Given to the Goddess: South Indian Devadasis and the Sexuality of Religion

Who and what are marriage and sex for? Whose practices and which ways of talking to god can count as religion? Lucinda Ramberg considers these questions based upon two years of ethnographic research on an ongoing South Indian practice of dedication in which girls, and sometimes boys, are married to a goddess. Called devadasis, or jogatis, those dedicated become female and male women who conduct the rites of the goddess outside the walls of her main temple and transact in sex outside the bounds of conjugal matrimony. Marriage to the goddess, as well as the rites that the dedication ceremony authorizes jogatis to perform, have long been seen as illegitimate and criminalized. Kinship with the goddess is productive for the families who dedicate their children, Ramberg argues, and yet it cannot conform to modern conceptions of gender, family, or religion. This nonconformity, she suggests, speaks to the limitations of modern categories, as well as to the possibilities of relationsandmdash;between and among humans and deitiesandmdash;that exceed such categories.

andquot;The ethnographic data that Lucinda Ramberg obtained while living with the devadasis is unique. The conversations she relates bring much-needed nuance to representations of these women. Ramberg insists that anthropologists need to take the religious lives of the devadasis seriously. For scholars of South Asia, her most interesting contribution is likely her masterful rethinking of theoretical models of kinship in India.andquot;

andquot;Lucinda Ramberg has written a book that charts new conceptual terrain in the anthropology of South Asia. Given to the Goddess indicts both liberal reformism and secular progressivism for their investment in an all too-easy politics of gender that occludes the power (and experience) of stigmatized sexuality. Instead, Ramberg shows how practices coded as anachronistic, or coerced, constitute the conditions of possibility for capacious, non-individuated accounts of sexed agency. This is an exquisite ethnography of the queer embodiments and ritual imaginaries by which women come to be and#39;given to the goddess.and#39;andquot;

andquot;Lucinda Rambergand#39;s powerful combination of ethnographic observation and theoretical reflection connects the study of a particular social group in South India (devadasis or jogatis) with general issues in anthropology and feminist and queer studies. Given to the Goddess will prove relevant to those, such as myself, who know very little about India but who are concerned with related issues in different contexts.andquot;

andquot;A compassionate and rigorous account of the much reviled and celebrated figure of the devadasi, Lucinda Rambergand#39;s book analyzes the central role womenand#39;s sexuality continues to play in religious and secular political orders. Rather than diagnose this as a moral problem, the author forces us to rethink how the biopolitical state has transformed both religion and sexuality in modern India.andquot;

andldquo;This excellent book makes a significant contribution to religion and kinship, gender, sexuality, and South Asian studiesandhellip;. Highly recommended.andrdquo;

Based on two years of ethnographic research, this book considers an ongoing South Indian practice of dedication in which girls, and sometimes boys, are married to a goddess. Called devadasis, or jogatis, those dedicated become female and male women who conduct the rites of the goddess outside the walls of her main temple and transact in sex outside the bounds of conjugal matrimony.

Lucinda Ramberg is Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology and the Program in Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Cornell University.

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction: Gods, Gifts, Trouble 1

Part I. Gods

1. Yellamma and Her Sisters: Kinship among Goddesses and Others 39

2. Yellamma, Her Wives, and the Question of Religion 71

Part II. Gifts

3. Tantra, Shakta, Yellamma 113

4. The Giving of Daughters: Sexual Economy, Sexual Agency, and the andquot;Trafficandquot; in Women 142

Part III. Trouble

5. Kinship Trouble 181

6. Troubling Kinship 213

Notes 223

Glossary 247

Bibliography 251

Index 270