Submitted by Filipe dos Santos (fsantos@pucsp.br) on 2016-09-01T14:36:13Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Jorge Lúzio Matos Silva.pdf: 22243686 bytes, checksum: 9b7d96e5a57d3917f4e717f5cdf50413 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-09-01T14:36:13Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Jorge Lúzio Matos Silva.pdf: 22243686 bytes, checksum: 9b7d96e5a57d3917f4e717f5cdf50413 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-04-08 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico / The colonial system implemented by Portugal over the occupied territories in the west coast of India between the Sixteenth and Eighteenth centuries, by portraying the figure of the bailadeira, a category of dancer women associated with Hindu temples and whose representation had been based on reductionisms, misconceptions, and distortions related to prostitution, imposed an interpretation developed under the European ethnocentrism. It was a strategy to disqualify the local culture, facilitating the conquer project and the conversion to Christianity. Since the Indian antiquity, as observed in the bodies represented iconographically in ivory, the bailadeiras, particularly the devadasis, were the main carrier of their ancestry, religiously revived in the arts of liturgical dances and chants. Due to their social autonomy, these women transited in the spheres of the local power, always surrounded by ambivalences and contradictions from the colonial society. As historical subjects, they remained under stigma derived from the orientalism. This work, founded upon the Postcolonial Theory, aims to analyze the Indian coloniality and its mechanisms of self-affirmation and domination, which involves the bailadeira from the Portuguese India / O sistema colonial implantado por Portugal sobre os territórios ocupados no sudoeste da Índia entre os séculos XVI e XVIII, ao retratar a figura da bailadeira, uma categoria de mulheres dançarinas vinculadas aos templos hindus e cujas representações estiveram pautadas por reducionismos, equívocos e distorções associados à prostituição, impôs uma interpretação construída sob o etnocentrismo europeu, numa estratégia de desqualificação da cultura local, a favorecer o Projeto da Conquista e a conversão cristã. As bailadeiras, e em especial as devadasis, desde a antiguidade indiana, foram as principais portadoras da sua ancestralidade, religiosamente revivida nas artes das danças litúrgicas e do canto, como foi possível constatar em seus corpos iconografados em marfim. Em sua autonomia social, transitaram nas esferas dos poderes locais, entre as ambivalências e as contradições da sociedade colonial. Como sujeitos históricos permaneceram sob os estigmas do orientalismo. Este trabalho, concebido a partir da teoria pós-colonial, analisou a colonialidade na Índia e seus mecanismos de autoafirmação e subjugo do colonizado, no qual se enquadrou a bailadeira da Índia portuguesa

This thesis theologises with the contemporary devadāsīs of South India, focusing in particular on the Dalit girls who from childhood have been dedicated to the goddess Mathamma and used as village sex workers. Firstly, chapters one and two situate the context for theologising by outlining the discriminatory practice of caste and the place of the Dalits, noting in particular the plight of Dalit women. From here it explores the socioreligious identities of the contemporary devadāsīs that have been transformed and degraded as a result of a multitude of hegemonies, to the extent that the existential narratives of the contemporary devadāsīs are shaped by sexual violence, caste and gender discrimination, local village religiosity and sex work. And it is based upon such narratives that this research contemplates God. Chapter three suggests that there exists a lacuna in Indian Christian Theology and Dalit Liberation Theology for the voices and experiences of the most marginalised of Dalit women, in particular those whose narratives would be deemed “indecent”. In response, inspired by the Indecent Theology of Marcella Althaus- Reid, it suggests that in order to be truly identity-specific and liberating to the most marginalised of Dalit women, Dalit Liberation Theology must be born out of the sexual narratives of the oppressed. Chapter four therefore uses an Indecent Dalit feminist hermeneutic to re-read the narratives of the “harlots,” “concubines,” and “whores” of Scripture alongside the lived experiences of the Dalit sacred “prostitutes.” It does so in the hope of challenging patriarchal hegemonic Dalit Christian theologising that portrays the ‘decent' woman as godly, to the detriment of those who transgress heteronormative sexual moral orders. The final chapter goes on to further challenge Dalit Theology to discover the Dalit Christ in the context of the dedicated women – where we encounter a lived religiosity, that is shaped by religious hybridity, goddess worship and the Christ who has become a Dalit devi.