Is Onam a Hindu festival? The moral imagination that underpins its secular appeal

Onam is widely seen as a secular festival, affirmed not only by its recognition as Kerala’s official state celebration but also by the enthusiastic participation of people across caste, religion, and political affiliation. Yet this claim to secular character is constantly challenged. This year, controversy flared when a teacher at Sirajul Uloom English School in Thrissur allegedly sent a WhatsApp message urging Muslim students and parents not to take part in Onam, calling it “unislamic”. She was suspended, and a police case followed. Several Muslim organisations criticised the action as pseudo-secular, arguing that participation in festivals must remain an individual choice. While the majority of Kerala’s Muslims continue to take part in Onam, debates over its “religious” or “secular” nature recur within some sections. Similar debates have also surfaced within Kerala’s Christian community, prompting the Syro-Malabar Church to issue a clarification that Christian participation in Onam is not only permissible but should be understood as part of embracing it as the state’s cultural festival.

Despite their differences, both kinds of controversy share a common perception: That they represent attempts to “Hinduise” Onam, to destabilise its secular and inclusive character. This raises important questions. Is Onam in any way a Hindu festival? Is it an instance of “banal Hinduism,” where practices associated with Hindus are rebranded as secular traditions? Or do both Hindutva appropriation and the concern voiced by the Muslim teacher together erode Onam’s secular claim?

Not one, but many Onams

Though Onam was formally declared Kerala’s state festival only in 1961, its ascent is tied to the making of Kerala’s subnational identity in the early twentieth century. The now-standardised narrative celebrates the Asura king Mahabali, who was deceived by the Brahmin dwarf Vamana and pushed into the underworld, returning each year to visit his subjects. But this is only one version. At the Thrikkakkara temple, Vamana is worshipped as Vishnu’s avatar, and the festival honours his victory. Others remember Onam as an agrarian celebration, marking the harvest month of Chingam after the harshness of Karkidakam. Folklore across Kerala introduces additional figures: Mathevan, Onathappan, Onapottan. Onam, then, has never been monolithic but a mosaic of myths and practices layered through time.

How, then, did Mahabali emerge as the central figure? Scholars note that neither epic nor classical Hindu traditions strongly linked Mahabali or Vamana with Kerala until the 19th century. The shift came in the early 20th century, with the rise of two overlapping political currents: the anti-caste struggles and the communist movement. Both movements sought to articulate what historian Dilip Menon has described as a “community of equals” in a deeply hierarchical caste society. To do so, they needed to indigenise the idea of equality — not as a foreign or Western import, but as something rooted in Kerala’s own cultural imagination. For instance, E M S Namboodiripad read Maveli’s reign as a pre-class society of “primitive communism”. Social reform poets cast him as a just, low-caste ruler betrayed by Brahmanical cunning. Even Congress-aligned writers drew on Mahabali to frame Gandhian ideals of justice and self-rule. Across the spectrum, Mahabali became the emblem of a moral community of equals — an idea that spoke directly to a society seeking to progress on its own terms. Similar re-interpretation of Mahabali myth was also attempted elsewhere as Jotirao Phule in his Gulamgiri identifies Mahabali or Bali Raja as the ruler of casteless egalitarian kingdom.

The contrast is striking when read against earlier accounts. As P Ranjith, a historian of Onam, notes, Herman Gundert’s 19th-century version of ‘Maveli charitham’ describes Onam as a time of prosperity and honesty, but not equality. The imagination of an “equal society” entered only in the twentieth century, inserted into the Onam song in keeping with the new egalitarian politics of the time.

The moral framework of Onam

Anthropologists Filippo and Caroline Osella describe Onam in terms of a politics of “moral framework,” a yardstick against which Kerala measures the amoralities of everyday life. Mahabali’s reign is invoked as the golden standard, and the state and its leaders often claim to embody his benevolence. In this sense, Onam provided an indigenous idiom for rights and obligations, binding rulers and citizens in a shared moral imagination.

Yet this moral framework carries contradictions. Like Kerala’s egalitarian politics, both anti-caste and communist, it remains unfinished. Although Kerala’s welfare and development indicators are better than in much of India, Dalits, Adivasis, and fisherfolk continue to be outliers in its developmental process. For them, Mahabali’s “egalitarian society” remains aspirational.

Onam itself continues to evolve. As J Devika has observed, there are many Onams today, including the commercialised “shoppy Onam” that dominates public imagination. Whether the festival can sustain its moral anchoring in Mahabali’s reign is uncertain. Yet it is precisely this association with an indigenised egalitarian politics that underpins both its immense popularity and its secular appeal, rather than an instance of banal Hinduism. Onam’s secular character lies not merely in its celebration across religious communities, but in its role as an idiom of modern Kerala’s politico-moral framework and aspirations of egalitarianism that emerged in the formative years. The outrage when Onam is reduced to a “mere religious festival” reflects the fear that this moral framework may be undermined.

If Onam is to remain a shared moral horizon, however, it cannot be frozen or protected through punitive measures against dissent. It must be continually historicised, debated, and critiqued. Only then can it endure not as a relic of an imagined past, but as a living moral imagination for the present.

The writer is assistant professor of Social Sciences at NLSIU, Bengaluru