Sakthi Folk Arts Centre

The Sakthi Folk Arts Centre in Dindigul, Tamil Nadu, was started in the early 1990's by progressive, Indian, Catholic nuns who decided to use the Tamil folk arts to develop self-esteem and economic skills in young poor Dalit women (former outcastes or untouchables). Because of the intersections between casteism and patriarchalism in Tamil Nadu - as throughout South Asia - the young women served by the Sakthi Folk Arts Center experience discrimination on the grounds of their caste identity, their gender, and their economic and educational status. The nuns decided to take a different approach to gender-based empowerment and, ultimately, communal divestment from both casteism and patriarchalism: They started the Sakthi Folk Arts Centre using paraiattam – a traditionally male-dominated folk drumming and dance form based around the parai frame drum - as a means of then both culturally reclaiming paraiattam and economically empowering the women of Dindigul.