Keele Research Repository

Anti-Catholic polemics from the mid-nineteenth century made frequent comparisons between religious practices in Britain, Ireland and India. The supposed atrocities taking place at locations such as Lough Dearg in County Donegal and ‘Juggernaut’ (Jagganath) at Puri were denounced in terms which hinted strongly at a striking combination of extreme asceticism and perverse sexual enjoyment. In the same period the word ‘perversion’, which had hitherto referred to apostasy, started to develop connotations of sexual deviance. Protestant sexualized readings of Catholic and Hindu asceticism appear to have been an important site for the development of conceptions of deviant sexuality in general and masochism in particular.