Democracy and posession by deities

...As noted, oracular possession has been on the increase in South Asia. Gellner attributes this increase in Nepal since about 1950 to democratization (prajātantra), which has emboldened a large number of people, especially women, to establish themselves as regular mediums. This has become a new and viable wage-earning opportunity for women in certain oppressively patriarchal rural areas of Nepal—not a trivial factor in the general empowerment offered by possession. Thus, as with New Age channeling, the proliferation of possession in Nepal and elsewhere in South Asia is a populist artifact of democratization. In this way, democracy has done well its job of leveling inequalities: It has been a mechanism for shrinking the gap
between laity and deity in the West and between the laity and the priestly elite in South Asia.

Nevertheless, in spite of similar dynamics of cultural legitimization and forces of modernity at work in the West and in other less-privileged regions of the world, the personal empowerment experienced by
New Age trance channelers displays a considerably different texture from that experienced by women and others of lower social rank in developing societies whose possession is a temporary expression of social or political dominance in a general climate of oppression...

From
The self possessed
Deity and Spirit Possession in
South Asian Literature and Civilization