Brahmanical Patriarchy

Uma Chacravarti
Brahmanical Patriarchy

Caste hierarchy and gender hierarchy are the organising principles of the brahmanical social order and are closely interconnected…..

The purity of women has a centrality in brahmanical patriarchy, as we shall see, because the purity of caste is contingent upon it……

A similar exploration of the process of establishing control over women's sexuality in a highly stratified and closed structure could be useful in analysing the connections between caste, class, patriarchy, and the state in the brahmanical texts of early India. The structure that came into being has shaped the ideology of the upper castes and continues to be the underpinning of beliefs and practices extant today.