exemplified escape of a woman from slavery through sacrifice. In her life story, she went through a kind of domestic slavery and decided to renounce it. Ultimately, Māriamman confessed through Sarasvati, “for Tamil women only I will do much good.” I wondered then what Māriamman meant. I guess I was assuming that Māriamman, as a great spirit, had to be a universalist. In fact, she was enshrouded in the specificities of place, time, history, and culture. Most of all, a belief in the power of self-sacrifice is a significant part of the Tamil world. In this sense, Māriamman was and is very Tamil. However, Māriamman was also, in Simone de Beauvoir’s terms, both immanent and transcendent. She had attained, in her own word, freedom (moḍcam).2
When I returned in 1990 to visit Sarasvati, Puli Kuḍḍi was in his mid-teens, handsome and sleek. By then, the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, a powerful Tamil militant group fighting against the government of Sri Lanka for freedom from discrimination) was at the front and center of Tamil thinking. I had not yet started research on them, and only thought it was crazy for the LTTE (if it was them) to set off a bomb in the Madras airport, killing many civilians, leaving shreds of bloody flesh all over the walls and ceiling. I imagined that Sarasvati, basically a peaceful woman, would be opposed to the Tigers. And maybe she was. But when I asked her what she thought of the LTTE, Māriamman, speaking through Sarasvati, said, “I wear different colors. Sometimes I am peaceful, and wear sandal-colored clothing. But sometimes it is necessary that I wear red.” I took this statement as a symbolic declaration on the part of Māriamman that she was in support of the LTTE and their violence.
That year was the last time I saw Sarasvati. Though she and most of her family were flourishing, a horrible thing had happened. Vasanti, Sarasvati’s eldest daughter, had died. She had complained of back pain, and then she died. The causes of her pain and her death were unknown. When this happened, Sarasvati told me she fought again with Māriamman, saying, “You were our protector. Is this the way you protect my daughter? By killing her?” To this question, Māriamman replied, “Who is more important? Your daughter or me?”
There is more. At the beginning, I was afraid to ask Sarasvati her caste, because it was impolite. But one day I asked. She answered, “Chakkili.” To me that meant “sandal maker,” and I thought no more of it. Later I learned that Chakkili was not only a caste name but a deeply derogatory term. In some parts of India the main job of Chakkiliyars was removal of human excrement, and some of them still perform that work. The history of antagonism between Paṟaiyars and Chakkiliyars is long-standing.3
During my research on the war in Sri Lanka, I learned that Chakkili is also a derogatory Sinhala term for Tamil. The implication is that all Tamils are as low and foul as excrement. The term Chakkili was most commonly used by Sinhalese for members of the LTTE, the Tamil Tigers, who renounced caste divisions altogether.
Another name for people of the Chakkili caste is Arunthathiyar, named after the unmoving polestar, Arundhati. The activists among them protest the fact that they must remove the contents of sewers, raw excrement, by hand, carrying it in pots or baskets on their heads. A person doing this work can pass out from the toxic fumes of the sewer and fall and die in the sewage. It is terrible work.
Arunthathiyar activists promote literacy and English-language learning for Dalits. They consider that, in India, learning English is essential for success. They search for and publicize white-collar jobs and university scholarships for which Arunthathiyars are eligible. They also publicize violence done against any Arunthathiyar. They protest the fact that Arunthathiyars are too often beaten, murdered, and dismembered with impunity.
In 2011, an Arunthathiyar woman, elected Panchayat president in a village of Tamil Nadu, was beaten by men who did not want to take orders from a Dalit woman. Four reporters, at least one of them himself of Arunthathiyar caste, visited the place of the beating, took notes, and wrote a report. They plan a documentary about this incident. The full report is too long to repeat here, but it includes these words.
On the street next to her house, at the turning past Karuppansamy temple, they attacked her. Opposite the library she had built, upon the road she had laid, they stopped the auto. The auto driver leapt out and fled. They clamped her mouth and eyes shut. They had already broken the streetlight on the road to ensure perfect darkness. They pulled her head back by her braid. They cut off the braid. They cut off an ear. They hacked at her, all over her body.
In photographs, she stands bold, straight and beautiful, radiating confidence and strength.… In every picture, she stands straight, shoulders square, her courage writ large upon her posture.
In hospital, she lies on a stretcher, both her arms and legs, her body covered in bandages. Her head shaved, the scar of the lost ear turning a sickly yellow, a blood stain on the bandage on the left hand, her sister holding up the bandaged right hand because it hurts too much to put it down. “I am afraid now,” she says. Krishnaveni, the brave. Krishnaveni, the strong. Panchayat president Krishnaveni, the woman who was given the title of Vīra Peṇmaṇi (Heroic Woman) by the women of her village. Panchayat president Krishnaveni, first woman panchayat president in the state to be attacked with such cold-blooded brutality. (Jayanth 2011)
A message one may draw from this article is that powerful women of the lowest castes live in danger in Tamil Nadu. In fact, all women of the lowest castes are in danger, whether they speak out or not. The protection of a powerful deity may or may not mitigate this danger.
The Narrative
The narrative comprising the bulk of this chapter is a translation from Tamil of my tape-recorded interviews of Sarasvati/Māriamman.4 Although the interviews were conducted in 1975, Sarasvati may be in the same neighborhood, doing the same work still. She is, or would be, in her later seventies today. What is certain is that mediums for Māriamman practice now in Chennai, as Māriamman is a popular god, and spirit possession continues to thrive in urban as well as rural areas of Tamil Nadu. What I write below remains in the present tense.
The central portion of Sarasvati’s mud house is a shrine for this deity. It contains an image of Māriamman—a triangular black stone with an angry face skillfully carved on it, with gleaming metal eyes and long fangs. Weekly the priestess adorns the image, first rubbing oil on its face, then painting it black with ink, red with kumkum, or yellow with turmeric, carefully outlining the eyes, then wreathing it with flower garlands, putting on its jewelry, and laying a clean petticoat in front of it. She performs this ceremony with all the absorption of a young person before a mirror.
She calls her mud house a temple, and neighbors and visitors also regard it as such. At the time that I met her, she lived there with her husband, ten children, three sons-in-law, four grandchildren, and several buffaloes, goats, and chickens. Although, through her skill as a priestess and healer, she had acquired some material wealth in the form of saris, stainless steel kitchenware, and livestock, she said that she could not move out of the mud hut because of the tradition that mediums of Māriamman live in poverty. That was then. Later she built a larger house in the same spot.
On Tuesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, or whenever someone arrives with a special request, she calls Māriamman to come upon her. At these times, and especially on the full moon and other auspicious days, her house will be crowded with supplicants. Several hundred people may come to her in a single day.
When she is ready to call Māriamman, she leaves the house, bathes, and returns, and sits cross-legged in front of Māriamman’s image. She closes her eyes and breathes the smoke from the camphor burning in a plate of ash before her. She yawns and is silent. In a few moments suddenly she shudders and lets out a roar. This is Māriamman. She caresses and scratches her body and tousles her matted hair. If someone has brought butter she smears it all over herself, eating some and giving the rest to visitors. She may stuff neem leaves in her mouth and wash them down with turmeric water. She laughs loudly, and begins to speak in a sign
