worship”). They
or tappattam used in secular or religious events, followed by several six-beat variations that built
the intensity. The young trainees, the full-time animators, and staff gathered in a large circle in a
open space toward the back of the compound. Ritual focus was on the bass drum, with other items
placed on the ground below it and several parai drums and pairs of sticks, long kolattam sticks, and
decorated karagatam pots placed around the raised bed in the center of the space to represent the
collective folk arts. After everyone had joined the circle, the two-parai drummers played a three-
accent cadence to end their announcement and laid down their drums. In silence, the women, some
with heads down and eyes closed, held hands to send their sakthi energy from one person to the
next around the circle to create a bond of community. This was followed by one of the trainees
making the first self-composed statement of respect in formal Tamil for Boomie Tai (Mother Earth).
Everyone then knelt on the ground and began to sing the first verse of “Vēdar Āttam” in unison,

Boomi Taiye, yengal sakthi Taiye.

Mother Earth, mother of feminine strength and power,
Uyir muuccaaga kapaavalee, yengal Taiye
Our mother who protects life through your breath.

The next statement by a student spoke about the oppression of Dalit women in the name of caste
and religion. It ended with a call to give respect to the folk arts or nattupura kalaigal (arts of the
countryside).
Three students then came forward to conduct the puja (worship). One placed a dot of sandal
paste on the bass drum. Another lit the camphor and incense and placed red kumgumum powder on
each parai next to the bass drum. They then presented the incense, a plate of flowers, and the lit


28 In 2009 there were 30 full time animators. While trainees have sponsored tuition, a beginning animator
receives a salary ranging from 300 to 1000 rupees, with senior members making Rs.3000 per month.
From this, the senior members have to contribute Rs.500 a month for their food. They also contribute
Rs.1000 a month to a common interest-free fund from which they can draw up to Rs.10,000 once a year
in case of family crisis or need. They typically perform an average of two times a week. By 2009 the
group had surpassed 1700 performances.
29 Interview with Sister Chandra, Dindigul, Feb. 11, 2009.
Sherinian 75

camphor to the drum (conducting ārati) in three circular gestures. The light was then presented
around the circle and the group began to sing:
Nala nala kalaihal valaranum
The more that we develop the folk arts,
Mela mela manidam mararanum
The more the people (Dalits) will grow and change.

While singing and after taking the light, each woman touched a drum, a set of sticks, or a karagam
pot, thereby making the drum of “the untouchables” ritually pure (touchable). This praxis reversed
the understanding of the drum as degraded, polluted, and unworthy, thereby reversing the disre-
spect that the society shows Dalits and women as Dalits. The lyrics above indicate that this reversal
or reclamation flows out from the musical objects and their symbolic meaning to re-humanize the
Dalit individuals and communities. They assert that these reclaimed tools of Dalit culture will
transform the young women and give them self-confidence.30 Next they sang:
Mannin makkal kalaikalile manita neeyam kaankiroom.
We see humanity in the art of the people of the earth (art of the soil)
Kalai valartta aasaanukku mudal vanakkam seyhiroom.
We offer our first praise to the teacher (āssān) who nurtures the arts.
Ee paattan paaddi kalakalelaam, azhiñcitaama kaakkanum
The art of our ancestors should be protected.
Atai pakkuvamaa miitteduttu valarkkanum
It should be revived and carefully nurtured.

They finished their worship by holding hands again in unity declaring at the top of their voices their
intentions to live life to the fullest with the internalized knowledge of their individual and collective
strength as Dalit women. This was followed by wishing each other morning greetings (varnakum).
Ovvoru Nodiyilum Vazhvoom
Every second that we live
Ovvoru Pozhudilum Vazhvoom
Every moment that we live
Unmai Azhaginil Kaanboom
We will find beauty in truth
Unnatham Ithu Ena Solvoom
We declare this the ultimate (truth)
Pennin Valimai Pesumpozhuthu
When we speak of a woman’s strength
Mannum Silirthu Nimirum
Even the soil will shuddder and rise in respect
Ovvoru Pozhudilum Vazhvoom
Every moment that we live.31

30 I also draw this understanding from a version of the worship heard in June of 2013 while making a docu-
mentary film on Sakthi. In this, one of the animators, Devi says, “We take an oath to respect these tools
and instruments, which will transform and give us self-confidence.” See Zoe Sherinian, Sakthi Vibrations.
31 I am grateful for translation assistance on the four sections of this liturgy above by B. Balasubrahmaniyan,
Bernard Bate, and Lavanya Raghuraman.
76 Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology 71(1)

The third song connects all three elements of worship. The first verse humanizes the art, grounding
its materialism in respect for the teacher and the soil (a Tamil metaphor for the source of indigenous
non-Brahminical people). The call to action in this verse is to protect, revive and develop the art,
by extension reclaiming its nature as culturally valuable, not polluted. The second verse claims
that, “from the working people’s art32 comes the sakthi or power to work and survive. Thus, we
should greet (physically touch and venerate) Mother Earth who gives this sakthi.” Indeed, they
believe it is Mother Earth from whom the folk arts like parai come. For Sakthi, the arts evolve from
 parai group, Kurinji Malar believe that
the deity (perhaps the deity’s grace), while the male village

the drum is the deity. Dancing and drumming brings on sakthi, which is received from Mother
Earth.
While Kurinji Malar theologically constructs the parai as Goddess, one as one, the three part

structure of Sakthi’s ritual can simultaneously be understood to symbolize the Christian Trinity, or
three in one: Boomie Tai is God the Mother, the great teacher, Āssān33 is the son Jesus, and the drum
and its sakthi feminine power is the Holy Spirit, as well as the power of the people.34 This symbol-
ism draws on Dalit Christian liberationist theological understandings recommended by theologian
J. Theophilus Appavoo, a friend and consultant with the Sakthi center, who through Tamil folk
music indigenized Christian theology and liturgy to Tamil village religious practices.35 In this
spirit, Sakthi constructs God as the mother, Jesus as a great teacher, and brings the empowering
qualities of transformative possession of village Hindu practices brought on by parai drumming

into Hindu-Christian ritual encounter. All three of these as one is sakthi (feminine energy). Passing
of sakthi in a circle at the beginning and end of the ritual emphatically represents the concept of
unity among the community and among the diverse outcaste groups central to Dalit theology and
politics. Sister Chandra explained the special power of the parai to encode liberation:

This art has so much in it, strength…The art is in them. It is their life….Their life has been
oppressed, so their art is also oppressed. If they stand up and awake and take their own art for
their liberation, surely it can work out, I feel. Because, this rhythm itself is tuned to liberation.
Because of that, many are oppressing this. This is my feeling. Why people oppress this art and
these people? Because they have the power in them, they have the energy in them. If they stand
up, they can fight.36

While Kurinji Malar appropriates the Brahminical religious symbols of the goddess of music
Saraswati to reclaim the parai’s positive value and themselves in relation to their upper caste neigh-
bors, Sakthi reclaims the parai and folk arts within a Hindu and Christian context by claiming them

as Tamil, agricultural, feminine power that comes from the oppressed people and their culture.

The Parai in Protestant Christian Liberation Contexts

¯
For three hundred years, leaders of the Tamil Protestant churches have constructed Christian iden-
tity and theology through the practice of karnatak, classical Indian and Western music.37 The

32 That is, the poor villagers, the proletariat, or the folk.

33 Āssān is a term also used by Dalit theologian Theophilus Appavoo to refer to Jesus.
34 When I suggested this interpretation of the three elements being venerated as the Christian Trinity, Sr.
Chandra said she had not consciously thought of that before, but agreed with the interpretation.
35 Sherinian, Tamil Folk Music.
36 Interview Sister Chandra, Dindigul, Feb. 11, 2009.
37 Zoe C. Sherinian, “Musical Style and The Changing Social Identity of Tamil
Christians,” Ethnomusicology 51 (2007): 238–80. Also see Sherinian, Tamil Folk Music.
Sherinian 77

reclamation of Tamil folk music by theologians and Dalit Christians in South India since the 1980s
has created what anthropologist Sherry Ortner describes as “slippages in reproduction, the erosions
of long standing patterns…moments of disorder and of outright resistance.” Through music, Dalits
are transforming Christian theology into a form of resistance to oppressive systems of caste, class,
and gender. Folk music is an “alternative practice…that becomes the basis of resistance and
transformation.”38
Dalit theologian, folklorist, and composer, the Rev. J. Theophilus Appavoo (1940–2005), was
the most prolific Protestant proponent of reclaiming folk music for Dalit Christian liturgy. Appavoo
advocated that village folk culture is both an appropriate vehicle for Tamil Christian ritual and the
necessary musical vehicle for the transmission of Dalit liberation theology. In his book Folklore for
Change,39 Appavoo argued that it is precisely colonial and upper-caste elite devaluation that gives
folk music its liberating protest function. Thus, he endeavored to encode the values of protest and
the transformation of oppression into Christian worship through Tamil folk music songs and litur-
gies. His most radical action was to use the parai frame drum in liturgical performance, recordings,
and to name it in his Christian song lyrics. 
Appavoo defined folk music as economically and socially accessible, drawing on community
skills, participatory, potentially re-creative, and orally learned. He understood folk music and its
meaning as not necessarily defined by formal musical elements, but by its purposeful use to recon-
struct a positive identity, to protest oppression, and to communicate experience and feeling relevant
to the life of the community.40
In his creation of folk songs and a fully sung, folk music liturgy, Appavoo drew upon rural musi-
cal moods, functional genres, instruments, stylistic devices, agricultural metaphors, and elements
of Dalit religions and politics. His hermeneutics were inspired by the study of theology with villag-
ers. He sought to create a participatory liturgical context where the message was primarily com-
municated through the heart and emotions. This was signified musically through mood and rhythm,
which he believed were the key structural elements to the transformative power of folk music. The
lyrics helped create musical moods through painting nostalgic rural images and through emotional
shock engendered by using “unrefined” language.41 Appavoo also consciously drew on the linguis-
tic accents of spoken (vernacular) Tamil to create dramatic emotional responses in performance. He
employed folk melodies, mnemonic syllables, and polyphonic rhythms associated with functional
genres.42 However, Appavoo’s most radical act of musical indigenization was to bring the parai
 a
and its driving syncopated rhythms into the sanctity of the church building and to the center of
Christian liturgy that reclaimed it as valuable and worthy, rather than associating it with pollution.
Appavoo often played the parai as he led seminary students and villagers in his Girāmiya Isai

Vazhipādu (“Liturgy in Folk Music”), while his students accompanied him on the rubbed, hour
glass-shaped urumi drum associated with the village goddess. The timbres of instruments and
voices used in his recordings such as the song Nalla Seydi (“Good News,” lyrics and audio below),
were typically raspy or nasal, intending to evoke and make positive the ambiance of the rural con-
text, particularly Dalit worship and festival. The lyrics of “Good News” describe the outcaste cēri
dwellers performing the folk genres of ēthapattu (drawing water from a well) to express their

38 Ortner, Making Gender, 18.

39 J.T. Appavoo, Folklore for Change (Madurai, Tamil Nadu: TTS Press, 1986).
40 Ibid.
41 Nostalgia for rural landscape and village culture is aimed towards middle-class urban Dalits who have
fled the village and all its negative associations, physically and psychologically.
42 For example, he used the tune of the funeral lament genre of oppari for the “Confession of Sin” as a
means to lament structural sins like casteism and sexism. Sherinian, Tamil Folk Music, 55–56.
78 Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology 71(1)

suffering. The angels respond with a battle cry to bury the corpse of caste by beating the pōr parai

(war drum) unified in one heart. One of Appavoo’s seminary students took his work a step further
to compose a Parai Isai Vazhipādu that associated the appropriate folk rhythmic patterns or genres
with the specific sections of the liturgy. In the liturgical performance, the student invited the con-
gregation to come to the center of the chapel to touch the drum as a symbol of unity. For one of the
seminary professors, a self-identified Dalit, who had been teaching about Dalit theology for many
years, this was a transformative experience. He had never touched or played the parai drum and
was moved to tears by this experience of reclaiming identity.43 (Listen to an audio recording of
Appavoo’s liturgy Nalla Seydi at int.sagepub.com/supplemental).

Gabriel: Where have the shepherds gone?

Dalits: We come singing eethapattu.44 Oh angels!
We won’t go to Bethlehem because we have been
outcaste (kept at a distance) as cēri45 dwellers. Oh angels,
we are afraid to disobey [the caste rules].
The caste devil has offered a big garland [of flowers].
But now, no glory [is given] to God.
That devil is making us dance to its tune.46
If our sufferings were measured now, it would fill ten million barrels.
Angels: Dandananakada.47 Kill caste! Beat the drum in the traditional48 way.
Dance as David did so that the foolish troublemakers may tremble. Fear not! Fear not!
Oh, Dalit people! Only you have the war drum to drive your fear away. If you play the
urumi, udukai, parai, pambai, thavil, tappu, tarai, and tappattai drums49 with one heart,
 
hallelujah will resound in Galilee. Fear Not! Fear Not! All people come together in
Christ to bury the corpse of caste.

In Tamil village religions, empowerment occurs through transphysical rituals of “possession”

by the sāmi (deity).50 Appavoo believed that emotions such as anger and fear are not pacified, but
rather channeled into action by even the weakest members of the community who have been pos-
sessed by the deity. The key to inducing this possession is the powerful sound of parai drumming.
Through reclaiming the content and form of folk culture by using folk music and instruments in
Christian worship, Appavoo similarly reclaimed Dalit status as non-polluting and esteemed; he
therefore intended to empower the oppressed within Indian Christianity to resist the values of the
local elite and missionaries who considered their music and its message an unworthy form of
Christian music and theology.

43 Personal correspondence with the Rev. Jebaraj. Also see Greg Downey, “Listening to Capoeira:
Phenomenology, Embodiment, and the Materiality of Music,” Ethnomusicology 46 (2002): 487–509.
44 A folk genre associated with drawing water from a well.
45 Village ghetto, usually located on “wasteland,” assigned to Dalits to reside.
46 The literal meaning here is jerking movements or unrestrained behavior.
47 Mnemonic rhythmic syllables.
48 To beat in the “proper” way is also implied here.
49 These are different types of folk drums.
50 Kapadia, Siva and Her Sisters, 128.
Sherinian 79

Conclusion
This essay has analyzed three cases of religious syncretism and indigenization of Christianity to
Tamil village culture, showing how Dalits have used the parai drum as a tool of psychological
transformation from internalized casteism. They have done so through bringing its empowering
potential as a symbol of a liberated identity and as a source of transformative sound to the center of
syncretic religious rituals. They reclaim and transform it from its construction in the caste economy
as polluted to a symbol and sonic tool of liberation against caste oppression in the Dalit Civil
Rights Movement.
The Dalit theologian Theophilus Appavoo and others who have indigenized Christian music
using folk music style question the inculcation of both Western and elite Indian values in Tamil
Christian music. Western values are rejected for colonial condescension that negates the power
of village practices, and elite Indian values are rejected for reinforcing indigenous principles of
social caste hierarchy. In his Dalit theology, songs, and liturgies, the parai and other village cul-
tural and Ādi Samayam religious elements are reclaimed, using their powerful local meanings
and cultural perspectives such as empowerment of the oppressed through strategies of communal
unity in ritual to (re)interpret the Bible in ways culturally parallel to early Christian social con-
texts. Christianity is expressed through the transformative aspects of village ritual elements such
as the parai drum.
 outcastes like the drum-set troupe Kurinji Malar have used the strategy of appropriation
Village
from above through reclaiming the parai drum as the deity Saraswati, thereby attempting to legiti-
 to face the daily oppression of upper caste villagers, even
mize their art and empower themselves
as they use the religious discourse of upper caste Hinduism to do so. While Appavoo would say this
strategy is not structurally liberating, because it does not transform the belief in the polluted nature
of the drum and drummers propagated through the dominant culture’s value system, this may sig-
nal a first step towards a shift in internalized casteism for these oppressed people that is accompa-
nied by professionalization and economic independence in the village ritual economy. Indeed, it
may be a shift towards identity reformation to embrace the anti-caste identity of Dalit.
The young Christian and Hindu women of the Sakthi Folk Cultural Centre use parai drumming
in their daily rituals of self-esteem and leadership building to create an empowered community of
Dalit females. The two radical Tamil Catholic nuns who direct Sakthi indigenize the Christian
Trinity by reclaiming the sacred parai drum and other folk arts as the Holy Spirit to create an

empowered Dalit female identity (sakthi) grounded in progressive Tamil cultural politics that com-
bine Dalit liberation theology and non-Brahmin Hindu symbols with feminism and the communal
values of Marxism. Sakthi’s ritual community-building through the sound and physical impact of
ritual drumming and dancing is the key to helping these young, oppressed women gain the confi-
dence to learn micro-economic skills like tailoring and to pass their high school exams. Finally, the
women of Sakthi practice a transformative daily lifestyle (like the early Christians in Acts) that
Appavoo and others only sing about and have only been able to put into practice intermittently on
a smaller scale within the seminary context.