Amrita Vidyalayam Students & Ettimadai Villagers Dance for Amma

21-23 January 2007 —Seventy kilometers north of Coimbatore, in the Nilgiris hill town of Ooty, resides a community of people known as the Badaga. The Badaga trace their ancestry back to Ethai Amman, a pious woman from Mysore who fled the city when a Muslim king wanted her as his prize. Theirs is a somewhat cloistered community, stretching across some 500 villages in the Nilgiri Hills, which make the border of Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.

Each year more and more Badagars make the pilgrimage to Kovai to have Amma's darshan. This year nearly 600 participated in the Kovai Brahmasthanam Festival. It is their faith that Ethai Amman was in fact an incarnation of the Divine Mother, and that it is she who is once again with them in the form of Amma.

Read related articles: "Ethai Amman in Kovai"
View photos from Amma's 2007 Coimbatore program here