I like to go out and have a good time: An ethnography of a group of young middle class urban Indian women participating in a new drinking culture

The Indian middle class witnessed a reconfiguration in its composition after the failure of the secular nationalists in their method of development and redistribution of resources. This reconfiguration used cultural and religious fundamentalism in the form of Hindutva as its instrument to assert their right to access the resources and strive towards a non-State centric redistribution. However, this new middle class, which was mainly conversing in the vernacular and had its base in the smaller urban areas, was also faced with the assertion of the lower class identarian groups. In such a situation, a large section of the urban Indian middle class shied away from taking part in the electoral process citing moral crises of the corrupt secular English speaking elite on one hand and the lowly criminal nature of the lower class political assertion on the other. Taking hints from the works of Christophe Jaffrelot, I would try to argue in this paper, that non-participation of a major section of the urban middle class was a manifestation of securing the rechanneled and partially redistributed rent legitimised through the instrument of Hindutva. This has led to increased persona-centric populist narratives from the mid-1990s to the present times with efforts to undermine parliamentary democracy (which is associated as an institiution of the immoral secular nationalists). This in turn, I would try to argue by the end of this paper, has again assisted in concretising the very rent-seeking practices and patron-client political relationships that the new middle class had initially opposed to rise to political prominence throughout the late 1970s and 1980s

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Young Middle-Class Women, Consumption and Fitness in Contemporary India: ‘To Tackle All That is Thrown Her Way’

South Asia Research ◽

10.1177/0262728019895346 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 40 (1) ◽

pp. 111-126

Author(s):

Callie Batts Maddox

Keyword(s):

Middle Class ◽

Female Body ◽

Cultural Practices ◽

Multiple Roles ◽

Global Markets ◽

Indian Woman ◽

Indian Women ◽

Roles And Responsibilities ◽

The Right ◽

Working Out

This article examines the intersections of fitness, consumption, the middle class and the female body in contemporary India. Having grown up exposed to and interacting with global markets, brands and commodities, young middle-class Indian women seek to engage in cultural practices that distinguish them as members of an upwardly mobile class of urban professionals. For many young women, working out at a gym or fitness centre has become an important performative act that signifies ability to successfully navigate the globalised and cosmopolitan worlds. Drawing mainly from ethnographic fieldwork, the article suggests that the fit, young, middle-class body has become the ‘right’ female body in contemporary India and functions to reinforce a privileged social location. It underpins moralities of self-care and marks the rise of the global Indian woman prepared to tackle multiple roles and responsibilities.

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Understanding the intersectionality of urban Indian women's leisure experience.

10.1079/9781789247985.0015 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 168-179

Author(s):

Vinathe Sharma-Brymer

Keyword(s):

Lived Experiences ◽

Formal Education ◽

Research Data ◽

Indian Women ◽

Personal Time ◽

Decision Making Capacity ◽

Urban Indian ◽

Women's Lives ◽

Sociocultural Experiences ◽

College Educated

Abstract This chapter explores the conflictual location of leisure in Indian women's lives that religion, caste, class, formal education, and financial independence affect deeply. Autoethnography is applied as a methodology to analyse research data gathered from five college-educated, urban, upper-caste Indian women including the author herself. Autoethnography allows for the interrogation of broader processes of inequalities that shape lived experiences, particularly the interpretation of sociocultural contexts of life. The participants perceived leisure time embedded in socializing, religious and cultural gatherings, and family and community events. These collectively form the place, space, and events of women's leisure. Without assigning leisure a defined personal time, their leisure experiences carried layered meanings. It was a location of conformity, resistance, negotiations, desire, conflict, and transformation. Outside the realm of traditional sociocultural experiences, the women were becoming conscious of choice and decision-making capacity in their personal leisure. Their narratives provide insights into the experience of leisure with the nuances of strategies and agency.

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