Nandanar: Untouchable Saint and Caste Hindu Anomaly

Abstract

Cultural beliefs in support of untouchability are still prevalent in India today despite government efforts and new ideologies to combat them. These beliefs, I suggest, cannot be understood solely as a cultural tradition passively carried forward to the present, but are supported as well by psychological and social dynamics. Here, a study of the differing caste versions of an untouchable saint legend helps reveal some of these psychological and social aspects of untouchability beliefs through a discussion of attribution theory in social psychology and Bakhtin's dialogic approach to literature. In 1984-85 I1 did fieldwork in Tamil Nadu in a Paraiyar (untouchable) community near Chidambaram. From interviews with caste Hindus1 in the vicinity, sharp insights of some untouchable informants, and observances of interactions between caste Hindus and untouchables, I became aware not only of caste Hindus' views of untouchables-views in accord with the traditional Hindu belief that untouchables are inherently polluting, immoral, submissive, and lacking in intelligence-but also noted how cognitive manipulations in attribution processes, in conjunction with Hindu ontology and etiology, helped maintain these views, even in the face of contradictory information, such as an untouchable exhibiting positive qualities. These cognitive processes also became evident as I collected stories about Nandanar, an untouchable saint, and no