CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2023
| Author | Dasgupta, Suramya Pushan |
|---|---|
| Title | I Am My Own Goddess: Intersectional Agency and Transformation in The Brata Rituals of Urban Bengal |
| Summary | This thesis investigates intersectional agency and transformation in the women-centric Brata rituals, an understudied but important form of Bengali folk religion practiced by low-caste women in the largest urban sphere of East India, Kolkata. First, it deconstructs the socio- historical context of these rituals to establish their discriminatory origins as part of an exclusionary, caste-based, and patriarchal Hindu society. Second, it conducts an ethnographic study of the double marginalized Bengali low-caste women at important communal-religious junctions, keeping their lifeworld at the center of the analysis, to identify the traditional and modern forms of resistance against caste and gender-based hegemony. Looking beyond structural critiques of an age-old ritual practice, this research study employs an inductive grounded-theory approach, prioritizing local narratives and lived experiences, to arrive at conclusions about the unique nature of agency shown in the practice of these women-centric rituals. In doing so, it situates the women actors as the agents of projecting intersectional agency. Lastly, it contributes to a fresh understanding of a transforming folk ritual in a rapidly modernizing urban backdrop by including cases of male participation and inter-caste interactions that alter the purity and pollution dichotomy of the caste system. Thus, it produces a testimony of how the women’s Brata rituals, breaking historically divisive norms, adopt an inclusionary nature to provide agential spaces of expression in a rigid hegemonic religious system. |
| Supervisor | Naumescu, Vlad; Fabiani, Jean Louis |
| Department | Sociology MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2023/dasgupta_suramya.pdf |
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