Women in Ochre Robes

Meena Khandelwal

Description

Meena Khandelwal offers an engaging and intimate portrait of extraordinary Hindu women in India who wear "ochre robes," signifying their renunciation of marriage and family for lives of celibacy, asceticism, and spiritual discipline. While the largely male Hindu ascetic tradition of sannyasa renders its initiates ritually "dead" to their previous identities, the women portrayed here are very much alive. They struggle with, and joke about, the tensions and ironies of living in the world while trying not to be of it.

Khandelwal juxtaposes the common refrain that "in renunciation there is no male and female" with arguments that underscore the importance of gender. In exploring these apparent contradictions, she brings together worldly and otherworldly values within renunciation and argues that these create tensions that are at once emotional, social, and philosophical.

Acknowledgments

Note on Transliteration

Introduction: Sannyasinis as Persons

1. Gendering Hindu Renunciation

2. Walking a Tightrope: Renunciation as Love

3. Real Saints Don't Need Sleep: Renunciation as Service

4. (Ir?)reconcilable Tensions: Individual Existence as Spiritual Journey

5. The Genuine and The Fake: What's Attitude Got to Do with It?

6. Sannyasinis as Women

Notes

Glossary

Works Cited

Index

Sujets

• East Asian religions
• Hinduism

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 février 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780791485958
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

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