ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to explore the ways in which the female worshippers of the Siri ritual tradition and the female head of the famous Siri temple at Kavattar, Nina Shetty, are able to exert agency in the largely male-dominated religious landscape of Coastal Karnataka, South India. With the help of the textual analysis of the oral Siri narrative (pāḍdana) and the use of ethnographic methods like semi-structured biographic interviews and on-site observations, this study examines the impact and the limits of both Nina Shetty and the female worshippers’ actions within and outside the ritual context. The authors believe that female agency in the context of the Siri tradition derives: Firstly, from the narrative and its female center, Siri; Secondly, from the participation in the Siri ritual tradition, which provides the worshippers with what may be called a distinct ‘Siri identity’; Thirdly, and closely related to the second point, from the female worshippers’ service as mediums of the Siri deities (sirikulu), which is referred to as sēvɛ (cf. Skt. sevā). Informed by scholars who have tried to locate agency outside the compliance/transgression paradigm, we attempt to understand female agency in the Siri tradition by contextualizing it within the larger socio-cultural milieu and within the notion of sēvɛ (religious service), a concept brought up by the worshippers themselves, reflecting their devotion to divine Siri and their own self-image.
