Dangerous Marginality focuses on villages festivals invoking the Matangi, an outcaste clan goddess in Andhra Pradesh. It explores the ambiguous category of outcaste priest and priestess whose intriguing presence appears in fleeting images in colonial archives and missological accounts. These striking personae challenge the assumptions predominant in the discourses of caste.
As we delve deeper into this domain it becomes apparent that the constraints in engaging ...
This book seeks to explore certain hitherto unexplored issues relating to sacred prostitution in a historical perspective. It attempts to analyze significant issues such as the identity and sexuality of the Devadasi, as this custom encompasses women from distinct cultural groups, within a pluralistic cultural context. In doing so the author deconstructs the monolithic identity of the sacred prostitute and thus, locates the varied manifestations of this custom. Of ...