Bahinabai and the Devoted Wife: To Affirm is to Question

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe Indian saint Bahinabai (c. 1628–1700) became known to an Anglophone audience largely through A.K. Ramanujan's well-known essay, ‘On Women Saints’. As Ramanujan notes, Bahinabai's life diverges from the standard trajectory of Hindu women saints insofar as she did not reject her husband and family. However, her external conformity to the rules for women contrasts with her literary subversion of normative gender roles. I examine Bahinabai's autobiographical narrative, the Atmacharitra, to demonstrate that she claims spiritual rights for women by undermining the Brahmanical ideal of the devoted wife or pativrata. A rare example of pre-modern women's writing from South Asia, the Atmacharitra illustrates some of the diverse strategies Indian women have employed to circumvent the strictures against feminine self-expression.