Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses two instances of Dalit's aspiration for an egalitarian and inclusive India through their production of new idioms, symbols and narratives in the realm of religion.

Paper long abstract:

Based on the fieldworks done in Tirunelveli and Dharmapuri Districts of Tamilnadu, this paper explores the initiatives of the subaltern Dalits in advancing their project of emancipation. By appropriating the religio-cultural resources of the common people, they tap into the libreative potentials of the folk religious domains of different religious traditions—be it Christianity or Hinduism-- to construct an alternative social world that is all-inclusive and egalitarian in character. Such a space cannot be produced without challenging the existing schemes of domination and exploitation. By continuing the age-old traditional religious practices and metaphors, they seem to conform themselves to the old. But by innovating new idioms but thorough old religious grammar, they subtly introduce new meanings by which they not only invert the old hierarchical and dominant relations but also thwart the reproduction of inequality in the social realm. By enacting the life of Jesus on the stage through the folk drama known as 'Masatra Ratham' (innocent blood), they depict Jesus' life as a crusade against the then practices of untouchablity and social exclusion. By bringing in Ambedkar's portrait into the sacred space during Kodai (refers to the folk religious festival in Southern Tamilnadu), the Hindu Dalits not only invented a new patron who, by virtue of being the chief architect of India's Constitution, has showed them a road-map for an egalitarian social order but also expressed their agency in substituting him for earlier figures who had no relevance to their project of emancipation.