Description
This book focuses on village festivals invoking Matangi, an outcaste clan goddess in Andhra Pradesh, to explore
the ambiguous category of outcaste priest and priestess, whose intriguing presence appears in fleeting
images in colonial archives and missological accounts. These striking personae challenge the assumptions
predominant in discourses on caste, making it apparent that the constraints in engaging with such seemingly
inscrutable sites lies not only in the paucity of sources but also about the dread that comes with the loss of
secure ideologies. The compelling evidence of this ritual space suggests the need to move beyond the frame
of pathos that has come to define not only the past of outcastes but also their very being. Based on field data
and historical sources, this book offers a framework to critically examine the ways in which outcastes shape
caste culture in definitive ways even as their presence signifies a deeper tension in historical processes.