Who are the self-whipping men on the streets?
If you’ve been in Mumbai, have you seen these men whipping themselves on the streets? Who are they & why do they hurt themselves like that for spare change?
So I did some digging & as per the report by the People’s Archive of India, they’re called Potraj - also known as Pothuraju or Kadak Lakshmi.
And they almost always come from a community in Karnataka, Maharashtra, and the Bidar region - called the Dhegu Megu, classified as Scheduled Caste.
Their patron goddess is Māriyamma (मारीअम्मा), is a fierce mother deity linked to healing, protection from epidemics, and warding off evil.
Traditionally, villagers invited the Potraj during outbreaks of plague, cholera, or crop failures. The whip - the चाबुक (chabuk) - is not a stunt.
Each lash is an offering of pain to their Goddess, taken on their own body, so that the village’s suffering is eased. For them, the whip is sacred. “We do not apply medicine, because that pain is for our devi,” performers say.
But what was once ritual duty has now become survival. Families from Bidar and nearby districts migrate every year to Mumbai, Pune, and other cities.
They set up shanties near railway stations - Bandra Terminus used to have nearly 50 such families before the lockdown.
The men dance, crack whips, and sing invocations. Women drum, or balance the goddess’s idol on a plate or plank.
And they move from shop to shop asking for a coin or two, with the line: “Ek rupay, do rupay de de, bhagwan kasht se door rakhega.”
Often, they’re forced to take up cleaning, garbage & construction jobs for ₹200–₹400 a day, something we spend on a mere coffee.
And allegedly they have to live without electricity, fetch water at dawn from public taps, and pay to use station toilets. Their children rarely get steady schooling; while migration and police evictions break the cycle.
And yet, they continue because for them, this whipping isn’t just performance. It’s ancestral duty. Before leaving for the village, they sacrifice a goat to Mariyamma, asking her to protect them on the road. And with that faith, they carry their whips into Mumbai’s chaos.
Its very easy for us sitting here in our AC rooms to judge or criticise the practices of rural communities in our nation - we might not support what they do.
But keeping our prejudices aside & not jumping to conclusions, we should at least attempt keep an open to educate ourselves about their reasons, stories & ground realities.