112 SOCIAL SCIENTIST more to limit 'deviants' than to truly recognise and accept their elevated position. This is borne out by Ramaswamy's other points, the inability of women to initiate mutts for example. A similar social language of control (achieved through glorification) is visible in another significant point of Ramaswamy's work, i.e., the question of sharing and serving as essential components of spiritualism. Read the following passage: In spirituality patriarchal ideas of empowerment vis-a-vis disempowerment... do not have the same values as in the material realm. In fact, in the spiritual realm all these notions are reversed. The values that get emphasised in the spiritual path are those of giving (very different from the particular notion of 'abject surrender') and caring and nurturing, different again from the materialist values of hoarding and accumulating... This can be illustrated in terms of the Tamil legend of Manimekalai... in which the Buddhist renunciate Manimekalai receives the magic bowl... Here, what would be the caring, maturing qualities of the housewife turn into the begging bowl in the hands of a woman ascetic. The attributes of compassion and nurturing are used by the ascetic Manimekalai to feed thousands from the divine bowl and nurture and care for humanity at large. The qualities of caring and compassion which constitute striking features of the personality of the Buddha are to be found as much among spiritual/humanistic men as among women. Therefore, the qualities which command primacy in the spiritual field overflow gender constructs and lift the entire debate out of the contested terrain of male versus female epistemologies (1997:15; emphasis mine). My question is: does this really lift the entire debate out of the contested terrain of male versus female epistemologies? Or is it yet another condescending concession of patriarchy to women (agreeably perpetuated both by men and women in society), this time somewhat more carefully garbed in the proposition of 'high' or 'selfless' ideals like sharing and serving, apart from other things. Interestingly, Ramaswamy keeps hovering around this idea, but never puts her finger on it. While citing Meera's (who along with Lal Ded find recurrent mention) case, she also argues (separately) for spiritualism as an 'escape route' for women within an oppressive set up. She writes: 'Female spirituality can also be an enforced phenomenon, a diabolic outcome of patriarchal conspiracy'. Having come so close, Ramaswamy once again misses the point, or so I feel! This tendency