"Resolving" Conflict Among the Sons of Shiva: Caste, Possession, and Political Mobilization in the Margins of a South Indian Metropolis

In the suburb of RC Puram, Hyderabad city, the “non-existent” village of Mandumoola is reconstituted through the annual Mallanna jatara. Organized by the Kuruma caste association of displaced Kuruma caste members, the festival serves as a space for nostalgic recuperation of an ancestral lifeworld lost to state land acquisition and physical displacement. This paper analyzes a pivotal ritual innovation of the annual festival: a Poturaju (guardian-deity) sheep sacrifice performed at a sacred space disputed between the members of Kuruma and the Vaddera castes. I argue that the “possessed” body of the Ogguvandlu ritual specialist functions as a ritual arbiter, mediating and representing a “divine will” to resolve claims over sacrality and space. By situating this agency within broader caste-informed notions of the nature of the divine and local representative politics, I demonstrate how claims of representing and enacting “divine will” enable the Kurumas to claim disputed space through ritual action.