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possessed but are also labeled as having a “mental illness” or “mental problems”
by their families and by the temple staff. Th us the idioms of possession and men-
tal illness are used simultaneously at the temple. Most of the people suff ering
mental distress and their families that I spoke with did not see these two idioms
as being in confl ict or as mutually exclusive, and many of the mentally affl icted at
Chottanikkara had previously visited psychiatric facilities for their problems.
Enforcing a restriction that applies at only a few important temples in
Kerala, non-Hindus are not permitted inside the main sections of the temple.
All the possessed people I met at Chottanikkara were Hindu. Since I am not
a Hindu, there were certain things I could not see, but this did not aff ect my
research as dramatically as I thought it might. I simply had to stand on the
outside of a four-foot wall or behind a low bar demarcating the temple bound-
ary during ceremonies, which usually put me, along with a few other onlook-
ers, only a few feet away from the rest of the crowd and able to see everything
that was occurring. Th e only place I could not visit was the central shrine, and
much of my information about what goes on there comes from the temple
priests and my research assistant, Biju. I was allowed to visit the interior of
the temple once, however, when I was invited to a wedding that took place
there. Temple priests reported that non-Hindus on occasion have come to seek
relief from their problems at Chottanikkara. Th ey were supposedly warmly
welcomed, as I was, but they were asked to appeal to the goddess from outside
the temple wall. Restrictions barring people of other faiths did not exist at any
of the mosques or churches that I visited in Kerala.
Although Chottanikkara temple is famous for helping people with psycho-
logical or spirit possession problems, it is not solely devoted to this purpose.
Regular worshipers and pilgrims visit the temple daily as Chottanikkara is one
of the three most sacred temples in Kerala, ranking just below Guruvayoor
in northern Kerala and a little above the Sri Padmanabhaswamy Temple in
Trivandrum in the South in terms of prestige and auspiciousness. Chottanikkara
is also an important site on the southern Indian pilgrimage circuit especially
for devotees who are making their way to Sabarimala, a temple in the moun-
tains 90 kilometers from Chottanikkara that receives close to 20 million visi-
tors over the course of its three-month pilgrimage season. Regular patrons
and pilgrims are aware that many possessed people frequent this temple, and
it is striking to see worshipers nonchalantly carrying out their pujas (ritu-
als of devotion) while the possessed are “acting out” around them. While a
possessed person is writhing about and yelling on the main temple walkway,
other de votees will casually step around or over him. Th e mentally affl icted are
allowed to engage in emotional outbursts and erratic behavior while they also
follow a structured schedule of pujas and devotional singing.