In "Reading Devadasi Practice through Popular Marathi Literature", Anagha Tambe explores the lives of Devadasis in Maharashtra, with reference to the Maharashtra Devadasi Practice (Eradication) Act, 2008 enacted, as evident, to eradicate the practice. Analyzing various texts, Tambe emphasizes the complexities of this discourse due to its intersectionalities, in that caste and patriarchy align in this instance, making it difficult to pass normative judgments, where the sexuality of different women depending on their positionality is treated differently. The sexuality of upper-caste women is on a pedestal whose chastity represents honour and value. In contrast, the sexuality of jogtin, lower caste-women is open and also accessible to upper caste men of the entire village (despite notions of "pollution" and "impurity" governing their lives). Although allowing for liberty in sexual expression, consent, economic security and the safety that is allowed to wives and "non-prostitutes" is foregone in such instances - this is the enormity of Brahmanical patriarchy. The author notes that despite the fact that Devdasis are believed to be oppressed in some literature by upper-caste men, in the discourse of their abolition, arguably an extreme measure, their freedom of sexual activity, polygamy and agency defied that very oppression which the 2008 Act purported to remedy. Therefore, the Act in the garb of protection can be seen is paternalistic, and as protecting not Devadasis, but rather the same framework that allows for the oppression of their agency. At the same, agency is difficult to articulate agency in this discourse, in light of the caveat the author lays initially, as one must consider that the choice to enter prostitution is influenced by various factors, not limited to physical and economic threats, but also "social injunctions" that brand them as "sexually available" and disallow for stable inter-personal and non-sexual relationships.
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