Salabai

Salabai is the named goddess at the heart of the Devi movement that swept the adivasi tracts of western India in 1922-23, studied in detail by the historian David Hardiman. Originating in propitiation ceremonies to a mother goddess associated with smallpox and the fertility of the soil among the coastal fisherfolk of Palghar, her cult moved north through the Dangs and south Gujarat, where Bhils and other adivasi communities gathered to hear her commands spoken through mediums who shook in trance. The goddess ordered her followers to give up liquor and toddy, to bathe daily and keep clean, and to withhold service from liquor dealers and moneylenders, so that what began as a religious visitation became a far-reaching movement of adivasi self-assertion.

Domains

• epidemic disease
• moral reform

Powers

• to possess human mediums and issue her commands through their mouths
• to ward off smallpox and safeguard the fertility of the soil when propitiated

Sources

• Salabai is the goddess of the Devi movement of 1922-23, a smallpox and fertility mother goddess whose commands, delivered through possessed mediums, moved the Bhils and other adivasis of western India to collective social reform and assertion.: David Hardiman, The Coming of the Devi: Adivasi Assertion in Western India, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987. (secondary); David Hardiman, "Adivasi Assertion in South Gujarat: The Devi Movement of 1922-3," in Ranajit Guha (ed.), Subaltern Studies III, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1984. (secondary)