Reading devadasi Practice through Popular Marathi Literature
Tambe examines popular Marathi literary work to shed light on the condition of devadasis of the lower castes in an attempt to differentiate them from sex workers. She criticizes the system of Brahmanical patriarchy obsessed with the sexual oppression of women and analyses the paradoxical situation which according to her shouldn’t be constricted to two binaries of good and bad. The Brahmanical patriarchy operates not by dividing women into wives and prostitutes, but by hierarchizing them, producing graded and not dichotomous sexualities and labor. It has been amply pointed out throughout her piece that the “upper caste” wives are confined to reproductive labor within the home constraining their access to the erotic and to the productive labor outside the home but glorified as respectable and granted privileges both material in the form of inheritance and also symbolic like the ideal goddess. The “lower caste” nonwives or prostitutes, on the other hand, are demoted to the erotic labor in the nonconjugal spaces, denied respect with consequent material insecurities and disprivileges, and rather than enabling them sexual autonomy and pleasure outside the constricting compulsory monogamy, their sexual availability for “upper caste” men is facilitated and almost commodified. She concludes that the devadasi culture, therefore, cannot be deemed as mere prostitution but an archaic abuse of the caste hierarchy and women.
Tambe examines popular Marathi literary work to shed light on the condition of devadasis of the lower castes in an attempt to differentiate them from sex workers. She criticizes the system of Brahmanical patriarchy obsessed with the sexual oppression of women and analyses the paradoxical situation which according to her shouldn’t be constricted to two binaries of good and bad. The Brahmanical patriarchy operates not by dividing women into wives and prostitutes, but by hierarchizing them, producing graded and not dichotomous sexualities and labor. It has been amply pointed out throughout her piece that the “upper caste” wives are confined to reproductive labor within the home constraining their access to the erotic and to the productive labor outside the home but glorified as respectable and granted privileges both material in the form of inheritance and also symbolic like the ideal goddess. The “lower caste” nonwives or prostitutes, on the other hand, are demoted to the erotic labor in the nonconjugal spaces, denied respect with consequent material insecurities and disprivileges, and rather than enabling them sexual autonomy and pleasure outside the constricting compulsory monogamy, their sexual availability for “upper caste” men is facilitated and almost commodified. She concludes that the devadasi culture, therefore, cannot be deemed as mere prostitution but an archaic abuse of the caste hierarchy and women.
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