On the Margins of Respectability: The Disempowered Devadasi in Muvalur Ramamirthammal’s Web of Deceit

This paper is an attempt to identify patterns of cultural displacement in the lives of temple ritual performers like the devadasis and their representations in fiction. The paper focuses on the changing destinies of the devadasis in the context of colonialism and nationalism, with an added emphasis on the emergence of novel notions of cultural modernity in the early decades of the twentieth century. More importantly, it seeks to locate the cultural displacement and shifts in the status of the devadasi in relation to her body.