18. Anilesh TT

Abstract 18. Anilesh TT

The Corporal meets the Spiritual: De-stereotyping the Indian Ascetic Body:
A Study on the Life and Select Vachanas of Akka Mahadevi

Abstract

ANILESH T. T.

Human body, which was confined within the physicality in the past, is not anymore an ‘essential’ concept. Since the emergence of Semiotics, the body has been considered a sign, an arbitrary blending of a signifier and signified(s). The Poststructural theories further this notion and argue that the body is a cultural construct rather than a natural entity. This argument is based on the assumption that there is no unalloyed body with a singlular signification, but there are bodies on which a multiplicity of meanings are inscribed and infused. The responsibility of this ‘inscription’ lies in the agencies that hold power in a culture, and the infused meanings will consequently facilitate the ideologies of such agencies. The corporality of the body, in this sense, is a cultural site in which the subtle political ideologies are deftly imposed. So, it can be argued that the apparently unified or non-contradictory bodies should be suspected of having subtle hegemonic mechanisms in their formation. As a corollary to this, an investigation into such ‘commonplace’ bodies may have the effect of the subversion of a power structure.

As far as this paper is considered, the body which is investigated and analysed is that of Akka Mahadevi or Mahadeviakka, the 12^th century Kannada poetess who wrote several vachanas(poems which are meant to be sung) which revolutionised the patriarchal mind-set of Karnataka and South India in general.  She is reported to have broken all family ties including that with her husband and left home naked asserting her single-minded love for her divine lover/husband, Chennamallikarjuna. She is now considered a prominent figure in the field of female emancipation and a person of rebellious mystic vision. She is also read as an epitome of ascetic tradition of India, which made a dichotomy between this world and the other world, earthly and ethereal, and body and spirit. Indian hard-core asceticism has always condemned the body which is read as the nemesis of the uncontaminated and uncontaminable spirit. But, a careful reading of Akka’s life and her vachanas will reveal that she was never an ascetic of stoic ideal. Body, for Akka, was not a potential tempter to be suppressed. Rather it was something to be accepted, celebrated and transcended. Her addressing of Chennamallikarjuna in highly erotic terms is apparently antithetical to the age-old Indian acetic tradition. In this regard, Akka can be seen deconstructing the dichotomy between the corporal and the spiritual, and even proclaim the dissenting statement that spiritual can be erotic too.

However, my attempt in this paper is to analyse the life and concerned vachanas of Akka Mahdevi to retrieve the erotic elements that lie beneath the lines of Akka’a vachanas and foreground its iconoclastic and spiritual potential in the discourse. The endeavour simultaneously attempts to de-stereotype not only her body but also the body of the Indian asceticism that silences the natural bodily urges which are to be transcended and not suppressed and stifled.