![]() ![]() ![]() Indological reconstruction of glorious India, at the cross road of revivalism and Anglicism, was too preoccupied with the textual-scriptural versions of Indian reality to even acknowledge the folk. Women in particular were typified as the embodiment of nature/emotion/irrationality. The dichotomies of Emotion and Reason in modern science obscured a prejudice-free understanding of folklore. The reigning epistemological assumption, stemming from modernity, had already rendered the folk as the ‘other’, dwelling ‘benighted heathen’, and their lore as ‘popular antiquarian’ or a ‘system of belief and superstitions’. It curiously coincides with the ambivalent attitude of anthropologists and folklorists toward folklore and the folk (both men and women) in the colonial times. Thus, the conclusive image of veiled women singing songs to helplessly vent their frustration rules the roost of discourse. These all find support by virtue of the selective usage of folklore. What are the popular images of women in the discourse on Purdah (Veil): Yoked to stereotypical roles within the tightly-knit kinship structure, controlled sexuality to perpetuate the design of wife-givers and wife-takers, discharging the drudgery of every day life in the name of labor of love, slogging day and night to attain motherhood- the only exit from bondage, and also an easy victim of male dominance! So much oft-mouthed it is that it has become almost academic common sense and a rallying cry to decry Purdah.
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