REVIEW OF WOMENS STUDIES

Attukal Pongala: Youth Clubs, Neighbourhood

Groups and Masculine Performance of Religiosity
Darshana Sreedhar

This article unravels the complex narratives which might

counter the popular perception of the pongala festival as
an all-women space. The all-male groupings that have
sprung up in and around the Attukal Bhagavathy temple
during the festival and their participation in the ritual are
examined closely. An analysis of the film Vedivazhipadu,
which is set against the backdrop of the festival, also
incisively questions the taken-for-granted purity of the
ritual and its nature as a hyper-feminine space.

Darshana Sreedhar (darshanatvm@gmail.com) is a PhD candidate

at the Department of Cinema Studies, School of Arts and Aesthetics,
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
Economic & Political Weekly

EPW

APRIL 26, 2014

vol xlIX no 17

he pongala1 at the Attukal Bhagavathy temple in Thiruvananthapuram is renowned as a gathering which

has made it eponymous with the title Sabarimala of
women.2 Even though it is only one of the many rituals which
form a part of the temples annual festivities, pongala has
almost single-handedly been instrumental in making the
temple a bustling site of pilgrimage. Pongala falls on the
karthika star of the Malayalam month of Makaram-Kumbham
(February-March), to be precise on the penultimate day of the
10-day festivities. Pongala, the collective act of cooking by the
women devotees as a nercha (service or offering) to goddess
Bhagavathy, is coloured strongly by its mass participation.
Occupying the space of an all-women ritual, the participation
of devotees on that day has run into such gargantuan numbers,
increasing with every succeeding year, that it has been appropriated as a hyper-feminine space and as a ritual performed
exclusively by women devotees. This is evident in the accounts of
the congregation of women and the participation of hundreds
of thousands of women devotees cutting across caste, class,
religion and other differences which is seen as being emblematic of communal harmony. The festival has made it twice to
the Guinness World Records as the largest annual gathering
of women in 1997 with a participation of 1.5 million women
devotees, and in 2009 with a gathering of 2.5 million women.
This article unravels the complex narratives which might
counter the popular perception of pongala as an all-women
space through two sets of observations. In the first section,
which forms a part of the ethnographic study carried out from
January to March 2013 in Attukal, I look at the pourasamithis
(citizen forums), youth clubs and neighbourhood groups which
have come up in and around the temple during the period and
their participation in the ritual. I look at how these all-male
groupings intervene and mediate discussions on the need for a
participatory mode of governance. This section also examines
how the Janamaithri Suraksha Project, launched by the Kerala
state government as a community policing initiative to curb
crimes and encourage community participation, finds its space
in the organisation of the Attukal pongala. The second section
of the paper looks at the Malayalam film Vedivazhipadu
(directed by Shambhu Purushothaman, 2013) which mobilised the Attukal pongala as a backdrop for the narrative and
the contestations following the release of the film. Vedivazhipadu was denied a certificate by the Central Board of Film
Certification (CBFC) and an extreme right-wing organisation
demanded that it be banned.
53

REVIEW OF WOMENS STUDIES

The days leading up to the Attukal pongala are marked by

jubilation, with the locality transforming into a mela and the
festive atmosphere giving a different colour to Thiruvananthapuram city. With vendors setting up their stalls selling fancy
items, roadside sales of mud pots, sales of pongala saris, and
even palmists and astrologers lined up to predict futures, a
range of activities take place simultaneously, attracting quite a
lot of customers. The narrow stretches leading to the temple
are packed with women, and an entourage occupying the
roads with bag and baggage looks out for convenient places
to offer pongala. Here, convenience need not always translate
into offering pongala in proximity to the temple. As the stretch
of land acquired by the temple trust to facilitate the offering of
pongala is not sufficient to accommodate the devotees, the
preferable sites for the devotees can very well be pavements or
bus stations or the railway station which give them easy passage back to their destinations once the offerings are sanctified with the sacred water by the priests in the evening. What
gives the pongala a democratic flavour is the manner in which
it spills out of the temple premises to the narrow lanes, government offices and a radius of approximately 14 kms around the
temple. The roads are dotted with varied symbolic markers
such as the huge banners of gymkhanas which are decorated
with the image of Hanuman, cut-outs of film stars promoting
their new releases, jewellery showrooms exhibiting their latest instalment schemes for prospective customers to buy gold
for marriages, and even huge hoardings announcing the state
governments prominent achievements in the course of its tenure. Thus, it is an array of fleeting and ephemeral experiences
that can easily distract the gaze of a passer-by.
Many Stakeholders

In the framing of the pongala, one can see the projection of

Attukal as a Sabarimala of women through the rhetoric of
numbers. Here, an anonymous crowd of women become the
uncountable mass and relative performance in numbers
compared to the previous years is taken without any statistical
accuracy to tabulate the extent of participation. Since it is a
scattered arrangement with spatial dispersion, the narrow
alleys or courtyards of houses or even parking lots can be
probable locations for the pongala. By virtue of being hosted in
the capital city of Kerala, its success is also a much anticipated
moment for the ruling government. If successful, the governments response towards tackling the anonymous crowd is
seen as a testimony to its efficiency in dealing with any exigency
at hand. Seen with electronic eyes in the form of multiple
cameras installed at various points by the satellite channels
reporting live from the temple premises, there is hardly any
uncertainty. The Thiruvananthapuram Municipal Corporation,
the nodal body invested with the responsibility of facilitating
the pongala by arranging the public works, water, electricity
and transportation for devotees, is put under constant
vigilance as any minor miscalculation can put the whole system
in disarray.3 For instance, in 2013, on the eve of the pongala,
water supply to many parts of Thiruvananthapuram suffered a
severe shortage as the major supply line of the Kerala water
54

authority from Aruvikkara reservoir had burst at four points.

In no time, alternative mechanisms to supply water had to be
arranged on a war footing as problems would have magnified
had the water shortage forced people to rely on unsafe water.4
More than being a ritual associated with a Hindu temple,
the Attukal pongala becomes an event which mobilises a variegated crowd. This includes devotees who have come from
faraway places to offer pongala, the people living in the locality
of Attukal who see it as an annual performance of hospitality
when they take care of the needs of the devotees, the vendors
for whom it forms a part of their routine spatial relocation, and
for those who are at Attukal on pongala duty, which itself
they see as a form of nercha. Even when the pongala has been
projected as a public ritual where devotees participate irrespective of their religious beliefs and where class and social boundaries are toned down to the minimum, the neat narratives do
cause discontent among sections inhabiting the locality of Attukal
who are not able to share the fruits of the festivities, in spite of
the physical proximity they share with the temple. For instance,
MSK Nagar colony, otherwise known as Sinkarathoppu, which is
only a few metres away from the temple, is a case in point.
The colony was formed in 1964 when the Scheduled Caste/
Scheduled Tribe (SC/ST) Corporation bought the land which
was leased out to Anandan Nambiar by the maharaja of Travancore. Housing more than a thousand people and comprising over 250 families, the majority of the colony residents are
dalits. Allegedly seen as an area which breeds drug
peddlers and goondas, this area is usually under the scanner
of the local police, as an area where problems can erupt
at any minute, as one of the police constables who is on a
regular patrol told me.5 Even during the pongala festival, the
colony is under strict vigil. Mukesh, a young man in his
mid-20s who is also an active member of Shiny Star Theatres,
a local club of the colony, told me as he was introducing me to
some of the women in the colony who were busy with the
preparations for the next day: When these women make use
of the colony space to perform pongala, it is a proactive step
towards claiming the dignified lives we aspire for. It is heartening to see them prefer our premises to offer pongala than
other places which are seen as better placed.6 Their limited
incomes do not prevent them from providing their guests
with whatever they need for the pongala, which includes a
feast and arrangements for the brick kilns and music system
to welcome the devotees. But the colony residents were upset
with the second-rate treatment meted out to them by the
Attukal temple trust. One of the office bearers of the residents
association said:
If the claims of [the] pongala as thinning down the class barriers were
true, they should also take into consideration the voice of the people
whose invisible presence is crucial for making [the] pongala a success.
There are contract jobs on offer for the span of the pongala. As of now,
there are no regulations followed on the appointment of the class four
contract workers during the pongala. The employment in this regard
is not open to all, but restricted to a particular caste. In this colony,
there are many unemployed youths who could have applied for these
jobs, but are tied down by the caste-specific nature of the jobs. We have
put this to the notice of the temple trust more than twice, citing it as a
APRIL 26, 2014

vol xlIX no 17

EPW

Economic & Political Weekly

REVIEW OF WOMENS STUDIES

proactive step to make [the] pongala an inclusive festival. But there
has been a conspiracy of silence regarding this as the Nair composition
of the temple trust makes it an exclusive terrain,7 in spite of the projection of the pongala as a harbinger of democratized participation.8

When petitions and negotiations failed, the collective decision

of the colony residents was not to bow down, but to channelise
their disappointments productively to successfully organise
the pongala in their vicinity and thereby attract more devotees
to their space in the coming years. But even in the participation of the clubs for the pongala festivities, there are restrictions in place. In 2006, clashes were reported in the colony
between the workers of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and
the Left Democratic Front (LDF) on pongala day, accentuated by
the demands from both sides to serve the women devotees.
From then on, only the MSK Nagar Residents Association was
allowed to organise the arrangements for the devotees. The
fans association and clubs, including Shiny Star Theatres,
were asked to pull back from the organising and instead asked
to do the groundwork for the residents association, who would
replace them as the organiser. If this was seen as a preventive
measure to maintain peace, it ended up alienating many
youngsters who felt they were being discriminated against as
the organising of pongala-related programmes was something
they were closely associated with until then. While other clubs
in the locality were given sanctions by their respective residents associations and were actively using the pongala space,
the clubs at MSK Nagar had to shield their service under the
shadow of the residents associations, once again bringing to
light the differential treatment meted out to them on account
of not being part of the middle class milieu.
Karyakaran: Male Organising of the Hyper-Feminine Space

The pongala also becomes an instance where one can see the
dynamic negotiations which transpire among the various residents associations, sports and arts clubs and pourasamithis
dotting the locality of Attukal and the nearby areas like
Manacaud and Fort. On pongala day, the entry of men is limited
to areas adjoining the temple, with only those with special
passes allowed entry to the temple. This is what makes the role
of these all-male spaces as seen in the pourasamithis and clubs
all the more striking. The tradition of issuing special passes and
badges for volunteers and the queue system for crowd control
started in 1968 when Minnal Parameswaran, the sub-inspector
of the Fort police station, stepped in to take charge of the law
and order situation on pongala day.
Apart from being the space where men congregate on the day,
these spaces multiply as parallel sites of spectacle. The highlights of these spaces are roadside pandals or tents erected with
temporary shrines decked up with idols of Attukal Bhagavathy.
The pandal will have the banner of the club inscribed on the
top, sound sets and decorations, including the offering of fruits
and performance of puja. This in some ways is similar to the
organising of the puja pandal during Durga puja in West Bengal,
but on a reduced scale. The male members of clubs and associations perform their role as karyakaran,9 as a responsible
line of sergeants ready to take charge of the situation at hand.
Economic & Political Weekly

EPW

APRIL 26, 2014

vol xlIX no 17

This is a crucial tangent which reiterates the male organising

of an ostensibly hyper-feminine space. Most accounts of the
Attukal pongala demarcate its distinctness as an all-women
space. Here, participation of women devotees is seen more
in terms of the liberatory potential invested in the pongala
as a ritual in giving women possibilities to work out the
narrow confines of their life worlds (Jenett 1999). But as I have
argued elsewhere, it is also true that there are patriarchal interests vested in the pongala as a ritual, especially as Attukal
Bhagawathy is believed to be a reincarnation of Kannagi
(Sreedhar, forthcoming). Here, pongala becomes an annual
chastity vow performed by women under the watchful eyes of
the seemingly liberal state, opening out its bounty to ensure its
smooth conduct. The paternalistic gaze which structures the
conduct of the ritual renders the ritual with its much hyped
status of a womens ritual. In fact, except for the last two
days leading up to the pongala, the temple is open to all, including men. So, the sobriquet Sabarimala of women that is
ascribed to Attukal is clearly inaccurate, since in no way can
such a title justify the women devotees on pongala day as the
only devotees. But the temple trust seems to have realised the
advantages of the marketability of such a title they procured
the trademark for it. So now if anyone wants to use
the title Sabarimala of women, they will have to get prior
permission of the temple trust (Sreedhar 2014). There is a
diffused exercise of power which is at work in the overall
organising of the pongala where the women devotees are put
on a pedestal only to reinstate the binary of Kannagi and Matavi,
the two mythological female figures who become the embodiment of chastity and profligacy respectively.10 I return to this
thought in detail in the second section of this paper which
discusses the film Vedivazhipadu.
Amidst the celebratory mood that engulfs the city, one can
also see the busy preparations which the residents associations and local clubs are engaged in, ranging from arranging
the kilns on which the devotees would offer the pongala to arranging for the food which would be served to the devotees. It
is mostly a month and a half prior to the pongala that many
clubs and pourasamithis start their preparations towards setting up their planning meetings. The way the male organising
of an all-women ritual translates in terms of the arrangements
to facilitate the smooth conduct of the pongala is also symptomatic of the paternalistic modes of interaction shared by
many members as they reach out to those who are in need.
Also, what is equally pertinent are the modalities used in the
course of the pongala to strengthen the sense of belonging
which is built on the lines of local power and informal interaction. The term Attukal is used loosely to refer to ones place
of habitation, even when the person concerned may not be
staying in the area demarcated as Attukal by the residents associations. Manacaud where Attukal is located, has the highest
number of residents associations within a radius of 5-6 kms.
Each narrow lane has a separate residents association. The
pongala becomes a moment when the localities, which are
otherwise referred to broadly as a part of Attukal, take on a
local flavour, attempting to carve out an identity of its own by
55

REVIEW OF WOMENS STUDIES

floating pourasamithis to stand for the locality they represent.

Here Attukal becomes a signifier which is used by the localities
to find their own footing. The all-male spaces of these groupings are crucial to unravel how neighbourhood groups envisage their role as custodians of culture and the modalities
through which values of responsible participation are scripted
into the narrative of the pongala.
There could be overlapping definitions of locality which
link the pourasamithis, youth clubs and residents associations. At the same time, each one of them attempts to make the
use of locality to mark its distinction in terms of its reach and
functioning. The performative space of organising is the key
trope that is mobilised by the groups in order to make their
presence visible. A close look at the composition of these clubs
reveals how they see their roles as facilitators of the pongala.
There is a strong way in which these groups stand in as a visible marker for the locality they represent, even to the extent of
incorporating the dictates of propriety and responsible participation as essential prerequisites for taking on the garb of a
pothupravarthakan (public worker). Most pourasamithis and
youth clubs are transient spaces as they are organised only
during the pongala and disappear immediately after the
festivities are over. Residents associations, on the other hand,
function within the matrices of a well-defined structure,
which necessitates that decisions have to be taken collectively,
heeding the opinions of the members on board. There are
stark differences in terms of the membership and subscription
policies as well. While the residents association stipulates
membership from all members of the locality, pourasamithis
and clubs are temporary groupings that are entered into by
few individuals for a specific period, after which the members
need not hold on to the membership. Unlike the public subscriptions (which could very well be forced on all members),
followed by the residents associations, the local clubs mostly
collect money from the members voluntarily, as they put it to
rubbish the allegation that they use the money collected for
their own pleasures. As one of the members of the club
Padinjarenada Friends said, We dont collect money from the
locality. If we are using our money for the decoration and the
speaker that would not come under spending public money.11
There is now a regulation that the clubs and pourasamithis
that participate in the pongala will have to register themselves
in order to avail the sanction from the food and safety department for serving food as well as permission from Janamaithri
police for the use of a sound system. This specification forced
many groups who earlier did not feel the need for registration,
to do so. One of the aftermaths of this is the conflation of the
range of activities performed by the clubs and pourasamithis
into one rubric. For instance, the use of the term club need
not solely refer to a sports and arts club run by youngsters.
Many trade unions used the tag of club to register themselves. It was the lack of a better name that made the trade
union of head-load workers and small shopkeepers based in
Chalai, one of the busiest markets, to register under the name
Attukal Arts and Sports Club. Since there was already a
pourasamithi in the same area by the name of Vyapari
56

Vyavasayi Paurasmithi,12 they had to settle with the tag of

club. Since accountability and transparency in monetary dealings became their catchword, the Attukal Arts and Sports Club
even incorporated the income-expense report of the pongala
in their meeting. It is the inadequacy of the tag as an arts and
sports club that was repeatedly invoked in the interviews I
conducted with some of the members. For many, the registration process offered a space to self-reflexively look at their
mode of functioning and vie for a change in terms of their nomenclature to that of pourasamithi, something which they can
relate to very well.
Male Bonding

By carefully mapping the topography of Attukal, one gets a

birds-eye view of the participation of men in varied capacities
in activities related to the pongala. The vendors at the kiosks
which crop up during the pongala in the deserted stretch adjacent to the temple are mostly male.13 This was an area earlier
occupied by the devotees to set up pots. This development
started in the last five years or so, mostly as a contractual
arrangement for the 10 days of the festival. Even when the
area adjacent to the temple is barricaded to make it an exclusive space for women devotees, the male vendors are given
special identity cards. Tenders are called for in the allocation
of stalls and separate rates are on offer for stalls depending on
site-specificity, its dimension and measurement. This might
include small teashops, ice-cream parlours, snacks parlours
and stalls of companies like Munnar Valley Tea. Many of the
employees at these stalls are signed in for the 10-day period
and there are catering assistants, blacksmiths and even college
students who take this as a part-time job.
Male bonding is strong and evident during the pongala. The
pongala special duty is much sought after by many drivers,
conductors and control inspectors of the Kerala State Road
Transport Corporation (KSRTC), as it is annually performed as
a nercha by many of them. There are frequent buses that ply to
and fro from Attukal to Thampanoor, the main bus depot, and
even to distant parts of Thiruvananthapuram. The Kerala
police also have deputed more than 5,000 staff, including the
Janamaithri police, to tighten security for the festival. There
are even rare instances where the pongala is offered by men,
which is publicised widely more as exception to the rule. In
most instances, pongala offerings by men are directed at a
public cause, like stalling the price increase of petrol or for the
installation of the high court bench in Thiruvananthapuram.
There are even pourasamithis which have offered pongala,
like the East Fort pourasamithi which offered a 1,001 handfuls
of rice14 as a nercha to Bhagavathy for the speedy recovery of
Jagathy Sreekumar, an actor who was in a critical state in the
hospital after a major accident.
Another key category of players is the 1,000-plus male
priests who are deputed to reach every nook and corner of the
streets to sanctify the offerings. On the day, the priests are
kept within the confines of a hall in the temple where they are
issued chits with numbers. The representative from the
respective pourasamithi or residents association would come
APRIL 26, 2014

vol xlIX no 17

EPW

Economic & Political Weekly

REVIEW OF WOMENS STUDIES

with a token number an hour before the auspicious time designated for sanctifying. When the two token numbers match,
the priests are released (and this is the term that is actually
used to refer to the final deployment of the priest). Apparently,
this system of allocation was started a few years ago when the
temple witnessed a scuffle between two pourasamithis to get
priests of their choice. The representatives of each locality
would want the best priest, as the efficiency of organising is
seen in terms of how well equipped they are in facilitating the
devotees to leave for their homes as soon as the auspicious
time comes for the priest to sprinkle the sacred water over the
offering prepared by the women. To prevent selective allocation of priests, there is now a veil of anonymity over the selection process and the representatives do not know who their
priests are until the moment of final allocation. The sight of
the priests mounted on two-wheelers and being taken to the
sites of the pongala is a spectacle worth witnessing.
In the last couple of years, spaces which were earlier considered inauspicious have now become preferred sites, more
on account of the pourasamithis which have tried to integrate
their participation by attracting devotees from far-off places.
For instance, it is believed that the pongala can be performed
only on one side of the Killi River; the other side, with areas
like Kaladi, Nedungadu and so on, was not preferred. But as
the number of devotees increased, women started to occupy
the parts which were on the other side of the Killi River as
well. The Maruthoorkadavu bridge helped trigger the expansion of the area covered by women devotees. For instance, the
MLA road pourasamithi tried to cash in on this influx of devotees by charting out their area as a site which can accommodate the devotees along with the provision of auxiliary services
such as vehicles arranged by the pourasamithi which would
wait at Thampanoor bus station to provide the conveyance for
the devotees who would want to offer pongala at the MLA
road.15 Medical camps were also organised for the devotees,
which included special counters for patients of cataract and
diabetes. For women who cannot visit the temple on pongala
day, a vessel is placed with the image of Attukal Bhagavathy
as a backdrop. The offerings, including money, camphor,
sindoor, sandalwood and incense sticks, can be put in the
vessel which would be offered at the temple in the evening
by the pourasamithi.
The participation of pourasamithis, clubs and residents
associations is also connected to the space opened up by
Janamaithri community policing. This becomes an instance
where one can see the different layers of interactions producing new matrices of relationships and hierarchies. Envisaged as
a project to fight crime as well as to improve the security of the
neighbourhood by linking the residents associations to form a
network, the Janamaithri Suraksha project was launched by
the state government in 20 select police stations in March
2008.16 The Janamaithri Suraksha project at the Fort police
station, which has jurisdiction over the area covered by the
devotees during pongala, became the task force entrusted
with organising the pongala. This includes reaching out to the
residents associations, pourasamithis and clubs to arrange for
Economic & Political Weekly

EPW

APRIL 26, 2014

vol xlIX no 17

the prerequisites for a successful pongala and to also oversee

its conduct. The 150 residents associations which form part of
the Fort station Janamaithri project are divided into 12 sectors.
If the entry to the police station on a normal day can be a bit
unprecedented for many, the Janamaithri desk stands out
because of the relative ease and sense of comfort it provides to
the visitors who come there with their grievances. The pongala
planning meetings with the representatives of the womens
safety council, residents associations and senior citizens
forums involve detailed preparations on how to increase the
efficiency of the police who are deputed as a part of pongala
duty. The crux of community policing was to have a participatory mode of decision-making, where the representatives of
the residents associations could bring in their grievances,
suggestions and lines of action. At the same time, the Attukal
pongala also brings to light the contestations over ideas of
responsible participation and service which form the backbone
of the Janamaithri, but could also potentially alienate many who
want to be part of the festival.
Notions of Propriety

For many members of the pourasamithis and clubs, being part

of the pongala as volunteers to help with the crowd control,
arranging for the free food, helping the women devotees to
arrange the brick kilns and even arranging cultural programmes
and film screenings for them, form part of their nercha. But
these run amok with the notions of propriety and legitimisation which are seen as necessary preconditions for their
participation as charted out by their respective residents
associations. The organisation of pongala festivities by the
pourasamithis and clubs has to be routed via their respective
residents associations by issuing a letter authorising them to
be members of the locality. But, at the same time, it is the
discretion of the residents associations whether they would
want to include the clubs as part of the organising of the pongala.
While the Janamaithri Suraksha project allows the respective
residents associations to have the final say, before the request
is processed and sent to the police station for sanction, it also
means that the credentials of the local clubs is decided solely
by the equation the clubs share with their residents associations. The patronising attitude of the residents associations
often puts them at loggerheads with the clubs. In one instance
that was reported, the conflict-ridden relationship between
the youth club Manacaud Young Stars and their residents
association led to the filing of a petition by the members of the
club asking for police protection to serve the food they had
arranged for the devotees, without any kind of hindrance
from the concerned residents association.17 On the other
hand, the fans associations are not bound by the authorisation
letter from the residents association as the members come
from various parts of Kerala. The youth clubs are joined by
fans associations of various film stars like Mamooty Fans and
Welfare Association, Vijay Fans Association, Dileep Fans
Association, Rajnikant Fans Association, Kalabhavan Mani
Fans Association and so on, who have deputed special service
teams to help the women devotees.
57

REVIEW OF WOMENS STUDIES

Another instance which showcases the paternalistic framing of the ritual could be seen in the audio CD which is
produced and distributed by the Janamaithri Suraksha Committee and Fort police in 2013. The eight-minute CD begins with
devotional songs in praise of Attukal Bhagavathy, followed by
the announcers stating that Bhagavathys blessings have
destined them to take charge of the safety of the devotees.
By framing the guidelines in the guise of the norms which
would help the devotees by providing a hassle free religious
experience, the text of the announcement lays out the responsibility which is invested in the police to take charge of the
situation. The reminders for the people who participate in
various capacities, including the devotees, mike operators,
pourasamithis and auto drivers, foregrounded the exceptional
status of the pongala. For instance, one of the reminders to
the men says: Men, please do not intrude into the privacy of
women. Remember, Attukal is known as the Sabarimala of
women . The announcement is interspersed with details of
the Janamaithri Suraksha project and its various programmes,
a brief history of Attukal and the need for community policing
to ensure the motto For safety, police and people. The key
programmes floated by the government, such as the Student
Cadet Corps (SCC), found mention in the announcement on the
need to instil moral uprightness, national pride and service
mentality in children. Alongside this, parents are warned about
the misuse of mobile phones and the Internet by children and
of the need for vigilance.
The one key strand that conjoins the multiple layers opened
out by the announcement is the warning it gave to the women
devotees women are pious womens greatest enemy. Referring to chain-snatchers and pickpockets, the announcement
reminds the devotees of the need to be cautious about some
women who pretend to be devotees and infiltrate into the mass
of pious women while they are engrossed in their prayers.
This binary between the pious women devotees and the
so-called others, who are hell-bent on unsettling the sanctity
of the temple, is particularly emphasised in the final reminder
to the pious women to report these suspicious women to
the police and cleanse the place of its impurity. The clubs,
residents associations and pourasamithis who have registered
for the mike sanction for the pongala were given the CD and
were asked to play it every half an hour. Through the notion of
service, the announcement of the Janamaithri Suraksha
Committee actually extends the day-to-day paternalistic structures of social control into the space of the pongala. The genderliberal aspect of the pongala, therefore, is ephemeral at best,
while it is the patriarchal norm that is actually performed
under the garb of the liberatory exception.
Censorship and the Foregrounding of
the Kannagi/Matavi Split

When the preparations for the Attukal pongala scheduled for

February 2014 were announced in December 2013, enthusiasm
was brimming over about a Malayalam film made on the
Attukal pongala which was about to be released in a weeks
time. Even though pongala festivities have been documented
58

by researchers like Dianne Jenett, who has done intensive

work on the Attukal pongala, perhaps it was for the first time
that it became an integral part of a mainstream film narrative.
In Vedivazhipadu, debutant director, Shambhu Purushothaman,
made use of real footage shot over a period of two years,
even including interviews which were incorporated as a part
of the film. Vedivazhipadu unexpectedly ran into controversy
when it was denied a certificate by the CBFC regional office at
Thiruvananthapuram. The film has Attukal as the backdrop of
its narrative and explores the happenings of 24 hours, starting
with the devotees flocking to Attukal for the pongala and
concludes with the pongala the next day. Focusing the narrative
on the domestic space of three couples whose strained and
incompatible relationships are set against the episodes that
happen on the day of pongala, the film came to be seen as a sign of
profligacy when the censor board declared it as disrespectful
to the women devotees who have gathered for the festival. If the
initial response to the disapproval from the censor board evoked
a lukewarm reception, with many citing it as a publicity
stunt, in due course the discussions moved into the realm of
moral hypocrisy which the film was trying to unravel. Speaking about the censorship controversy, the director said,
Usually there are negotiations over the scenes which have to be
removed and whether it is a U/A or A certificate which would be issued
accordingly. But, we were in fact shocked to know that the problem
CBFC had was with the theme per se, which is woven into the narrative
so intricately that if you remove pongala from the narrative, the whole
narrative collapses.18

The problem that the censors had with the film is explicit in
the censor report, signed by T P Madhu Kumar, additional
regional officer, CBFC. The report states:
Having regard to the theme of the contents of the film which portrays
the story of a few friends indulging in prostitution, drinking and
smoking of cigarettes and drugs while their wives are away participating in the famous festival of women called Attukal Pongala at
Trivandrum, the committee has come to the conclusion that the portrayal of the festival which is inseparably intertwined with the theme
of indulgence and promiscuity in the film, is likely to hurt the religious
sentiments of millions of women devotees who perform the ritual of
pongala at Attukal temple. Therefore the film in its entirety is violative of the para (X11) of the guidelines and hence the film cannot be
certified for the public exhibition in its present form.19

When the film was referred to the Revising Committee under rule 24, it gave the film a clean chit with a few mutes in the
dialogues. The film was given an A (adult) certification. The
probable reasons why the censor board decided to unilaterally
opt for denial of the certificate says quite a lot about the terrains of sanctity and profanity which the film was carefully
trying to straddle. In the meantime, the responses to the film
varied from outright allegations of it having tried to copy the
formula of New Generation cinema (Kumar 2013) to its failure to convincingly depict some of the characters who were
bordering on the ludicrous (Palicha 2013) or even as a sex
comedy which is ineffective as a wet firecracker.20 The allegations of promiscuity raised by the censor board were taken up
by Hindutva forces and there were protests against the screening of the film. In many places, the screenings were disrupted
APRIL 26, 2014

vol xlIX no 17

EPW

Economic & Political Weekly

REVIEW OF WOMENS STUDIES

by the Shiv Sena; in others, women were denied tickets in

many theatres on account of it being labelled a sex film.
The use of the social media with regard to the film also has
to be taken into account to examine the changing trajectory
that the promotion of the film took. What in fact could have
been problematic was its title. There are more than two layers
of meaning which are embedded in the use of the word vedi.
On the one hand, the term in its entirety could stand for the
ritual which is offered as nercha, involving the bursting of
crackers. On the other hand, in colloquial Malayalam, vedi can
very well stand for a transgressive relationship that is rooted
in the realm of clandestine pleasures. This was the contentious
realm which the films producers expected would accrue after the
censoring of the film. But mired in the larger problems that the
board was concerned with, this went unnoticed. Apparently,
one of the two women members who were part of the reviewing committee of the film was a staunch devotee of Attukal
Bhagavathy. This was cited by many as one of the reasons why
the depiction of the sex worker in the space of the pongala had
caused so much ire. The posters of the film were bold statements, which could also withstand censorship regulations.
While one of the posters stated: Moralists, please forgive,
another one featured a big A in the background, and the
third showed the three male leads of the film, each holding a
slate close to his chest. The latter resembled the photographs
taken of convicts with their name and age written on slates.
The films poster also had images of a cockerel, alluding to the
colloquial use of the Malayalam word kozhi (cockerel), which
also means a womaniser. One of the actors in the film, Murali
Gopi, was vocal in his protests against the ban. In a Facebook
post, which also included a screenshot of the famous Himanshu
Rai and Devika Rani lip lock in Karma (1933), he wrote:
Censor board, with the kind of guidelines which it has set for itself, is
State sponsored creative terrorism...When a nation and its people lose
their ability to laugh at themselves, that is the first sign of the impending brain death. It is actually such draconian steps that sow the wrong
ideas in the peoples hearts.21

The film attempts to create a multilayered narrative when it

punctures the myth of pious women and their unadulterated
religiosity as the sole signifier of women who participate in the
pongala. Often there are societal expectations that coerce
women into becoming ideal female figures, emulating the
canon of Kannagi-like figures who take on the world by virtue
of their chastity. The film even reviews the eulogistic accounts
of the hospitality provided by the people in the locality of
Attukal in accommodating the visitors on pongala day, when it
hints at the casteist attitude inherent in many families and the
parochial world views that condition it. For instance, one of
the male characters in the film comments on the newfound
enthusiasm of his wife on pongala day: It is a bit surprising
how she can transform in a matter of seconds from someone
who is finicky about people from other castes visiting us, to
becoming an ideal host.
If there was anything radical the film pushed for, it was in
the conflation of the figures of the sex worker and Kannagi and
the ways that the conflicting binaries between the Kannagi
Economic & Political Weekly

EPW

APRIL 26, 2014

vol xlIX no 17

and Matavi are reconciled. The opening credits are depicted

through murals recounting the Kannagi myth as she burns the
city of Madurai to ashes to avenge the (mistaken) death of her
husband and becomes the framing device for the film as it
explores the subliminal space of the pongala. The commentary
on the origin of pongala during the opening credits is given by
Praveena, an actress whose role as the devi in devotional serials
has made her a television goddess, a new prototype of
goddess in the calendar images, replacing Raja Ravi Varmas
images. The last scene shows the sex worker being offered
prasad by a woman decked up like a goddess, played by
Praveena. In effect, this final scene dissipates the myth of the
pongala as the sole space of the pious woman.
By showing an encounter with the figure of the goddess and
the figure of the prostitute, Vedivazhipadu dispels one of the
foundational myths of the ostensibly sanctified space of the
Attukal pongala. Scenes such as these and the anti-casteist angle
in dialogues such as the one mentioned earlier destabilise the
myth of the pongala as a homogenously secular and liberating space in terms of gender, class and caste. Additionally,
Vedivazhipadu provides us with another window to view the
pongala ritual and this has to do with the festivals organisational structuring in terms of gender. The male characters in
the film, for instance, view the day of the pongala as free
time away from their wives, when they can give vent to their
licentious desires which have been suppressed by domesticity.
On the other hand, the inclusion of a female character, Vidya
(played by Mythili), who is reluctant to perform the pongala
but has to play along because of familial pressure gives a different twist to this womens only ritual by suggesting that
the liberation that the pongala supposedly provides is often
forced upon women by societal norms of propriety and ideal
womanhood. Vidyas final rebellion in her pretence of going
to perform the pongala wearing the customary sari while
actually using the time to sleep with her husbands friend,
Joseph (Indrajit), who is one of the three friends, shatters this
myth of liberation and ideal womanhood. Throughout the film,
the live telecast of the pongala in the background becomes
crucial, as it is used by the men as a means of marking time
and synchronising their alternate life on the day of the
pongala in terms of the progression of the ritual that is being
broadcast. In doing so, Vedivazhipadu incisively questions the
taken-for-granted purity of the Attukal pongala and its
nature as a hyper-feminine space.
Conclusions

Both the real organisational level of the pourasamithis and

the youth clubs, and the fictional rendering of the lives of
men and women in Vedivazhipadu, points towards one thing.
In many ways, the foregrounding of a specific kind of liberalhyper-feminine discourse serves to disguise its nature as token
liberalism. Both the state governments political appropriation of the Attukal pongala and the temple trusts near-corporate
branding of the festival feed a myth of gender-egalitarianism.
At best, this can be seen as a structuring principle, whereby
Keralas dominant patriarchy attempts to hide its nature as
59

REVIEW OF WOMENS STUDIES

patriarchy; at its worst, it perhaps is a kind of ontological

violence, whereby women are invited to view themselves
not as victims or as the oppressed, but as queens, even if
their reign lasts for a mere day or two. The day-to-day functioning of the festivities, as I have tried to show, is still not
devoid of these discriminatory structures, be it in the realm of
Notes
1 The collective act of cooking by the women
devotees.
2 Sabarimala is a pilgrimage centre in Pathanamthitta dedicated to Sastavu (Ayyappa). The
entry of women to this temple is limited to premenstrual girls (below the age of 10) and postmenopausal women (above 60 years). Hence
the title of Attukal as Sabarimala of Women
is a carefully thought out strategy to showcase
Attukal as an alternative Sabarimala, that is,
one which is exclusively for women.
3 Full-fledged government involvement in terms
of support for the pongala started in 1979 when
M R Chandrasekhara Pillai was the chairman
of the Attukal temple trust. The government
circular issued by C P Nair, the chief secretary,
had a provision for a state-level coordination
committee which would oversee the arrangements for the pongala.
4 The pipe burst is not new; it has happened before. There have been times when officials at
the water works department have colluded
with private contractors who supply water to
cut the pipes to benefit the contractors. In this
particular instance, the pipe burst happened
hours before the pongala thus aggravating the
situation, allowing private contractors to reap
substantial profits.
5 Interview with Raghavan, police constable, in
Thiruvananthapuram on 22 February 2013.
6 Interview with Mukesh in Thiruvananthapuram
on 25 February 2013.
7 The Attukal temple trust was formed in 1968
with a 28-member committee. Later, following
a court case, the membership was increased to
117. The court ruled that there should be two
appendices; one consisting of the new members
and the second one consisting of the old members. As the list of old members gets reduced
following their deaths, newly selected members
could join the first list.
8 Interview with Krishnan Kutty, secretary of

9
10

11
12

13

14
15

16

everyday practices of organisation, policing and control, or in

the realm of representation and responses to narratives. The
Attukal pongala may well be celebrated as the Sabarimala of
women but what goes unsaid and remains hidden in parentheses is that it is not necessarily for the women and by
the women.

the MSK Nagar Residents Association, on

24 February 2013.
In Malayalam it translates as someone who is in
charge of the situation in a supervising position.
The Tamil epic Cilappatikaram: The Tale of an
Anklet by Illanko Adikal captures the retributive justice of Kannagi, the mythic heroine
who later gets reified as Goddess Pattini, for
the mistaken death penalty imposed on her
husband Kovalan by the King of Madurai. As a
much celebrated epic on the virtues of female
chastity, Kannagi gets reified as the embodiment
of ideal femininity, while Matavi, a courtesan
with whom Kovalan had an affair, becomes the
profliguous figure.
Interview with Subramony, member of Padinjarenada Friends, on 20 February 2013.
The term vyapari vyavasayi comes from the
larger collective Vyapari Vyavasayi Ekopana
Samithi (KVVES) which was formed in 1980 to
safeguard the interests of traders and businessmen. Vyapari Vyavasayi pourasamithi is managed by the traders and that accounts for why
the head-load workers decided not to float a
pourasamithi, but change it to an arts and
sports club.
Almost 98% of the vendors are men. A few
women who were managing the stalls were doing so in the absence of their husbands. There
was only one woman who had taken the stall
on lease, but she was managing the stall with
the support of her brothers.
An offering in which the pongala pot is filled with
a thousand and one handfuls of rice for cooking.
Earlier known as Bund road, it was renamed
MLA road as the MLA funds were utilised
for the development of the road, including
Maruthoorkadavu bridge which was frequented by the residents to reach Kaladi.
It has been successful in building the trust of
the community by taking them into the decisionmaking bodies and streamlining their resources
for collective participation.

17 Interview with Vinu, member of Manacaud

Young Stars, in Thiruvananthapuram on
21 February 2013.
18 Interview with Shambhu Purushothaman in
Thiruvananthapuram on 13 January 2013.
19 Annexure to the CBFC letter No DIL/178/2013THI dated 26/11/2013.
20 Vedi Vazhipadu, viewed on 13 January 2014
(http://www.sify.com/movies/vedi-vazhipadureview-malayalam-15045160.html).
21 Murali Gopi Lashes out for Banning Vedivazhipadu, Oneindia Entertainment, 26 November
2013, viewed on 15 January 2014 (http://entertainment.oneindia.in/malayalam/news/2013/
murali-gopy-lashes-out-for-banning-movie-vedivazhipadu-125743.html).

References
Jenett, Dianne (1999): Red Rice for Bhagavathy/
Cooking for Kannagi: An Ethnographic Organic
Enquiry of the Pongala Ritual at Attukal Temple,
Kerala, South India, PhD dissertation, School
of Consciousness and Transformation, California
Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco.
Kumar, K K Ajith (2013): Udyathapurushene ushiyakkumbhol, Mathrubhumi, 14 December.
Palicha, Paresh (2013): Vedivazhupadu Is a Damp
Squib, 13 December, viewed on 12 January 2014
(http://www.rediff.com/movies/report/review-vedivazhipadu-is-a-damp-squib-south/
20131213.htm).
Sreedhar, Darshana (Forthcoming): Myth and
Modernity in a Ritualistic Space in Shiju Sam
Varughese and Satheesh Chandra Bose (ed.),
Essays on Kerala Modernity: Interdisciplinary
Perspectives (Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan).
(2014): Attukal Pongala: Everyday Lives in a
Ritualistic Space in Ann David, Geoffrey Samuel and Santi Rozario (ed.), Transformations in
Contemporary South Asian Ritual: From Sacred
Action to Public Performance, Journal of Ritual
Studies, Special issue, 28(1).

REVIEW OF URBAN AFFAIRS

March 30, 2013
(Un)Settling the City: Analysing Displacement in Delhi from 1990 to 2007
Revitalising Economies of Disassembly: Informal Recyclers, Development Experts
and E-Waste Reforms in Bangalore
Biometric Marginality: UID and the Shaping of Homeless Identities in the City
Protest, Politics, and the Middle Class in Varanasi
Revisiting the 74th Constitutional Amendment for Better Metropolitan Governance
Urban Multiplicities: Governing Indias Megacities

Gautam Bhan, Swathi Shivanand

Rajyashree N Reddy
Ursula Rao
Jolie M F Wood
K C Sivaramakrishnan
Ashima Sood

For copies write to: Circulation Manager,

Economic and Political Weekly,
320-321, A to Z Industrial Estate, Ganpatrao Kadam Marg, Lower Parel, Mumbai 400 013.
email: circulation@epw.in
60

APRIL 26, 2014

vol xlIX no 17

EPW

Economic & Political Weekly