Weaver Woman and Lover Extraordinaire

Abstract The sixteenth-century Hindu woman saint Mirabai is extremely popular among marginalized communities in India. This chapter examines two performance traditions of Mirabai circulating among nonelite communities: a khyal or Rajasthani folk drama entitled Mira Mangal (Mira’s Marriage) and an oral epic song tradition Mira Janma Patri (Mira’s Horoscope) performed by low-caste singers in Rajasthan. The saint is portrayed as down to earth, struggling with social and familial pressures, without miraculous divine aid, and her life story becomes a language to expose and resist gender expectations and caste oppression from subaltern perspectives. The khyal, performed in the mixed caste setting of the village as a whole, presents Mirabai’s tale as a romance. Already completely devoted to Krishna, she is clearly forced to marry against her will, with love the pivotal issue around which the plot turns, as individual desires conflict with familial, caste, and social cohesion. In the Janma Patri, she must act under varying degrees of coercion, complying with her arranged marriage in response to her mother’s plea and to protect them both from male violence. Here, however, assignations of caste and the immense suffering this creates are the focus of the tale, as Mira faces rejection initially because her fellow queens suspect her devotional practice but irrevocably when her allegiance to the low-caste guru Raidas is revealed to her royal husband. This epic, though generally performed by male singers, bears the distinctive marks of women’s experiences and song and ritual traditions, and Mira stands in solidarity with all those who suffer under patriarchal and feudal domination, choosing to live as they must and affirming the possibility of alternative values and social relations.