Contemporary Gender Formations in India: In-between Conformity, Dissent and Affect

edited by Nandini Dhar, Abingdon, UK and New York: Routledge, 2024

Reviewed by Deepti Komalam

Analysing the contemporary is always a fraught exercise since signposts and their meanings keep shifting under the barrage of information and experiences that clamour for attention in this heavily mediated internet age. But to continue to record analysis and observations from multiple perspectives about the contemporary, so as to add to the larger historical record of a time, is a crucial task. That is what Contemporary Gender Formations in India, edited by Nandini Dhar, sets out to do, attempting to understand the shifting terrain of feminist movements and its subjectivities in India in this millennium.

Some of the key signposts that the book uses to frame the contemporary are the 2012 Delhi gang-rape case, Raya Sarkar’s List of Sexual Harassers in Academia (LoSHA) that came out in 2017, and the #MeToo movement, which peaked in 2017–2018, over a decade after activist Tarana Burke gave life to those words. Certain other conceptual nodes that connect most of the chapters are the neoliberal turn in India; the gendered nature of spaces and protests (both online and offline); digital feminisms; and a commitment, realised in varying degrees, to a more intersectional understanding of women’s lives and experiences taking into account class, caste, religion, sexuality, age, ability, etc.

The 14 chapters in the book provide an in-depth analysis of various gendered spatialities and deploy varying methodologies ranging from feminist ethnography, literary analysis, and epistolary correspondence between a teacher and student. The very first chapter opts for an interview format to unravel the various layers of artist Maya Krishna Rao’s The Walk that was performed across the country after the gang-rape and death of Jyoti Singh. The chapters by Anindita Sengupta and Bhumika shift our focus to the hill states of north-east India, with the latter undertaking close readings of literary texts from Mizoram and Nagaland to analyse the gendered social formations in militarised zones. Another chapter that takes the literary analysis route is by Ratika Kaushik who foregrounds the ways in which the characters in Arundhati Roy’s second novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, reclaim public space in various ways.

Part Two of the book leans more towards ethnography and brings together a fascinating array of research work from across the country. Ritam Dutta delves into the sociability practices of young Bengali men and women hanging out in addas (referring to informal social conversations as well as its place setting), while Ipsita Pradhan takes us among women shop-floor employees in a Hyderabad mall to chart the ways in which their labour contributes to the manufacturing of specific kinds of neoliberal subjectivities. Arya Thomas unravels how gender and class work as axes of power through observations on women-led protests in the tea estates of Kerala and in prominent industrial corridors connecting the major metro cities. Jigisha Bhattacharya’s wordy and somewhat nebulous chapter looks at contemporary feminist movements hinging on the question of menstruation. In contrast, Lars Olav Aaberg’s mini-chapter reflecting on sexuality, class, and traffic infrastructure in Bangalore leaves one hungry for more of his detailed and keen analysis.

Rahul Sen’s chapter on ‘desire’ in the classroom puts forth an unequivocal argument on how the feminist rhetoric post-MeToo is brewing a conservative attitude towards sex, especially due to the overarching dominance of narratives of exploitation. This chapter, which is housed in Part One of the book, seems to fit better in Part Three which takes our focus back to sexual violence and hashtag movements. Here, Shweta Khilnani’s chapter examines how digital activism complicates the ‘personal is political’ evocation of feminism and cites literature that traces online and offline spaces as alternative realms that enjoy a dialectical relationship. Debanjana Nayek’s chapter on Indian cyberfeminism points to how online narratives do the crucial work of documentation and also looks at dalit feminism in digital spaces. Sameena Dalwai and Eysha Marysha, in their chapter, speak to each other on these issues, bringing in perspectives from two generations of feminists. Lastly, Tarishi Verma and Radhika Gajjala’s chapter puts caste in the centre of the LoSHA-due process debate and asks if the lack of corporeality delegitimises hashtag movements.

That the chapters provide contradictory readings of moments such as #MeToo and LoSHA is perhaps a strength of the book, as it keeps open the possibilities of differing perspectives. However, as with most books, not all these perspectives are given equal weightage. The introductory chapter penned by Dhar analyses #MeToo and LoSHA with a lens that is consistent with that of the ‘Kafila feminists’ who had argued for ‘due process’ and against the tactic of ‘naming and shaming’ on social media. But theorisations that put forth a contrarian viewpoint are relegated to the last chapter. In fact, the last two chapters provide counters to certain critiques raised in the introduction, and a more sustained engagement between the two ends of the book might have helped it overcome the problem of (for lack of a better term) binarity. Without a more nuanced entanglement between the differing perspectives put forth in the chapters dealing with #MeToo and LoSHA, there is a risk of narrowing the issue down to two broad analytically oppositional brushstrokes and forcing readers to choose between them.

The problematics of an ‘or’ reading

By an ‘or’ reading, what I mean is the oft-used framework of choosing two different events/experiences and comparing them to mount a social critique. The simplest example is provided in Sengupta’s chapter, where she compares the media visibility garnered by the 2012 Delhi gang-rape case with that of Thangjam Manorama’s in Manipur to lay out the ways in which women from conflict zones and socially marginalised locations occupy only the peripheries of the national imagination. But, the trouble with an ‘or’ reading is not just that the comparative framework can be redeployed in endless ways (for instance, comparing Manorama’s case with the rape of a dalit woman that got even lesser visibility); but also that it forces readers to pick sides, foreclosing opportunities for more nuanced analyses.

Several such seemingly oppositional categories are scattered across the book: due process versus #MeToo/LoSHA, digital versus material, sex as liberation from patriarchal morality versus sex as a zone of potential danger for women, victimhood versus agency, etc. For instance, Dhar writes, ‘It is, then, not on the basis of a politics of resistance or agential subjectivity – the traditional realm of feminist politics – that the imagined community of #MeToo has been constituted. Instead, the emphasis has been on the common experiences of violation and trauma’ (p. 6). For Dhar, the personal narratives of sexual harassment under #MeToo, since they were more individualised and were in digital spaces, stand in opposition to the ‘labour of material and institutional emotional or political transformation’ (p. 8). This was a sentiment similar to that of feminists who felt that the ease of shaming predatory men on social media carried the risk of misuse and would work against the long fight to establish legal protections for women via due processes.

Instead of falling into the trap of a binary reading, in the last chapter Verma and Gajjala ask, ‘Why is not the hashtag movement a part of the institutional process itself? Why should it be looked at as something far removed from the institutional processes?’ (p. 338). In several cases, #MeToo narratives on social media became starting points for institutional battles and led to several media organisations setting up Internal Complaints Committees (ICC). This happened because of the strength of ‘discursive evidence’ (p. 341), like in the case of MJ Akbar, where several women shared experiences of having been harassed by the same powerful man.

My own experience of writing a #MeToo post in 2018 (without naming the aggressor) was similar to this. It was when other women started commenting under my Facebook post and took the discussion to Twitter that I came to realise that what I had considered my individual experience at the hands of a former male employer in a media organisation was, in fact, something faced by several women over the years. The online discussions led to telephone interactions and finally culminated in five of us filing an official complaint with the organisation. An ICC hearing was held, but this ‘due process’ did not result in any definitive punitive action against the aggressor. What was accomplished, however, was the affective solidarity among a group of women who would otherwise have never formed a collective front to make it clear to the aggressor that his inappropriate actions would not be tolerated silently.

How does this sit together with Dhar’s and, in a subsequent chapter, Sen’s reading of #MeToo narratives as an ‘ascendancy of assertions of female helplessness and victimhood’? (p. 103). An ‘or’ reading would force us to choose between reading #MeToo narratives as an essentialisation of victim identities versus a transgressive moment of women breaking their silence. But both these readings are valid and co-exist. The trouble with an ‘or’ reading is that it invariably excludes women with contradictory experiences in life, whereas the goal of the larger intersectional feminist movement is that of inclusion. And the Indian feminist movement, while continuing its fight to make due processes accessible to all, needs to also include a mass of youngsters whose ‘real lives are very much connected to social media’ (p. 321) and for whom the lines between digital and material worlds are increasingly blurry.

Caste into the last intersectional node

A common way in which scholars attempt intersectional analysis is by listing the various possible nodes separated by commas and then adding an ‘etc.’ (like I have done above) to signify the endless possibilities inherent in how the social influences the experiences of a person. But these commas hardly do full justice to the inextricable and temporal nature of these social categories. Intersectionality is always a process, one that needs to be continuously attempted. In this regard, most chapters in this book do engage with the various modalities of gender, class, labour, urban–rural divide, and digital access, but only rhetorically engage with the question of caste. In fact, several times, usage of phrases like ‘urban and upper middle-class’ comes to stand in for oppressor caste locations and invisibilises the entrenched relationship between class and caste in the Indian context.

Dhar does admit to major exclusions in the anthology – ‘of caste, of region, of inadequate coverage of class’ (p. 28). But one wonders if this statement is made to merely mark the absence of papers on the lived experiences of Dalit, Bahujan, Adivasi (DBA) women. Because if so, it again resorts to the blinkered approach that connects caste only with the marginalised, as if urban, middle-class folks do not embody caste in various ways. For this same reason, chapters by Dutta, Thomas, and Khilnani fall short of a proper process of intersectional analysis. For instance, Dutta defines ‘bhadralok’ simply as educated middle-class Bengalis, glossing over the caste angle. And Thomas elaborates on the gender bias faced by Gomathi, one of the leaders of the Munnar tea plantation protests in 2015, while only fleetingly referring to the caste-based targeting she faced for being a vociferous dalit woman.

Strangely, while Dhar aptly critiques the class component of #MeToo and LoSHA (because a majority of women still do not enjoy internet access in India), she omits mentioning the caste element in the divide between feminists after LoSHA and does not engage at all with Raya Sarkar’s dalit, queer identity. Only Verma and Gajjala’s chapter looks into how the feminists who came out with statements against LoSHA were from upper-caste locations. Most chapters do point out the obvious connection between caste-class and lack of internet access, but only in the last three chapters do we find engagement with how digital spaces, at least in theory, have paved the way for the marginalised to have access to a wider world and led to more of their voices being heard than before. Especially since mainstream media still continues to be a stronghold of oppressor castes and hardly ever makes space for the marginalised.

The critique of #MeToo and LoSHA being limited to certain urban, upper-class, and privileged spaces of the digital or elite academic institutions, is valid. But, it is the same critique that has been made of traditional forms of feminist organisational endeavours by scholars speaking from dalit feminist perspectives. Thus, to use this argument to pit individualised digital feminism against structural and material feminist mobilisations in offline spaces is to again resort to a partial ‘or’ reading. It cannot be denied that protest forms such as #MeToo, to an extent, do replace collective struggles with multiple individual rebellions. However, it also cannot be denied that the affective registers it creates spills over from digital to material spaces in various ways and initiates more structural interventions. A more nuanced outlook can engender a ‘more multitudinous model of feminist activism which operates via multiple modalities including digital media and is characterised by personalised political narratives’ (p. 286).

Whatever be its drawbacks and absences, this anthology does undertake the crucial task of mapping the contemporary gender formations upon which future feminist solidarities and activism can be built and strengthened. Keeping aside the lack of sufficient engagement between the divergent perspectives provided in the chapters, each author individually puts forward strong and coherent arguments to present their case and provides a persuasive reading. The language and style followed in the book is accessible to a general audience even though it is intended for those who are specifically interested in gender studies, ethnographic research, and digital feminisms. The chapters provide compelling arguments and perspectives that can be of use to students of the social sciences and activists within the ever-expanding Indian women’s movements.