An anti-caste Onam with Baliraja
In mainstream imagination, Onam is a quaint festival of flowers, sadya and kasavu. It’s radical edge of mourning the loss of an asura king, Mahabali, who personifies indigenous rule, is defanged. His mythic foe, Vamana, is now glorified. Non-Brahmanic traditions abound with these inversions. In these tellings, asuras and rakshasas become besieged natives fending off Brahmanic invaders.
A.V. Sakthidharan’s Antigod’s Own Country: A Short History of Brahminical Colonisation of Kerala tells us the story of Mahabali and of the repressed Dravidian and Buddhist history of Kerala. In Jotirao Phule’s examination of mythology, Baliraja is shown to be a just king who faces the invader Vamana. Phule’s seminal work Slavery (1873) examines this story: You can find it in the graphic retelling, A Gardener in the Wasteland: Jotiba Phule’s Fight for Liberty. B.R. Ambedkar’s Riddles in Hinduism is a comprehensive account of the many ways in which Brahmanical myths conceal the oppression of dissident masses.
Rediscover these lost histories with Navayana’s Onam selection.
