CATHOLIC SAINTS AND THE HINDU VILLAGE PANTHEON IN RURAL TAMIL-NADU, INDIA

This article examines the intersection between a 'global' religious tr adition (Catholicism) and the 'local' (Tamil) social and cultural matr ix in which it is embedded. It shows how Hindu ideas of renunciation, death, sacrifice and divine power have blended with Catholic notions i n the local conception of saints. The article then describes two contr asting ritual contexts. In one, Christian saints are defined by sets o f relations similar to those which structure the Hindu pantheon. Here Catholic saints and village Hindu deities exist as unequal but complem entary powers. In the other context, the saints are conceived in essen tialist terms; they represent the absolute truth claims of Christianit y, and Hindu deities are represented as either illusory or demonic. Th ese opposed ritual contexts, and the forms of thinking (relational ver sus essentialist) which correspond to them, are symbolized by the indi genous moral spaces of the 'village' and the 'forest'. These also serv e as a local metaphor for the complementary relationship between the a bsolutes of Christian belief and social ethics and the relativistic an d hierarchical values of caste society. The article concludes with obs ervations on contemporary religious change which suggest the modificat ion of the relationship between 'global' Catholicism and a popular rel igious culture.