Signposts: Gender Issues in Post-independence IndiaRajeswari Sunder Rajan As a newly-independent nation-state, India saw itself as initiating progressive social change, increasing economic prosperity and encouraging the advancement of political ideals. Though the reality has been a vastly different one of struggle, compromise, and the lapse of ideals, there have been some hard-won gains in these areas. Issues of gender have been central to the process of new nation-state formation. The essays in this volume map the concerns of gender onto the terrain of nation, finding significant connections, disjunctions, and tensions between them. The authors argue that for any cultural analysis to be performed in the context of the decolonized nation-space, gender must take centre stage. The essays explore gender as a point of crisis in the cultural, social and political space of the nation. They attribute the existence of these crises to conflicts between gender, on the one hand, and family, community and nation on the other. These are then analyzed in terms of female identity, subjectivity and agency within a narrative of historical modernity. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
Virgin Mother Beloved Other | 9 |
The Impossible Subject | 12 |
The Erotics of Tamil Nationalism in Colonial | 17 |
Thinking About the New Indian Middle Class | 57 |
Gender Development and the Womens Movement | 100 |
Gendercleansing | 125 |
Gender Caste and Modernity | 155 |
Caste and Desire in the Scene of the Family | 188 |
Understanding Sirasgaon | 205 |
Cutting to Size | 249 |
Of Victims and Vigilantes | 293 |
The Story of Draupadis Disrobing | 332 |
Mnemosigning | 360 |