New Roles for Indigenous Women in an Indian Eco-Religious Movement

This article aims to study how a movement aimed at the assertion of indigenous religiosity in
India has resulted in the empowerment of the women who participate in it. As part of the movement,
devotees of the indigenous Earth Goddess, who are mostly indigenous women, experience possession
trances in sacred natural sites which they have started visiting regularly. The movement aims to
assert indigenous religiosity in India and to emphasize how it is different from Hinduism—as a result
the ecological articulations of indigenous religiosity have intensified. The movement has a strong
political character and it explicitly demands that indigenous Indian religiosity should be officially
recognized by the inclusion of a new category for it in the Indian census. By way of their participation
in this movement, indigenous Indian women are becoming figures of religious authority, overturning
cultural taboos pertaining to their societal and religious roles, and are also becoming empowered to
initiate ecological conservation and restoration efforts.