Making of 'Brahmin' womanhood: an intersectional study of lived experiences and discourses of womanhood among Tamil Brahmins

Abstract

This study explores the making of contemporary ‘Brahmin’ womanhood. It is based on a ten-month-long qualitative study (October 2021 – July 2022) of the Tamil Brahmin caste cluster and their collective representatives. Scripturally, ‘Brahmin’ has been a male category, which lays out a person’s moral-religious duties (dharma) throughout the life course, and women’s corresponding roles have been defined only in relation to their husbands and other male family members. However, nowadays, the term is associated with anyone born in the various endogamous Brahmin castes. Hence, women may now identify as Brahmin, even though they must perform their gender roles amidst caste kin to live up to the ideal of Brahmin-ness. The study begins from this paradox to understand what it means to be and become a ‘Brahmin woman’. Despite pathbreaking work exploring caste-gender intersections and theorising Brahmin-ness, there is limited scholarship on the gendered nature of the category. Scholarly accounts focusing on women’s lived experiences in this caste cluster are also scarce. These are gaps which this study aims to address.

The study foregrounds lived experience by conducting in-depth interviews about women’s life course across generations in Tamil Brahmin families. This reveals women’s roles in spatial organisation based on ritual purity (madi) in dense Tamil Brahmin localities. It also shows how madi is maintained or replaced with alternative modes of spatial organisation amidst the urban, middle-class lifestyles and international migration of many Tamil Brahmins. A focus on the life course sheds light on how the education and socialisation of daughters, the latter mainly done by mothers, are aimed at making ‘good Brahmin women’ in preparation for the ideal of a family-arranged endogamous marriage. Relatedly, the study traces the phenomenon of higher education becoming a core marker of identification for Brahmin women and unpacks the role of education in the making of appropriate brides. In response to women’s increased access to education and paid employment, as well as increased age of marriage and autonomy in (sometimes non-endogamous) partner choice, Tamil Brahmin caste and sectarian collectives propagate scriptural notions of ideal womanhood (strīdharma). This study aims to capture the narratives around strīdharma and analyse the role they play in contemporary expressions of Brahmin-ness.

In sum, this study has attempted to demystify the category of ‘Brahmin woman’, using intersectional and caste-critical lenses, taking into consideration the categories of gender, endogamous unit (jāti), and generation, as well as by being attentive to how these categories are reproduced to entrench caste ideology, practice, and privilege. The study contributes to understanding how caste-gender operates among present-day Brahmins in reconstituted forms, with women’s gender roles and notions of ideal Brahmin womanhood at its core. The study will hopefully enrich analyses of caste-gender and its intertwined reproduction in contemporary society.