“This Temple is Our Natal Home!”: Women’s Experiences of Marriage and Possession in Maharashtra

Ranganathan, Shubha (2013) “This Temple is Our Natal Home!”: Women’s Experiences of Marriage and Possession in Maharashtra. Psychological Studies, 58 (4). pp. 437-445. ISSN 0033-2968

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Abstract

This paper explores women’s experiences of marriage, stress, and spirit possession in the context of healing shrines. It is based on ethnographic fieldwork in three Mahanubhav temples in Maharashtra (western India). Women’s narratives emphasized the tensions and conflicts they experience in relation to marriage. These accounts about family stress were not just empirical accounts of stress but narrative devices that legitimize women’s stay in the temple. Thus, in referring to the temple as the “natal home”, women seek to access their privilege to periodically visit the temple “just as” they would visit the natal home. By making available to women alternative spaces and subject positions, these narratives of spirit possession and marriage emerge as powerful expressions of women’s agency.

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