Exploring Historical Disruptions in the Quotidian Practices of Mahari Temple Dancers in Postcolonial Odisha, while Juxtaposed with Oral Testimonies from the Community

Abstract

With their origins under colonial and postcolonial Devadasi-abolitionist acts from the mid-1900s onwards that culminated in the extinction of the hereditary community of female temple-dancers in the Jagannath Temple of Puri, Odisha in 2021, the ritualistic practices of Mahari-Devadasis have been on the decline in the independent Indian nation-state. This presentation focuses on histories of subaltern agency and bottom-up mobilization in the aftermath of Devadasicriminalization laws. It does so through the case-study of the now-extinct regional community of Maharis (undomesticated, ritualistic temple-dancers in Odisha, whose practices of religiosity entailed being wed to Hindu deities). Under the colonial disciplining of deviant sexualities together with nationalist regulation, the practices of religiosity of hereditary, performative communities of Devadasis were monolithically categorized, and criminalized as “religious prostitution” at a nationwide scale. This research delineates the ideological factors and institutional processes shaping the policing of temple-dancing under postcolonial structures of governance, the caste dynamics of state reform measures, and the subsequent silencing of women’s voices under exclusionary legislations. However, incorporating oral testimonies from the last two surviving Maharis, Sashimani and Parasamani, it delineates how they historically contested and subverted top-down modalities of disenfranchisement through their songs of resistance, quotidian cultures, social positioning, and practices of everyday life in carving out circumscribed positions of autonomy for themselves in postcolonial India.