Women in Ochre Robes: Gendering Hindu Renunciation

Focuses on the lives of female Hindu ascetics and the significance of gender to the tradition of renunciation.

Meena Khandelwal offers an engaging and intimate portrait of extraordinary Hindu women in India who wear "ochre robes," signifying their renunciation of marriage and family for lives of celibacy, asceticism, and spiritual discipline. While the largely male Hindu ascetic tradition of sannyasa renders its initiates ritually "dead" to their previous identities, the women portrayed here...