ABSTRACT
Gender both as a subject of inquiry and as a concept informing research and
interpretation emerged as signifi cant within the study of Hinduism during
the second half of the twentieth century, as feminist scholarship gradually
permeated the humanities and social sciences. Research processes often
fueled by activist motivations developed the concept of gender not only to
redress previous ignorance and imbalance but to generate fundamentally new
questions about-among other things-culture, bodies, and knowledge itself.
Attention to contested discourses and discrimination was central to these
