Paper short abstract:

The paper examines the festivals and confraternities of the Latin Catholics of Kerala against the background of concepts of Westernisation and Indianisation, syncretism and hybridity, and explores the analytical usefulness of these concepts for the understanding of the church festivals.

Paper long abstract:

In 1599, the Synod of Diamper, held in Kerala by the Portuguese with the aim to wipe out 'Nestorian' influences and 'Hindu customs' among Christians, passed a decree that included the command to establish confraternities for the service of the church and especially for conducting festivities.

Indeed, confraternities founded in the Latin churches in Kerala and became an important part of church festivals and parish life. Today, the church festivals, celebrated in honour of particular saints, constitute in many Latin Catholic parishes the grandest celebrations of the church year and the confraternities play an important role in the organisation and sponsoring of the festivals.

The structure of the confraternities and many other elements in the festival context show obvious parallels to confraternities and church festivities in Europe. However, the specific form these church festivals developed in Kerala and other parts of South India - for example, their highly hierarchical structure and entanglement with caste distinctions - made anthropologists and religious studies scholars term them 'indigenized' or 'indogenized'.

Based on fieldwork in a village in coastal Kerala, the paper compares, on the one hand, the Latin Catholic church festivals and confraternities with those in Europe, on the other hand, with temple festivals in South India. It explores the festivals and confraternities against the background of the concepts of Westernisation and Indianisation, syncretism and hybridity, and examines the analytical usefulness and theoretical relevance of these concepts for the understanding of the church festivals of the Latin Catholics.