Graduate Thesis Or Dissertation

 

The Question of Agency and Conjugal Norms for the Devadasi Public Deposited

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https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/graduate_thesis_or_dissertations/pc289j378
Abstract
  • The devadasis have been a subject of inquiry in the history, gender studies, and postcolonial studies for South Asia. In India's colonial past, Europeans have called them 'temple prostitutes.' Apologist accounts in the present have equated them to 'nuns.' Recent postcolonial works, however, have conflated these categories and suggested many of these women were courtesans with a respectable standing in both temple and secular settings. Debates in the past have focused on the question of agency amongst the devadasis when investigating the factors leading to the Devadasi (Prevention of Dedication) Act of 1947, which effectively outlawed their system. However, this thesis examines an even more pervasive element surrounding the abolition of the devadasi system: the construction and reconstruction of conjugal norms. This shift in societal ideas regarding conjugal norms presents itself in the history of India beginning with British rule after the Indian Revolution of 1857, which extends well after Independence in 1947.
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  • 2013
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  • 2019-11-18
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