Accepted Panels

Teyyam is a ritual form of worship of North Malabar. The right to perform or be a teyyam is passed down hereditarily through matrilineal or patrilineal caste kinship lines. This right is known as avakasam (hereditary rights or privileges) and teyyam performing communities, even in contemporary times, continue to take their hereditary privilege/birth right (cherujenman rights) seriously. A majority of teyyakkars honour their caste obligations and perform at specific kavus or taravads. Framed as an exchange system between patrons and clients, strict rules continue to exist about who has the right to perform and in which spaces, and the remuneration that will be accorded. This results in teyyam being a highly uncertain source of income and necessitating other forms of employment for teyyakkars and their families to make ends meet. Around the turn of the 20th century, with the decline of the taravad due to colonial and post-independence legislation, and the rise of socialist and communist politics, teyyam began to be actively read as both a form of resistance and protest against caste and as artistic practice as opposed to ritual worship. Since the mid 20th century theatre, folklore and anthropological studies on teyyam have opened up new ways of engagement with world for the practitioners. Nationalism, tourism, globalization and North Malabar’s diasporic population have further been responsible for teyyam traversing national and transnational borders and being seen as a carrier of local, state, and national culture depending on where it is performed. My paper explores how teyyakkars negotiate their identities as gods and goddesses worshipped during the teyyam ritual and their uncertainties and hopes for the future as people from traditionally dispossessed and marginalized castes in North Malabar society during the rest of the time.