'The Bourgeois Woman and the Half-Naked One': Or the Indian Nation's Contradictions Personified

In: Modern Asian studies, Band 44, Heft 4, S. 785-815

Abstract

AbstractThis paper explores the interplay between development, identity politics and middle-class aspirations amongst low-caste Chamar women in rural north India. It argues that this interplay has reinvigorated notions of women's domesticity, education and modern conjugality as they emerged in the reforms and 'modernising' efforts of sections of Indian society, since the nineteenth century, in their encounter with the colonial 'civilising mission'. It will show how the long-term effects of this 'legacy', through its reconfiguration and appropriation by members from a low caste, have affected a historically marginalised community in their pursuit of middle-class aspirations. In addition to the criticality of Indian women and their gender roles as 'sites' where nation and community transformations are symbolically and practically negotiated, scholars of South Asia have also highlighted the separation between historical and anthropological discourses on women. This paper brings these discourses together and addresses this separation by showing that Chamar appropriation of the 'modernising' agenda has initiated a dual process. On the one hand, a minority of women have embarked on an embourgeoisement trajectory predicated on education, 'modern motherhood' and aspirations to white collar employment, and on the other hand, underprivileged women (with their 'unfit' personas) have become increasingly vulnerable to stigmatisation as a result of being in 'menial labour'. It is further argued that dialectic study of the 'two [groups of] Chamar women' will provide an insightful lens through which inner conflicts within low-caste communities in contemporary India may be understood, and suggests that there are contradictory trends concerning women, their development prospects, and their membership within the nation.