The Clothing of the Naked Saint: Lal Ded’s Role in Shaping Ascetic Masculinity

Poetry attributed to Lal Ded first appears in the historical record in the late seventeenth century, over 300 years after she died, and thus was unlikely written by her but by later Kashmiri Hindu men. Even the earliest writings to mention Lal Ded, which are hagiographical, were written by Sufi men in the late 1500s. Through a close analysis of these early sources, this paper argues the Kashmiri woman saint Lal Ded was utilized in these earliest sources to shape and define a new ascetic masculinity—free from, but not unrelated to, other competing paradigms of masculinity in early modern Kashmir. New frameworks for understanding women saints may be produced through examining such historical reconfigurations of gendered protocols and expected behaviors, providing insights into the self-fashioning of past religious communities for both men and women.