Section outline

  • In this session, we will examine how traditional (and often disturbing) practices in India have shaped — and continue to shape — the regulation of the female body. For example: 

    sati (suttee; the ancient Hindu practice of a widow immolating herself on her husband's funeral pyre); ritual "purity" and "pollution" (e.g., temporary ritual impurity of menstruating women — presence believed to transmit ritual "pollution", removable only by elaborate "purification" rites); flesh trade and prostitution villages; female infanticide and sex‑selective abortions; the traditional dowry system; patrilineality and patrilocality; honour killings)