Temple Dancer, Prostitute, Celibate Nun? The Shifting Position of the Mahari-Devadasi from Late Colonial India to the Early 21st Century Social

The MPT focuses on the rights of gendered minorities in postcolonial India through the matriarchal community of Mahari-Devadasis. It delineates how the abolition of this tradition under colonial and postcolonial laws, instead of ameliorating women's life circumstances constituted their growing socio-economic marginalization and exclusion from civil society, whilst juxtaposing inclusive feminist paradigms. It argues for a bottom-up, experiential analytical lens for studying such subaltern actors.