Contemporary Indian Context Research Articles

Towards Deciphering Shared Spaces Among Religious Groups in Contemporary Indian Society: Some Illustrations and Challenges

This article presents the concept of shared spaces among religious groups in the contemporary Indian context. In the land of unity in diversity which India is known to be, this article showcases some illustrations of attempts to build shared spaces historically through religion, social arrangements, and interfaith communications and discusses the challenges in this journey. It is argued that through shared spaces, people come together, feel closeness and engage in acts of reciprocity, cooperation, and mutual celebration. Such shared spaces have permeable boundaries. The boundaries can be either barriers or bridges. Attempts to create bridges will foster peace and harmony.

Truth Unmasked: The Voice of an Indian Transwoman in The Truth about Me: A Hijra Life Story

The present research article delves deep into the autobiography, The Truth about Me: A Hijra Life Story, to unmask the intricate tapestry of challenges, prejudices, and triumphs faced by Revathi, an Indian transwoman. Revathi’s autobiography transcends the boundaries of a mere autobiographical narrative, as it assumes the role of a seminal work that enriches our comprehension of the intricate dynamics pertaining to gender, caste, and social marginalization within the context of India. It serves as a poignant testament to the resilience and defiance of an Indian transwoman amidst socio-cultural adversities. Through the utilization of a narrative approach characterized by a combination of intimacy and directness, Revathi effectively elicits emotional and intellectual engagement from the reader, thereby transforming her story into a compelling and evocative plea for action. The author’s emphasis on topics such as intersectionality and social stigma renders this piece essential for individuals with an inclination towards gender studies, social justice, and Indian culture. The present article critically examines Revathi's voice as an instrument of both resistance and revelation. On one hand, her story confronts and critiques the entrenched societal norms that perpetuate discrimination against the hijra community. On the other, it illuminates the internal struggles and moments of epiphany that define her personal journey of self-realization. The article sheds light on the sociocultural dynamics that intertwine with Revathi's identity as a hijra, her caste background, and her positioning within the broader Indian sociopolitical milieu. This research article accentuates the autobiography's significance in amplifying marginalized voices, thereby contributing to the broader discourse on gender, identity, and human rights in the contemporary Indian context.

Reading Object Lessons in India today

This essay situates Object Lessons in the contemporary academic spaces of women’s studies in India. A decade ago, Object Lessons offered an extensive critique of identity knowledges in the US academy with a special focus on women’s studies. What might its relevance be in the contemporary Indian context? The institutionalisation of women’s studies in India has been shaped by the resources of the social sciences, with their empirical bent and especially their connection to state and development policy. This makes for specific differences with the US context while many concerns are shared. The essay also looks at how gender as a category has been deployed in specific contexts in contrast to that of “women”, in the light of Wiegman’s cautions over seeking resolutions to particular problems through a preferential treatment of categories. By way of concluding thoughts on the Indian situation, women’s studies in India is hypervisible compared to other identity knowledges. In spite of its marginal and precarious location in the academy, it carries a disproportionate political burden, one that a heterogeneous student body is shouldering in their struggles for a sustainable future.

‘Does the Prime Minister Care?’

Drawing on Nancy Fraser’s theorization of care as a “fictitious commodity”, Rashna Darius Nicholson’s article ‘‘Does the Prime Minister Care?’: Spectacular solidarity, infelicitous performatives and the doubly fictitious commodification of care in India during the COVID-19 pandemic’ describes how organised gestures of care in India work to interpellate Indians into soft, palliative forms of populism and authoritarian governmentality. Through an analysis of inter-related state-sanctioned gestures of care such as symbolic acts initiated by the Narendra Modi administration during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, the PM Cares fund, and artist-in-aid programs, this article suggests that state-affiliated, spectacular care functions in the contemporary Indian context as a doubly fictitious commodity. Fictionalized first through commodification by the neoliberal marketplace and subsequently by a government seeking to advance a Hindu nationalist project, care as state-affiliated mass spectacle has become an infelicitous performative, that is, a seductive aesthetic mode that facilitates the political choreographing of (extra-)legal political interventions. Through an analysis of the infelicities of institutional care, the article shows how the state’s systematized affirmations of public concern obfuscate the breakdown of civil society-state relations, normalization of Hindu culture and increasing violence in contemporary India.

Gender-affirmative technologies and the contemporary making of gender in India

This paper explores gender-affirmative technologies in the contemporary Indian context, drawing on the findings of a qualitative study of medical practice across four Indian cities and an analysis of state documents. It examines terminological protocols and therapeutic crafting as aspects of human technologies that mobilize affects of distress and aspiration to facilitate belongingness to the universalized identity ‘transgender’, a crafting that also enacts an absorption of the hijra figure into the universal category transwoman. It links these technologies to community-building, emergence of behavioural categories and management of bodies and risk developing from the 1990s to the present in India. It explores the medical assemblage, including institutionalized healthcare and extended sites of expert authority, proposing a shift in reading of discrimination as strategies of containment and relocation of self-determination within state language and the clinic today.

Situational analysis of diabetic retinopathy screening in India: How has it changed in the last three years?

Of all the eye conditions in the contemporary Indian context, diabetic retinopathy (DR) attracts the maximum attention not just of the eye care fraternity but the entire medical fraternity. Countries are at different stages of evolution in structured DR screening services. In most low and middle income countries, screening is opportunistic, while in most of the high income countries structured population-based DR screening is the established norm. To reduce inequities in access, it is important that all persons with diabetes are provided equal access to DR screening and management services. Such programs have been proven to reverse the magnitude of vision-threatening diabetic retinopathy in countries like England and Scotland. DR screening should not be considered an endpoint in itself but the starting point in a continuum of services for effective management of DR services so that the risk of vision loss can be mitigated. Till recently all DR screening programs in India were opportunistic models where persons with diabetes visiting an eye care facility were screened. Since 2016, with support from International funders, demonstration models integrating DR screening services in the public health system were initiated. These pilots showed that a systematic integrated structured DR screening program is possible in India and need to be scaled up across the country. Many DR screening and referral initiatives have been adversely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and advocacy with the government is critical to facilitate continuous sustainable services.

Modern Durgas Fighting against the Demons of Globalization

Abstract The analysis presented here focuses on the way the antithesis between the global and the local is approached from a literary point of view in the contemporary Indian context. Assuming an ecocritical perspective, it reinterprets literature on ecological themes as a tool to negotiate some spaces of autonomy from hegemonic models imposed by globalization on an economic, technological and cultural level. Global plans often collide with local ecosystems, upsetting their pre-existent equilibrium and always more frequently producing antagonism, resistance and overt conflicts. The claim for the management of local resources and the safeguard of traditional lore become a response to the “allegedly value-neutral global market” (Eaton / Lorentzen (eds.) (2003): Ecofeminism and Globalization: Exploring Culture, Context, and Religion. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc., 4). Filtering the discussion through an ecofeminist critique, it is possible to find a connection between the abuse of power that underlies human oppression and the exploitation of the environment. Women and nature are, in fact, connected in the dominant masculine discourse by the rhetoric of submission, which is harmful to both of them (Zimmerman, et al. (ed.) (1993): Environmental Philosophy: from Animal Rights to Radical Ecology. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.; Warren / Cheney. (1991): “Ecological Feminism and Ecosystem Ecology”. Hypatia 6/1 Ecological Feminism: 179–197.). As an example of resistance strategy to these dynamics and a means to give voice to women through literature, this article proposes a critical reading of the novel Betvā bahtī rahī by Maitreyī Puṣpā (“The Betvā River was flowing”).

Neighborhood spaces in residential environments: Lessons for contemporary Indian context

The importance of open and unbuilt neighborhood spaces in residential developments has been established by numerous scholars. Having a diverse nomenclature in varied contexts, these areas are indispensable yet often neglected and designated as leftovers in contemporary planning practice. With their usefulness in the Indian context of socially active and sometimes even intrusive communities, such spaces are rapidly losing their place in present-day residential environments due to the pressure of providing for the rapidly growing population coupled with mass migratory patterns. These neighborhood spaces that impart physical, psychological, and perceptual comfort to residents have been present in spontaneously developed traditional Indian cities due to their inherent order and integrity. Moreover, some contemporary housing environments by eminent designers have also utilized the virtues of well-designed neighborhood environments. This study is a comparative analysis of three selected projects, which aspire to devise suitable methods for contemporary Indian context and achieve neighborhood comfort and an overall sense of belongingness among residents.

The hijras of India: A marginal community with paradox sexual identity

Transgender people in India, commonly known as the Hijras, who claim to be neither male nor female, are socially excluded in Indian society. The uniqueness of Hijras lies not only in their existence beyond social structure but also in Indian society's historical acceptance of that position. This study aims to understand the sociocultural exclusion of Hijras, depending on their gender identity disorder and their paradox sexual appearance. An exploratory cum descriptive research design with a nonrandom purposive sampling including the snowball technique was adopted, to collect information from 51 Hijras at Kharagpur town from the state of West Bengal, India. The study shows that although Hijras have a sort of sanctioned and visible place in Hindu society, but in the contemporary Indian context, it is the gender nonconformity of the Hijra that has a major impact besides lack of a gender recognition, sexual expression, employment, decent housing, subsidized health-care services, and as well as the violence they suffer, especially when they choose to take up formal works. Therefore, Hijras are controversial and minacious community in Indian society and their existence disrupts essential ideas about sex or gender. They need to be recognized as having a space on society's gender continuum. Vertical interventions of rights are greatly needed to address the unique needs of this marginalized group and recognizing them as equal citizens of India.

The metatext of Bajirao Mastani: intolerance in the time of Modi

ABSTRACTSanjay Leela Bhansali’s Bajirao Mastani (2015) utilizes an historical account to (re)tell a contemporary story. While Bhansali takes great pains to disavow any intention of religious critique, this article argues that such a critique – of fundamentalist Hindu forces – can be read as the metatext of the film. Such a metatext becomes particularly apparent in the contemporary Indian context, in which the always fraught relations between Hindus and Muslims have been further exacerbated since the 2014 election of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party leader Narendra Modi to the post of prime minister. In this article, I read Bajirao Mastani in light of these current events, excavating in the process the film’s metatextual critique of such fundamentalism and arguing that, in an interesting corollary to Modi’s purported silence, it is Bhansali’s strategy of indirection – addressing contemporary events via a historical tale – that has paradoxically resulted in the film’s overwhelming success.

Rethinking Panel Culture: Resistance and Subversion in Drawing the Line: Indian Women Fight Back

This paper sets out to interrogate an interesting dimension of a popular form—the graphic novel—and its use as a mode of social activism. Illustrating clearly the myriad manifestations of sexuality in modern Indian urban spaces through 14 graphic narratives, Drawing the Line: Indian Women Fight Back (2015) is a bold attempt by Priya Kuriyan, Larissa Bertonasco and Ludmilla Bartscht in documenting the predicament of young women in our society in a rather refreshing manner. I focus on the performative aspect of gender by analysing the graphic texts where an effort is made to subvert the power structure by appealing to social conscience. Here, the authors have tried to rethink femininity in the contemporary Indian context by developing a counter-hegemonic narrative which challenges the aggressive nature of dominant masculinity and by opening up the possibility of constructing a ‘counter-space’ (Lefebvre). Intersection between verbal and visual representation in the graphic stories is studied with theoretical inputs from W. J. T. Mitchell, Michel Foucault and Judith Butler.

Feminist Reflections on Labour: The 'Ethics of Care' Within Maternity Laws in India

The Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Act, 2017 has recently been passed by the Parliament of India. While this Act is a progressive step for women, there is a need to question the theoretical foundations of the law, rather than merely its consequential ramifications. Through this paper, we attempt to critique the individual rights-justice model that is integral to conceptualising maternity laws and labour laws in India. We employ a critical feminist lens to argue that such a model reproduces the public-private dichotomy and devalues the work of care within the private sphere- suggesting that it is not “transformative” labour, but “merely reproductive”. We draw from the feminist philosophy of care to argue that child-rearing must be recognised by the State as a form of labour in itself. Further, we root these theoretical suggestions in the contemporary Indian context by providing certain tangible suggestions in terms of legislative and judicial changes that would further the responsibility-care approach to the issue of maternity in the Indian legal framework. Through this paper, we argue for broadening the scope of “labour” to include the work of care-thereby creating a space for care, relationships and connectedness within the law.

Sexualizing Neoliberalism: Identifying Technologies of Privatization, Cleansing, and Scarcity

Drawing from sexual politics unfolding in the contemporary Indian context, this article tracks the ways that sexuality provides particularly fertile ground for neoliberalism’s itineraries. Juxtaposing three disparate cases involving the struggle for decriminalization, labor rights, and migration, it identifies the technologies of privatization, cleansing, and scarcity as crucial to normalizing neoliberalism. In so doing, the essay analyzes how states continue to thrive by extending market principles through privatization, promoting the interests of the urban middle classes while dislocating subaltern communities, and upholding racist and nationalist ideologies by deporting select migrant populations.

Aspirations, Expectations and Realities to Gain 'Access to Work': Insights from Women's Narratives

The phenomenon of workplace gender diversity has become a reality today across nations and organizations. More and more organizations have been arguing to have created diverse structures and practices to provide an inclusive space to all. However, in this drive to be diversity friendly what most them have missed to understand is need for them to modify underlying notions that have made them rigid vis-a-vis gendered cultures and structures. These existing workplace gendered realities creates experiences of exclusion and lack of receptivity for women at work triggering dilemmas related to their working. This has resulted in increasing concerns about gender blind nature of employment relations and human resource development systems and processes. It is in this context that this paper discusses the experiences of gender dilemmas in person-workplace interface and interactions by engaging with ordinary working women and listening to their narratives in contemporary Indian context. These experiences have been captured through an intense interview engagement based ethnographic research approach that was used to study multiple realities of person-workplace interface and interaction experiences of women in India.

Problematising teacher education practice in India: Developing a research agenda

AbstractThis paper examines the intimate relationship between pedagogic practices and the education of teachers within the larger contemporary Indian context. The first part of the paper examines this relationship in the light of a neo-liberal economic and social engineering-oriented policy discourse which is centred on concerns of national competitiveness in a globalising world. This has gained momentum in India over the last decade with the increasing engagement of the corporate sector in education, leading to a superficial policy consensus. In practice, the tension between policy imperatives and the lived reality of school education continues. This is further accentuated by an entrenched teacher education discourse and practice that has wrapped itself in dualities, is circumscribed and resistant to meaningful interrogation and challenge. It is argued that classroom pedagogy is being shaped by the culture and social ethos of teacher education as much as the neo-liberal frame within which teachers' work ...

Gender Mores on Indian Tv: The ‘Respectable’ Middle Class and Ndtv'sThe Big Fight

While India's booming entertainment channels are often examined for their lifestyle content, the nation's equally vibrant English-language news networks can also be read as offering lifestyle-oriented content and advice. Talk shows of both the controlled panel debate and the more interactive studio audience discussion variety often veer into social commentary, particularly on issues pertaining to the transitioning social values of the middle classes, including normative gender. In light of this, this article examines a recent love, sex and marriage-themed episode of leading news channel NDTV 24×7's debate-style talk show, The Big Fight. Such discussions are often cast among ‘respectable’ middle-class Indian households as being ‘too forward’ to watch with the family. Do the panelists on these shows simply articulate ‘respectable’ middle-class sentiments, or are they drawn from a wider social pool? What is the role of the host in re-mediating the material under discussion? How do studio audience questions impact on form and content? Most importantly, what role does such programming play in the ongoing transformation of gendered social norms among the middle classes in India today? These questions are considered within the broader framework of the transnational talk show genre and its appropriation in a specific instance in the contemporary Indian context.

Mapping Interpersonal Communication between Pediatricians and Mothers: Understandings, Interdependencies and Gaps

Interpersonal communication between pediatricians and mothers is both complex and interdependent. The mother is dependent on the pediatrician for her child's wellbeing and care along expertise-related dimensions for which she cannot provide. The pediatrician is dependent on the mother's ability to provide accurate information about the child's health and habits, so that the doctor, who has limited time with the child, is able to make continuing accurate diagnoses. This paper seeks to provide a basic understanding of interpersonal mis-/communication between mothers and pediatricians, a complex area which has not heretofore been mapped in the contemporary Indian context. Therefore, the paper presents a small-scale exploratory qualitative study based on in-depth interviews with both doctors and mothers in the city of Kolkata (Calcutta), India. It focuses on providing an understanding of the factors that may enable or disenable instrumental or relational communication in the mother-pediatrician situation. Four major themes emerge from the data: first, the shifting borders of information between pediatricians and parents; second, the respective roles of verbal and non-verbal communication in the consultation; third, a tension between the traditional and the modern; and fourth, understandings of professional and interpersonal relationship in the context of responsibility for a child.

Ministry and Contextualized Mission

AbstractIn this article, Indian missiologist Lazar Stanislaus reflects briefly on the nature of ministry, whether lay or ordained. He then proposes a number of new ministries which are emerging out of the contemporary Indian context, among which are ministries to street children, drug addicts, prostitutes and their children, and the ministry of empowering women. In a third section the author suggests that commitment to Jesus, learning from the people, promoting individual initiative, working for the leadership of marginalized peoples and a knowledge of other religions are ways by which new contextualized ministries can emerge in the church. Finally, five challenges to such ministries are proposed. Only when these challenges are met will ministry in the Indian Church – or any church – be truly rooted in the local context, and so truly reflect the ministry of Jesus himself.