Botre, Shrikant (2017) The body language of caste : Marathi sexual modernity (1920-1950). PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

Late colonial Maharashtra witnessed a proliferation of sex literature that claimed to be scientific. Sexual-health journals and books on sexual science and eugenics, as well as marriage manuals insisting on sex reforms, were produced in Marathi in considerable numbers between 1920 and 1950. Why did sex reformism blossom in Maharashtra? What was reformed in the name of sex and science? What larger purpose did this writing serve in late colonial times? The present research work answers these questions while problematising the Marathi sexual modernity articulated through this literature. In critically assessing sex reforms, my argument highlights the rearrangement of an inextricable nexus between caste and sexuality that shaped late colonial Marathi expressions of modernity. The proliferation of scientific sexuality in this process, I argue, was an upper-caste resolution of the Brahminical crisis over dominating reformism in Maharashtra. To demonstrate this, my work situates sex literature in the context of Marathi caste politics. While explaining the Brahminical crisis and its resolution through analysing sexual discourses of brahmacharya (celibacy), marriage, and obscenity, this work unpacks the making of sex reforms as a journey to create a caste-sexual subject of Marathi modernity—the respectable upper-caste man.

Item Type:	Thesis or Dissertation (PhD)
Subjects:	D History General and Old World > DS Asia
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Maharashtra (India) -- History, Caste -- India -- Maharashtra -- History, Marathi literature, Sex instruction literature -- India -- Maharashtra -- History, Sexology -- India -- Maharashtra -- History, Social reformers -- India -- Maharashtra -- History, Brahmans -- India -- Maharashtra
Official Date:	September 2017
Dates:	Date Event September 2017 Submitted
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Department of History
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Hodges, Sarah
Sponsors:	University of Warwick. Chancellor's International Scholarship
Format of File:	pdf
Extent:	viii, 338 leaves
Language:	eng

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