Retro-modern India: Forging the Low-caste Self (Exploring the Political in South Asia)

Exploring the Political in South Asia

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The bus stopped in Moradabad, and amongst them, they found local contacts and sorted the problem immediately. Caste membership was not a good enough reason to establish this selective trust. These relationships get strengthened when women couch them in cultural, relational idioms sanctified by Hindu rituals.

She says her husband was a middle man in fixing big deals, in which significant amounts of money got exchanged against sureties. The tenacity of caste comes in its capacity to reproduce through actively forged networks of fictive kinship ties in the urban. These networks also provide suitable marital alliances for children.

These discussions precede the matching of kundalis astrological charts.

Only if there was a match between the suggested and expected budget were marriage negotiations carried forward. Common family, friends and at times marriage brokers helped in the negotiation process. The dowry could also be a part of the budget, depending on the parties involved in the negotiation. For the Aggarwal elite in this stratum, dowries did not involve consumer durables; that was considered fit only for working class families. Their budgets were spent on expensive, elaborate weddings, a luxury car or perhaps furnished flats.

For example Kanika 52 came from a mixed family: She did not fit in the same stratum as women with intergenerational professional family businesses or those with manufacturing plants; however, her family had a good reputation and had been involved in the neighborhood caste association since the previous generation.

Kanika knew all the other elite Aggarwal families through the caste association, kitty, 15 and rotary circles. She wanted her daughter Arunima to marry into a business-class family. When Arunima informed Kanika about her Punjabi professional-class boyfriend in the neighborhood, Kanika managed to dissuade her from choosing him. Arunima was convinced by her mother, whose reluctance was not rooted in caste difference but in the fact that the boy did not earn enough to provide the lifestyle Arunima was used to and that Kanika desired for her.

Studies on marriages in India argue that martial choices amongst the upper castes continue to be endogamous. However, endogamous choices or weddings were read as an event in themselves.

Behind such decisions lies a careful steering through the sociology of familial love and material security. Kanika found an affluent business-class family through her kitty party contact. She also found out the budget expectations, which matched theirs. Her daughter Arunima went on to become the youngest daughter-in-law in a business family in Delhi with four brothers and she was not allowed to continue working after marriage.

When it comes to marriages of sons, parents looked for alliances in the same class and status and not in one above them. This was because women realized that daughter-in-laws from families above them would be difficult to adjust to. Women secretly spoke of families in their strata who had gone on to marry above their means only to have unhappy daughters-in-law and ultimate separations.

Daughters-in-law also came from professional-class families and the third stratum of Aggarwal living in parts of Rohini, Pitampura as long as their status was comparable, budgets matched and sons were happy with the choice. As friends and confidants of their children, mothers ensured that their choices were accounted for while still securing status-appropriate marriages.

Her daughter-in-law, Roshini, comes from a first-generation business family settled in Rohini. It is considered unsuitable to the status of the family, as work is associated only with profitable earnings and not self-growth or expression. Working daughters-in-law would also constitute a loss of the status reproduction roles expected of them.

However, mothers-in-law realize that it would be counter-productive to the health of the family if educated daughters-in-law were actively discouraged. They encouraged daughters-in-law to pursue their hobbies by opening small projects on the side, like a design boutique, taking short-term courses like baking or joining the family business for a few hours.

Daughters-in-law would then have the flexibility of work hours, keep the status of being the daughter-in-law of an elite family and be creatively entertained in the process.

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To be an elite daughter-in-law was then to lead a lifestyle that reflects the affluence of the family business. If the family could afford to invest and spare both their sons for higher education, then it would be undertaken.

However, it was usually the younger son if he had a temperament for studies who was sent to study abroad; the elder son would have a basic degree and be involved in the day to day management of the business. Daughters were also sent abroad for short term courses. Pursuing higher education, however, posed a risk to the continuance of the family business.

Marriage alliances were sought and Rajat, her son, was married to Rachna on one of his visits to India.

Rajat, in turn, came back to India to join the family business. Marriage is seen as a route for attaining social adulthood, responsibility and prioritizing the needs of the family above oneself. A ritual to keep families united, strengthen affective ties, ensure channels of communication are functioning and in the process ensure the health of the family business was to find time to spend together as a family. In the previous generation, spending time together was a given.

All food was made at home, as women were frugal and also wary of eating food prepared by unknown castes. In the current generation, however, the home was no longer the primary site of socialization. Eating out and parties were frequent and children and parents had their independent circles of friend. The ritual of evening snack sessions, going on long dinners once a month, foreign trips together and celebrating festivals were some of the things women say they initiate to be a family in the everyday.

Rituals helped the different family units in the joint family—which resided on separate floors and at times managed separate manufacturing plants—to set time apart for members of the nuclear family. An increase in internal heterogeneities in urban caste groups like the Aggarwal causes the upper strata to forge cohesion by strengthening inter-strata caste and family ties.

Three strategies of reproduction used by women along with their families are discussed: This article shows how caste continues to act as a resource for the upper caste despite internal heterogeneities and the secularizing pulls of the urban. Their morally permissible sphere of socialization and mobility continues to be within extended caste and kinship networks. In the younger generation of women, however, there is a waning interest in these caste-marked spaces and an increase in individualized utilization of time and resources.

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Attention to changing elite gendered subjectivities and the new vocabularies of caste-ed selves reveals the secularizing pulls of capital on traditional institutions like Indian family businesses. Being Brahmin, Being Modern: Exploring the Lives of Caste Today. Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars: Saints, Goddesses and Kings: Muslims and Christians in South Indian Society, Occupation, Caste and Family. Selections from the Annales , edited by R. The John Hopkins University Press.

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Gender, Class and State. Forging the Low Caste Self. London and New York: Daljit, Han Donker and Ravi Saxena. Caste, Business and Industry in a Modern Nation. Gender, Religion and Tax Concessions. Maternity, Globalization and Middle-class Identity. The Caste System and its Implications. The University of Chicago Press. A Question of Sale? From Zamindar to Ballot Box: Collective Action and Community: University of California Press. The Making of a Middle-Class Caste.

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Women of the Upper Class. Why the Wealthy Give: The Culture of Elite Philanthropy. Rural Capitalists in Asia: Sangari, Kusum and Sudesh Vaid. Essays in Indian Colonial History. Honour and Patriarchy in South India. From Traders to Industrialists. Business Communities of India: Gender, Family, and Popular Culture in India. Upadhya, Carol and A. Retrieved August 6, Vithayathil, Trina and Gayatri Singh. Residential Segregation in Indian Cities. How Culture Shapes the Economy. Names and identifiable markers of all respondents have been changed to maintain anonymity.

They are based on the genealogical narratives of select Aggarwal families residing in each of these areas and hence do not claim to represent the entire Aggarwal population or their reasons for migration. This claim by the Aggarwal should be read in the context of their increasing Hindu-ization and close proximity to the political Hindu right.

Money lending as a profession and Aggarwals by extension were severely affected by this. The Aggarwal use it derogatorily to refer to anyone who is a Dalit. In the specific zone that my respondents belong to, membership is open to all; however, apart from two to three Punjabi families, the rest are all Aggarwal. Membership through invitation means that it is an intimate circle of known people.

Rotary membership overlaps with that of the caste associations. Families with successful intergenerational industries, however, were reluctant to participate in Rotary meetings, considering it a waste of their time. It was the men in professional firms along with their wives who were more inclined to participate. It is a Hindu religious festival between a brother and sister. Once a year when it is her turn she gets a lump-sum amount.

Membership in these kitties required the husbands to be members of the Aggarwal association at the Delhi level. However, the lane kitties involving members living in the same lane in the neighborhood included neighborhood Punjabi women. A journal promoting comparative and fieldwork-based research on society, culture and politics in South Asia. South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal.

Contents - Previous document - Next document. Women in the reproduction of caste and family businesses in urban India: Forging fictive kinship within caste stratum through sustained socialization. Steering individuating desires and marital choices. Notes Series numbering from jacket.

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