Impersonations

Harshita Mruthinti Kamath

Drawing on multisited ethnographic fieldwork and performance analysis, this book centers on an insular community of Smarta brahmin men from the Kuchipudi village in Telugu-speaking South India, who are required to don stri?-ve?s?am (woman?s guise) and impersonate female characters from Hindu religious narratives. According to the hagiography of Siddhendra, the founding saint of Kuchipudi dance, every brahmin man from a hereditary Kuchipudi family must don stri?-ve?s?am at least once in his life, a prescription that still resonates in the village today. Impersonation, the term used to indicate the donning of gender guise (ve?s?am), is not simply a performative mandate for Kuchipudi brahmin men but also a practice of power that creates normative ideals of brahmin masculinity in village performance and everyday life. However, the construction of brahmin masculinity against the backdrop...