by Nadeera Rajapakse

This book explores how Devadasi dance traditions were transformed through caste reform, colonial morality, and nationalist revival into Bharatanatyam, creating a purified symbol of Indian culture.

Drawing on a multidisciplinary framework, the work explores the “ethics-aesthetics nexus” to illustrate how technical ideals of purity intersected with questions of citizenship and belonging.

Historically, Devadasis occupied fluid roles as temple ritualists and courtly artists within matrifocal structures that enabled economic autonomy and ritual authority. Colonial regulation and nationalist reform later recast these “non-wife” identities as immoral, facilitating a transfer of artistic capital from female-hereditary practitioners to male authority, and imposing upper-caste domesticity.

Dancing Against Purity looks beyond the single story, highlighting the plural, layered histories, and invites readers to imagine forms of belonging that are as porous and transgressive as the women who once blurred the boundaries between the sacred and the sensual.