Living Memory, Performing History

The main area of research that I intend to focus on in graduate school is the sexuality of women and the burden’s placed on it. Albeit I intend to study the Christian West, the Davesh Soneji article was absolute treat to read for me.

By focusing only on the five remaining devdasi’s of the Ballipadu Madanagopalasvami Temple in Andhra Pradesh, Soneji puts a human face on an otherwise vast (and dare I say, dying) tradition.

For these women, Soneji argues that, their identity is incumbent upon their memories of who they used to be – they tradition, their ritual temple roles, their diminished status, and finally their currently isolated and declining position in society. He believes that these devdasis use nostalgia to elaborate upon their past identity – thus using wist and memory to forge a present-day identity for themselves (31).

I find Soneji’s comment about the umbrella term interesting – he holds that the Sanskrit term “devdasi” that is used as an overarching term for temple women in various parts of South India is a Colonial attempt at categorizing data for these communities (32). I think about the term “Hindu” as a parallel to this idea because much in the same way, Colonial attempts to neatly categorize the religious identities of Indians resulted in this faultily categorized seemingly homogenous ‘religion’!

In the new-age ‘performances’ of the devdasis interviewed by Soneji, the bhogam melams take place behind closed doors (for fear of persecution and because they’re prohibited in their traditional venue of the temple). Which makes me question whether or not an audience is a prerequisite for a performance. Soneji believes no. However, I am forced to ask about the tree in the forest making a sound if no one is around to hear it…is this lack of audience presence simple a newer facet of the devdasi’s tradition – brought about by an actual lack of audience rather than the desire to dance away from a viewer’s gaze? This question is brought about by what Soneji himself puts forth on page 34 – that the most prominent feature of the devdasi “performance culture” was the concert repertory (kacceri).

For me, the most interesting parts of this article were those that dealt with death and sex pollution. In other cultures that I have studied – including the Newari Buddhists of Nepal, the Nayari and Tiyyari cultures of the Indian Malabar Coast, and the native peoples of the New Guinea Highlands, sex- and death-pollution become the cause and effect of female sexuality. Thus to see that amongst the devdasis of the article, there is no pollution observation, was not only a little unusual but also liberating in a way!

The lack of menstrual pollution as well as the matrilocal organization of these women makes me ask if this society is also matriarchal. Soneji does not allude to this in his article.

If the dances are forced underground, and the mudras (hand gestures) are outlawed, and the songs are deemed as lewd, what then identifies a devdasi as such? Is it simply her memory as Soneji suggests? This is a sad notion indeed – that for the devdasi, who she is, is who she was. However, as Soneji concludes, while these acts of memory serve no societal purpose, they prove effective at the level of individual identity (44).