Abstract
AbstractThe chapter deals with a Veda school (Pāṇini Kanyā Mahāvidyālaya) for girls in Varanasi. While traditionalists among the local Brahmins claim that women can and may not perform Vedic rituals, this school gives access to religious and ritual knowledge to girls, who since 2014 also publicly perform Vedic rituals every morning at Assi Ghat. The author discusses the history and reception of this school and its activities in influential Brahmin circles in Varanasi, contextualizes this in light of discussions of female religious agency (adhikāra) in ancient India, and presents some views of the school’s teachers and students on these matters. While the young women learn to claim public spaces that are traditionally monopolized by men, the school associates with the ruling BJP party, and thereby implicitly teams up with a Hindu nationalist agenda, even though Hindu nationalist ideologies reinforce aggressive patriarchal structures. Paradoxically, it is this connection that allows the girls and women to occupy agentive spaces within these structures, with the support of important and powerful parts of the local communities.
Publisher
Oxford University PressNew York
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