World of Philosophy

Author(s): Christopher Key Chapple, Intaj Malek, Dilip Charan, Sunanda Shastri, Prashant Dave
Publisher: Shanti Prakashan

Page 213

tween 79.3 and 87.8), while the South and East have ratios as high or higher than the Western countries. Along with health care and abortion bias he voices concern for the inequality in schooling, and social participation of women who are expected to stay home, (as good upper caste females) or to be pulled from school to work in the fields (as lower caste girls are while their brothers may continue with their education ). He feels that they are deeply connected to issues of women's agency and empowerment. Ownership equality has been uneven for generations. (Not just in gender but in caste distinctions as well) But Kerala, where the influential Nayars have a history of matrilineal inheritance, stands in contrast to most of the country. Kerala was one of the Southern states (along with Andrah Pradesh, West Bengal, and Assam) that had a higher girl to boy ratio (between 96.3 and 96.6) than the highest ratio in the west (US 95.7). Kerala (as of 2001) had the highest female literacy rate, and lowest birth rates than other parts of India.
Possession: Men May Subsume Female Identity, but Mariyamman has the Last Word
Despite the bleak figures above there are many holy women in rural India who have contributed to education, and fostered women's communities. Ritual possession by the Devi is quite prevalent for women in the north, but it presents itself differently in south. There are descriptions of possessed female fortunetellers outside the temples in Tamilnadu, but generally female initiates practice for kin and close neighbors.
In Aurloo Kapadia did witness a Brahmin priest possessed by Mariyamman but Brahmins were most apt to keep those types of experiences within caste-only gatherings, and these possession rituals were gender segregated. In Aurloo possession by the deity was generally a lower caste affair at least when displayed publicly, and as far as female possessions is concerned it was only women of the lowest, the Pallar caste who could become possessed. This contrasts with Endl, (and the women in the north) who states that there are high caste women who experience possession. Among the Pallar women of Aurloo there were a number who regularly became possessed by the goddess, but it was only men who played official, often inherited roles as vehicles for the goddess.
Kapadia voices concern about an essential feature of the all caste male experience of possession that is not possible for the Pallar women. When a man prepares for possession he must, by Tamil gender-role standards feminize himself. He has to become receptive in order to be penetrated by the deity. She sees here the very qualities, such as self-sacrifice, devotion, and submissiveness that define Tamil women's power and cultural identity subsumed by males. They then contain both masculine and feminine attributes,
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