Kappiri Muthappan

Kappiri Thara in Fort Kochi

Deities are human creations, according to many eminent thinkers and sociologists. God is a society worshipping itself, as Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) put it poetically. Peter L. Berger (1929–2017) argued that religion is a humanly constructed universe of meaning.

Humans externalise meaning into institutions, including gods. These institutions become objectified and appear supernatural. Later generations internalise them as ‘given’ truths. Many of these truths are veiled self-glorifications. Some are born out of fear and guilt.

I visited Fort Kochi twice in the last one month and wrote many posts on the archipelago whose history is inextricably intertwined with the ancient Arabs, later Chinese, still later Portuguese, followed by the Dutch, and then the British. Let me now bring you a deity that is quite unique to Fort Kochi and is still worshipped by some people: Kappiri Muthappan. This deity is an exquisite proof for the theory of Durkheim and Berger on the origin of divinity.  

History of Kappiri Muthappan

Kappiri is a colloquial term used in Kerala for Africans. Its roots go back to the Arabic kafir and Portugues cafre. The Portuguese took the word from the Arabs to refer to nonbelievers. The Portuguese brought slaves from Ethiopia and East Africa to Kerala in the 16^th century and called them cafre. The people of Kerala Malayalicised the term to Kappiri.  

When the Portuguese were defeated by the Dutch in 1663, they left the islands. Kerala’s folklore has it that many of them couldn’t carry all their precious belongings and hence some of those treasures were buried in the island. They wanted the spirits of the cafre slaves to take care of the treasures. Hence they buried the slaves too with the treasures. The folklore says that the slaves were buried alive.

The native inhabitants of the islands were horrified at the sight of such burials. It was a common belief in Kerala that people who met with gruesome deaths turned into vicious ghosts seeking vengeance. When the Portuguese perpetrated the horrors on their African slaves, the local people of the islands felt threatened by the potential emergence of Kappiri ghosts. Hence they wished to appease the spirits. Kappiri Muthappan thus became a deity, the deified spirit of the African slaves buried alive.

The African slaves were physically powerful, socially marginalised, and horribly wronged in the end. The ultimate fate meted out to them by their masters was brutally unjust. By sheer coincidence, “South Kerala was plagued by epidemics in 1670, which caused many deaths” as reported in certain Dutch accounts of the region. It is only natural that the local people ascribed those fatal diseases to the spirits of the Kappiris buried alive by the Portuguese. It was necessary to appease those vindictive spirits. Thus Kappiri tharas (a kind of shrines) were set up in many places in Fort Kochi.

Kappiri Muthappan became a deity, though the original Kappiris were oppressed slaves. Folk memory, guilt, fear, and compassion all fused sublimely into devotion. As Durkheim said, fear got socially ritualised and transmuted into divinity. Berger would say that the Kappiri Muthappan arose from a collective feeling of guilt in order to forgive or be appeased.

A Thought for Religious Extremists

Several attacks on Christians took place in the last couple of days in India in connection with Christmas celebrations. The militant Hindu organisations and their goons didn’t care to understand the subtlety of PM Modi’s attending the entire Christmas service at the Cathedral Church of the Redemption in Delhi. The funniest irony is that while Modi was praying (or pretending to do so) in the Cathedral, his chelas were attacking Christians in many parts of the country.

Let that be. Maybe, the Hindutva right wing can – if they have the required cognitive faculties – contemplate before a Kappiri thara in Fort Kochi and learn some essential lessons about religion.

Kappiri Muthappan is an unsettling god – like quite many in Hinduism. He was not born in a scripture. He was not authorised by a shastra. He was not certified by a priesthood. He emerged because society failed a human being. Moreover, Kappiri Muthappan is an alien spirit from Africa, being worshipped by some people of India.

Maybe, the defenders of indigenous gods who hate foreign gods can contemplate before a Kappiri thara and understand that gods are not anybody’s eternal monopolies. That traditions are not as uncontaminated as they seem to pretend. And, most importantly, that the violence committed in the name of religion leaves historical residue.

May Kappiri Muthappan teach you that every act of religious cruelty plants the seed of a future god. The persecuted do not vanish. Their suffering returns as memory, ritual, and divinity.

Yesterday’s slave becomes today’s guardian spirit.

Yesterday’s outsider becomes tomorrow’s deity.

Yesterday’s violence becomes tomorrow’s shrine.

Dear Sangh Parivar zealots,

If you create enough victims, history will eventually sanctify them – and judge you.

And understand that:

Religions are the strongest when they heal fear.

Religions are the weakest when they manufacture fear.

May Kappiri Muthappan enlighten you.

 

PS. Related Posts

Re-exploring the Past: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

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