UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI
Date:______
I, ______, hereby submit this work as part of the requirements for the degree of: in:
It is entitled:
This work and its defense approved by:
Chair: ______
A Sociological Study of the Culture of Fasting and Dieting of Women in Urban
India
A Dissertation Submitted to the
Division of Research and Advanced Studies of the University of Cincinnati
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)
in the Department of Sociology of the McMicken College of Arts and Sciences
2008
by
Jaita Talukdar
B.A., Presidency College, 1998 M.A., University of Calcutta, 2001
Dissertation Committee: Dr Annulla Linders (Chair) Dr Rhys H. Williams Dr Kelly Moore Dr David J. Maume (Reader)
ABSTRACT
The ‘new Indian woman’ occupies a unique social location in contemporary times; she is caught between twin forces of ‘recolonization’ (the influx of a global, consumerist market) and ‘reterritorialization’ (patrolling and protecting women’s familial nature).In public imagination she has achieved the unimaginable by becoming the globe- trotting, successful executive by the day and the vigilant mother by the night. Under the theorist’s gaze, she stands on a web of contradictions caught in a double bind of meeting contradictory expectations of being modern and traditional. My work stands in contrast to studies that assume women indiscriminately adopt cultural practices or that they feel conflicted while negotiating cultural messages.
Instead, combining theoretical strands of Bourdieu’s theory of distinctions and
Lamont’s meaning-making, I base my study on the assumption that women are engaged in a process of meaning-making, and that they resolve contradictions or anomalies in their practice by calling upon repertoires of meanings common to the cultural terrain in which they live. I did a qualitative study comparing the religious institution of fasting and the modern institution of dieting to examine how women negotiated the traditional- modernity divide. Findings suggest that the dichotomy gets diffused in the accounts given by women, with no identification of intractable expectations confronting them. Instead women exercised a “speculative modernity” where they distanced themselves from traditional and contemporary explanations of the practices, thereby modifying both tradition and modernity in the process. However for both practices, the women constantly
ii sought validation of their practice by referring to commonality of such practices by women (and men) in similar social (class) locations. In case of dieting, women thought of their practice as a non-gendered health requirement for people engaged in urban economies where as women who fasted identified the practice as an imperative to their role as home-makers.
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Copy right, 2008 Jaita Talukdar
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In the loving memory of my papa, Bimal C. Talukdar Never said thank you for being a great father This would not have been possible without you
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
There are so many people to thank that I do not know where to begin. But I would like to start with my parents who taught me how to dream and then made my dream a reality with their small and big sacrifices. My mother selling her wedding jewellery to help me buy plane tickets and my father standing long hours with me to get my visa are some of the many ways they have been the pillars of support in my life. All of this so that I could set foot outside my home and country for the first time to go to a foreign land and pursue sociology. At that time in my life I knew only one thing and that was I wanted to read, write and breathe sociology. They made it come true for me. So thank you Papa and Ma. After seven years I can say that being a part of the sociology department at UC has been one of the best experiences in my life. I was immediately drawn to the warmth, kindness and intelligence of Dr. Annulla Linders who eventually became my advisor and my mentor. I guess I have only words to express the gratitude I feel for her support and guidance. She has worked with me every step of the process from nailing down my research question, brainstorming ideas, writing recommendation letters, giving me the “pep” talk after a bad day in class to sharing my joy when I got a tenure track position at Loyola University. I also want to say special thanks to Dr Rhys Williams who always asked me the difficult questions in committee meetings but would then remind me that he was doing so to prepare me for the outside world. I am glad he asked me the difficult questions to help me think critically. Finally I would like to thank Dr Kelly Moore. She got acquainted with my work in the last stage but her contribution is immense. She encouraged me to revisit some of Bourdieu’s theoretical arguments and incorporate it in my research to make sense of my data. I had the best team and thoroughly enjoyed learning with them. My graduate experience was further enriched by the support of Dr Sara Beth Estes, Dr Jennifer Malat, Dr David Lundgren and Dr David Maume. Time spent as Sara Beth’s teaching assistant felt more like fun than work. It was only later that I realized that she has profoundly influenced my teaching style and till this day I aspire to be as good as her. I do not have words for her kindness when she welcomed me into her house. Dr Malat helped me in becoming more professional in my work. Although I worked with her briefly I learnt a lot from her. I also learnt a lot from Dr Maume’s classes and would like to thank him for agreeing to be my reader. Finally I would like to thank Dr Lundgren for his kind words of appreciation and encouragement. But this list would not be complete if I do not thank Linda Kocher and Cheryl Lindsey. I looked forward to stopping by their offices and I knew they were always watching my back. Since they could have said “all work and no fun made Jaita a dull girl”, I need to thank my friends in the department for preventing such a travesty. Thanks Jenny-beans (Jennifer Hollenbeck) for that big and warm smile on the first day of class. Thanks for taking me under your wing and taking me home to spend a memorable Christmas with your family in Kentucky. A special thanks to: Vickie Dryfhout Ferguson, Vallerie Henderson, Alana Van Gundy, Destiny Howard, David Purcell, Ahoo Tabatabai, Joseph
vi Michael, Micah Holland, Aaron Howell, Hara Bastas and Alan Wight for your warm smiles, kind gestures and a ride back home. If all the people mentioned above made my experience memorable in grad school I have no words left to describe the joy, happiness and support extended to me by my friends outside the department. As unfair it is to mention their names in the passing I also know words cannot suffice. So my dear friends -Vaishali Datta (for putting up with my last minute demands), Rachana Jain( for pushing me to make my case for qualitative methods!), Soma Chaudhuri ( for reassuring me that I had a great topic), Soma Banerjee Dam, Anuradha Chakravarty , Divya Chapan (DC), Nithya Manikam, Shankar Sarvanan, Shyam Balasubramaniam, Sivakumar Gowrisankar, Rucha Sane, Firoz Jafri, Rishi Khar (for reading my first draft), Saraswati Narsimhan, Bindu Eluru, Kausik Mitra, Allie Caves, Mary Stricker and Rhia Newhouse (for working on my references for eight hours); my appreciation for helping me build a home away from home is beyond words. Last but not the least I would also like to thank Leopold Eisenlohr for believing in me and making me feel like a bright star on cloudy days. Special thanks also goes to “mama” (Arindam Das Barman) and “mammam” (Anjana Das Barman) for helping my family recover from the loss of my father and cheering for me from far away. And how can I not thank Babai, my elder brother for loving me freely without limits. I owe this journey to all of you and those moments in my life when you have given me all that I needed. I carry you all in my heart. I would also like to thank the forty eight women who took time to talk to me about my research. Thank you Molly mashi for taking me to the houses of these women in the cruel hot months of June. Thank you all for your time and your best wishes. I would also like to thank the Taft Research Center for funding my project.
“Let me light my lamp”, says the star, “And never debate if it will help to remove the darkness.” – Rabindranath Tagore
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter One: Introduction…………………………………………………………….....1
Chapter Two: Theories of Culture Introduction………………………………………………………………………………6 Cultural meanings as values and beliefs…………………………………………………8 The Shift: Culture as values and beliefs to culture as resources………………………..12 Switching gears: Meanings systems and their cultural ‘field’…………………….……14 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………...24
Chapter Three: Study Introduction ………………………………………...…………………………………..29 The cultural site: urban metropolis India……………………………………………….30 The ‘cultural’ subject: The new Indian women………………………………………...35 Understanding the traditional-modernity divide: Fasting as a traditional practice and dieting as a modern practice……………………………………………………………53 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………...61
Chapter Four: Methodology Introduction…………………………………………………………………………….62 Research Design……………………………………………………………………...... 66 Location of Study: Deciding on an Urban Metropolis…………………………………66 Question Guide: Rationale and Challenges ……………………………………………67 Analyses and Themes ………………………………………………………………….71 Selecting the Interview Subjects …………………………………………………...….72 Social Aspects of Interviewing: My role as researcher………………………………...83 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………….…..87
Chapter Five: Fasting Introduction……………………………………………………………………………..88 Understanding fasting: Practice of fasting……………………………………………...89 Meanings given to fasting………………………………………………………………92 Fasting and religion…………………………………………………………………..92 Fasting for the well being of the family…………………………………………….107 Fasting helps maintain health……………………………………………………… 117 Fasting and feasting………………………………………………………………...121 Fasting is ‘just superstition’………………………………………………………...123 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………….125
Chapter Six: Dieting Introduction…………………………………………………………………………...132 Understanding dieting: Practice and Talk of Diet…………………………………….134 Meanings given to dieting ……………………………………………………………151
viii Dieting and Appearance …………………………………………………………… 151 Dieting is about health ……………………………………………………………....171 Dieting is about style; having time and doing paid work …………………………...184 Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………………189
Chapter Seven: Conclusion Introduction……………………………………………………………………………195 The implications for the new Indian woman ………………………………………….196 The new Indian woman and tradition ………………………………………………... 197 The new Indian woman and modernity…………………………………………….... .199 Conclusion: The new Indian woman, urban India and Bourdieu …………………..... 207
Appendix A: Picture of Billboards……………………………………………….....…211
Appendix B: Question Guide……………………………………………………….…212
Appendix C: Fasts and their purposes…………………………………………………216
References...…………………………………………………………………………...217
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Chapter One Introduction
What is theoretically innovative, and politically crucial, is the need to think beyond narratives of originary and initial subjectivities and to focus on those moments or processes that are produced in the articulation of cultural differences. These 'in-between' spaces provide the terrain for elaborating strategies of selfhood - singular or communal - that initiate new signs of identity, and innovative sites of collaboration, and contestation, in the act of defining the idea of society itself (Bhaba, 2004, pg.1, emphases added).
We are living in the times of a global village. Undoubtedly, advancements in information technology have altered the time-space distinctions that have long characterized human societies. In the process culture has become unpredictable. The above quote captures this process; a shift in our understanding of our social and cultural worlds. The larger argument is that as globalization proceeds there are going to be a
“concomitant strain” upon traditional entities to identify themselves in relation to
“global-human circumstances” (Robertson, 1997). There has been much interesting scholarship about this process of transformation; either global or “western” values will erode traditional institution, or there will be “hybridization” (Bhaba, 2004) in which global values will be indigenized according to local standards, or there could be counter trends that privileges regional( nationalist ) ideas of cultural values. If culture is becoming unpredictable, and can take on any route (suggested above), then by implication identities are becoming unpredictable and unhinged as well.
The general question that I address in this dissertation is: how do people experience and respond to exposure to multiple and contradictory cultural worlds? Here I am interested in the language of negotiation, or meaning-making. The more specific
1 question I address is: how do women, negotiate multiple and (often) contradictory cultural worlds? In order to investigate this question, I draw attention to the much debated phenomenon of the “new Indian woman”. Academic scholarship on the “new
Indian woman” poses the problem of the new Indian woman as yet another illustration of transnational identities; that is, how traditional identities are being transformed in interaction with a global culture. Some of the debates about the new Indian woman mirror popular debates in the field of globalization. The new Indian woman is a hybrid,
transnational identity because it stands in between two cultural worlds; the traditional and
the modern world. Such identities that are plural and fragmented in nature have been
called “creative schizophrenia” (Berger, Berger and Kellner, 1973; cited in Sircar and
Kelly, 2001).
The new woman is the contemporary urban Indian woman who is viewed as
confident, outgoing and accomplished and yet holds on to modest traditional values.
While the popular press unequivocally celebrates the “new Indian woman” and contrasts
her with the submissive and dependent traditional Indian woman, feminists are more
cautious and express concerns that the new image is a web of contradictions (Thapan,
2004; Basu, 2001; Chaudhuri, 2001; Munshi, 1998). Although debates on the new Indian
woman have pushed the boundaries of thinking about women in non-western contexts, in
this dissertation I argue that existing frameworks are essentialistic explanations that fail
to capture the complexities of women’s lived realities.
The dilemmas of being a new Indian woman is typically posed as an individual
problem where women are suspended from tradition and left to their own devices when it
comes to figuring out how to navigate the new cultural landscape. In contrast, I argue that
2 the new Indian woman is a social-cultural phenomenon and therefore the struggles and
triumphs associated with her must be located in the social context in which they are
played out. My study not only provides a key step in understanding the new Indian
woman but also in understanding culture in contemporary societies more generally. How
do women negotiate cultural messages about being modern and traditional? What kinds
of meanings do women draw upon to manage their social worlds? In short, this
dissertation is about meaning-making. Meaning-making as a process gives insights into
how people use their cultural memberships to understand both personal strategies and
group differences.
The vitality of the phenomenon of the new woman lies in the alternate image it
provides of women living in non-western contexts; she is not passive, submissive and
abiding but instead ambitious, strong-willed and competitive. Mohanty (1991) and
Narayan (2000) have discussed the problem of “cultural essentialism” facing women
living in non-western context where diverse cultural norms are conflated into a dominant
experience applied to all women. Mohanty (1991) argues that the notion of cultural
essentialism or cultural coherence blankets heterogeneity of experiences. Drawing on these insights, my study explores the heterogeneity of explanations that women provide as they navigate the traditional-modernity divide. Therefore it provides an excellent opportunity to understand how women negotiate the cultural divides accosting them.
The concerns surrounding the new woman are intimately tied to larger socio- historical processes. In contemporary India, the concern is about the consequences for women and, by extension, India herself, of the unleashing of the ‘western- bound’ consumerist market values in society. After concerns about westernization during the
3 nationalist movement, it is now globalization that has put the focus back on the question of what will happen to traditional identities in the face of changing social and cultural circumstances. In this sense the new woman is not really new, for like the women in the nationalist movement who had to tow the lines of tradition and modernity; contemporary
Indian women are similarly situated in the midst of a cultural dilemma.
The only difference is that the threat of breaking the stronghold of tradition has become more visible and magnified given the fact that consumerist societies generate and produce symbols that are widely available (to the extent that they are purchasable or accessible from the market). In other words, the question of women that essentially disappeared after the conclusion of the independence movement has now re-surfaced. In a context marked by a rising consumer culture where exercising choices and fulfilling personal goals have become rampant, the twin questions of what will happen to the sanctity of India’s culture and to its women have become one and the same question.
In order to investigate the phenomenon of the new Indian woman I have done a qualitative study comparing the religious institution of fasting and the modern institution of dieting to examine how women negotiate the traditional- modernity divide that existed in these practices. In chapter two, I review major theories of culture and discuss three sets
of theories; a) culture as values, b) culture as resources and c) finally culture as a set of
contested meanings which are used for maintaining social differentiation. In chapter
three, I describe and review the debates around the new Indian woman and also establish fasting as a traditional practice and dieting as a modern practice. In chapter four, I discuss the methodology and provide demographic information of my subjects.
4 In chapters five, six and seven I discuss my findings. Findings suggest that the
dichotomy gets diffused in the accounts given by women, with no identification of
intractable expectations confronting them. Instead women exercised a “speculative
modernity” where they distanced themselves from traditional and contemporary
explanations of the practices, thereby modifying both tradition and modernity in the process. However for both practices, the women constantly sought validation of their practice by referring to commonality of such practices by women (and men) in similar social (class) locations.
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CHAPTER TWO THEORY
Introduction
The theoretical question that guides this dissertation is: how do people negotiate contradictory or conflicting cultural meanings systems? It is a well documented fact that
culture provides us with meanings and rationale for our actions so that we can confidently
engage in them (Geertz, 1973). Culture also impacts our lives by providing coherency to
it through its underlying rationales and justifications for our behavior. However in recent
times some argue that it has become harder to effectively determine if culture has a ‘real’
effect on us (Schudson, 1989). This is so in part because the meanings that constitute culture have become sporadic and varied in nature and in part because the meanings
people give to their cultural practices or symbols are equally varied and fragmented
(Swidler, 2001).
At the same time the need to understand the links between ‘meanings’ and behavior are as urgent as ever in the social sciences. Influenced by Weber’s claim that
“man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun,” Geertz
redirected the focus of cultural studies to “an interpretative one in search of meaning”
(Geertz, 1973, pg.5). Geertz saw the field of cultural studies as the study of meanings,
thereby renewing the verstehen tradition or interpretative understanding in the sciences.
In the interpretative tradition, theorists prioritize the subjective meanings that people give
to their behavior to account for social phenomenon. Therefore understanding meanings
becomes crucial to both understanding and explaining human behavior.
6 As I mentioned earlier, some recent scholarship suggests that the cultural meanings people draw upon have become more varied and multiple in nature (Hannerz,
1996; Appadurai, 1996; Featherstone, 1993). The increase in meanings systems is not viewed as an empirical problem of specific locales but a reality that confronts all human societies.1 In the social sciences the new challenge is how to understand how culture works under these new conditions or alternatively how people interpret, negotiate and navigate multiple cultural meanings. With the increase in meaning systems comes the possibility that some of these meaning systems are contradictory in nature. In this dissertation, I address the question of how meanings are negotiated in the context of multiple and contradictory meaning systems.
But in order to answer the question of how people interpret cultural meanings systems that are contradictory in nature, it is necessary to look into the question of how culture works. Here I suggest that asking the question of how people navigate through contradictory cultural meanings systems is similar to asking the question of how culture itself works. This is so because once the notion that culture provides a coherent set of values to guide human behavior was challenged, theorists have grappled with the question of how precisely culture affects human behavior (Swidler, 1986; DiMaggio,
1987). Therefore in this chapter I reopen the question of how culture works through a review of recent debates among cultural scholars that highlights different understandings of the relation between culture and behavior.
1 Appadurai and Breckenridge (1995) in their efforts to capture a common yet universal experience of people around the world writes that, “ Our assumption is that modernity today is a global experience( even if the term modernity is, in some sense, a category of Western history and reflexivity)……Most societies today posses the means for the local production of modernity, and as their members move around the world, these experiences inform and inflect one another, thus making the pragmatic modernity of the United States and West Europe ( itself not an unproblematic assumption) no more pristine.”(pg.1)
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I. Cultural meanings as values and beliefs
Noted anthropologist Geertz once wrote that, “anthropological writings are themselves interpretations and second and third order ones to boot” (Geertz, 1973, pg.16) alluding to the fact that, in most cases, explanations of culture remains at best an interpretation of the actual phenomena. Thirty-five years later theorists of culture still grapple with the question of how culture works. For example, Lamont (2001) in her review of Swidler’s book, Talk of Love (2001), writes that culture “is a crucial, if misunderstood, piece of sociological puzzle” (pg. 1201).
Where does this inexplicability of culture come from? The inexplicability of culture comes from the importance that has been attached to culture as a latent, underlying or deep–seated entity that pervades both people and society. As a result some current explanations of culture still imply that there are some invisible internal mechanisms that guide behavior in culturally coherent ways. The notion of culture as a coherent system of values and beliefs has its origin in the writings of early anthropologists and sociologists who studied integration of small and simple societies
(Benedict, 1934; Durkheim, 1912). So pervasive has this approach to culture been that the popular understanding of culture is that it is a set of values and beliefs held in common by people (usually living in the same region or geographical area). Based on
‘culture as values’ perspective, one could argue that since culture provides the basic rationale for behavior, meanings systems (amongst its people) are highly integrated and consensual in nature.
8 Although culture as values and beliefs has its origin in writings of social and
cultural anthropologists, we see similar kinds of arguments made in the field of
sociology. In sociology, the notion of culture as supplying the ultimate ends or values
towards which action is directed is considered a Parsonian legacy. When Parson (1951)
was building his model of the social system, he prioritized the culture system (values)
over the personality and social systems to explain what holds society together. In other words, for Parsons it was values and beliefs, arrived at consensually, that fulfilled the function of holding the system together. Swidler (2001) rightly points out that in Parson’s model the association between cultural values and action had become so strong that values are treated as the causal link between culture and action. More recently, both the positions that cultural meanings can be easily interpreted if we understand underlying values and that they provide social coherency have been questioned. Swidler in particular
makes the case that the use of culture as a self explaining concept comes from prioritizing
values and beliefs in analyses of cultural phenomenon.
Hannerz (1996), a cultural anthropologist, tries to infuse the field with a fresh
understanding of how culture works. He argues that the characterization of culture as a
highly integrated system that needs to be grasped as a whole reached its high point in
Benedict’s all time classic “Patterns of Culture”(1959). But for him it is a
misidentification of the field. He maintains that early theorists like Victor Turner and
Clifford Geertz made coherency of society something that needed investigation.
Therefore the idea that cultures are neatly packed meanings that are homogeneously
distributed in society has long been problematic in the field.
9 This idea of culture as being a packed set of meanings has faced most resistance
in two areas, post modernism and in cultural anthropology. Featherstone (1993) argues
that given the dilution of cultural meanings across territories, even what constitutes local
culture has to be defined in relation to a global culture. Therefore one needs to understand
that the formation of culture cannot be understood only as a process internal to the
society but also as processes external to the society. Hannerz (1996) and Appadurai
(1996) who represent the new voices in cultural anthropology raise similar concerns.
They both maintain that given the new technology and an interconnected world order,
cultural meanings now have the ability to travel across territories independent of people.
Now more so than ever people have access to cultural meanings systems of different
origins as territories cannot contain culture. Hannerz is of the view that given the
noticeable “share of contradictions, ambiguities, misunderstandings and conflicts” in
people’s lives about cultural meanings, current analytical strategies should be directed to
understanding how people arrange culture into coherent patterns as they go about their
lives instead of treating it as something given (Hannerz, 1996, pg. 8).
In sociology as well the idea of culture as being a generic set of symbols and values has been challenged. Schudson (1989), for example, questions the idea that cultural symbols are invested with generic, agreed upon meanings given to it by the larger society. In consumerist societies where symbols are mass produced and widely disseminated, it has become difficult to determine the efficacy of cultural symbols as they exist separate from the cultural traditions or the social practices in which they used to be embedded. Therefore, Schudson concludes, it is no longer possible to hold on to the
10 assumption that cultural symbols necessarily provide insights into the commonly held values and beliefs of people.
Swidler, in her study ‘Talk of Love’, found that people make sense of cultural meanings systems not as a given set of propositions but in varying ways, sometimes in swirling patterns of justification. She concluded that meanings become fragmented and discontinuous in narrated accounts of people, thus indicating that cultural meanings are constantly adapted in real life. Far from a coherent system that provides clear interpretive pathways, culture in Swidler’s view is fluid, contradictory, and elective. Therefore the real challenge for cultural theorists is to accept that “cultural meanings, often remain fluid, waiting to be filled” (2001, pg.183).
In sociology, Swidler can be credited for having demonstrated the limitations of the view of culture as a coherent and shared system of meanings.2 As a result, cultural meanings are now being now looked upon as repertoires or tool kits, capital, currency or script in which cultural items like meanings, symbols or practices are viewed as things that are put to use and malleable to change (DiMaggio, 1987).The proponents of culture as resources theory are convinced that a resource perspective will provide us with the analytical advantage of looking into how people use meanings, symbols and practices.
2 This is not to suggest that interpreting culture is completely random and lacks an underlying logic. Sewell (1999) argues that even if individual cultures may be incoherent, culture as an analytical concept is coherent because it is only through “structures of relationally defined” meanings that we can communicate. These arguments points to the fact that when we speak of culture, there is something distinctive and predefined about meanings that cannot be easily duplicated. a distinctively cultural argument can be made only when “practices form a meaningful constellation such that a distinctively cultural argument is attached to an overarching pattern of techniques rather than to a simple outcome” (Biernacki, 1995, 12-13, cited in Swidler)
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II. The Shift: Culture as values and beliefs to culture as resources
In recent years it is Swidler who has pursued the argument that culture works like
a tool kit, whereby people have at their disposal a repertoire of meanings that they use varyingly in their lives. More specifically, Swidler argues that people run through different parts of their cultural repertoires (or tool kit), selecting those parts that correspond to the situation that currently demands their attention. In her model values or beliefs lose their primacy and instead become part of the “skills” or the “capacity” that people deploy in social situations. Therefore, to Swidler, culture is important to sociological analysis in that it provides strategies (of action) that people can and do choose from (Swidler, 1986).
Swidler’s concept of the tool kit, then, amounts to a rejection of the notion of culture as an underlying inexplicable phenomenon that inexorably guides human behavior; with the toolkit metaphor Swidler makes it clear that culture is a resource that people actively use and choose from. In this sense (that cultural knowledge is a resource), Swidler’s tool kit has become a handy explanation for variations in the ways cultural meanings are used.
Following Geertz, Swidler argues that meanings are constantly reinterpreted by people. She develops the concept of ‘strategies of action’ to account for the skills, habits and strategies that people develop in organizing their action. She argues that culture enables people to develop these strategies or skills and therefore that culture’s effect is felt more in the ways meanings get organized into action towards a goal than in determining the final goal itself. The patterns that emerge out of actions that are
organized in culturally specific ways are, in turn, what reconstitute culture. Swidler gives
12 more importance to the strategies of action and the imaginative and creative ways people
use cultural meanings than treating meanings as given and static. Swidler suggests that
people have the means to navigate through multiple webs of meanings. She holds that,
The problem of meaning and of cultural coherence cannot be solved without some way of
understanding how people switch from one code to another…and how people keep
multiple interpretations of action available simultaneously, crystallizing situations and
meanings only occasionally (Swidler, 2001, pg. 184)
The problem with her analysis is that it ends here; her approach potentially
explains how people switch from one explanation to another, it cannot tell us why people do so. If culture provides “organized capacities” that have their own way of sorting out contradictions, then it assumes an invisible form and a will of its own. Swidler’s tool kit does not aid analysis if one is interested in why meanings become discontinuous, contradictory and fragmented.
Another potential problem with Swidler’s approach is that she assumes a general cultural readiness in people; that is, that people have at their disposal, and are ready to use, available cultural knowledge. Although Swidler clarifies that she is exploring how cultural meanings are used in particular social settings, there is still an element of determinism in her analysis when she claims that people use culture as they wish
(Swidler, 1986).
Therefore, while the theoretical perspective that cultural meanings systems are used as resources by people enables one to understand how people use meanings differently, it fails to account for why disjuncture or gaps in meanings exist in the first place. Lamont asks, “Is the choice of repertoire determined by context and institutions
13 alone, or also by resources tied to social positions?” She also asks, “Are there social, historical and political factors that determine what kinds of repertoires are available?”
(2001, pg.1203)
To answer such questions it is important to examine what kinds of meanings are available to people to explain their experiences. The theory of culture as resources is useful for understanding that cultural meanings are used in varying ways. But it does not help explain why people feel the need to negotiate meanings and/or if the negotiations vary across groups of people. A substantial body of research has shown that the meanings people give to practices or symbols do not emerge in a vacuum but rather in conjunction to larger socio-political dynamics of society. In order to understand how people negotiate cultural meaning systems, then, it is necessary to look into the meanings that are available in the larger society and the access people have to these meanings.
III. Switching gears: Meanings systems and their cultural ‘field’
In this section I review studies by Bourdieu (1984), Petersen (1992) and Lamont
(2001) who all have shown that meanings given to practices and symbols are borne out of a contested field (of meanings). According to this line of thinking, cultural meaning systems have a strategic purpose; they either maintain structures of difference (Petersen,
1992; Lamont 1992) or structures of inequality (Bourdieu, 1984).
I first turn to Bourdieu. Although Bourdieu has been eclectic in his thinking and has drawn from both Durkheim and Weber, his work still can be characterized as Marxist since he approaches cultural practices as reflections of the economic positions people occupy in society.
14 Marx (1904) in his famous distinction between the “base” and the
“superstructure” argued that culture or the realm of ideas and beliefs is super structural in nature and is built on the economic base structure of society. Later theorists carrying on the legacy of the Marxist tradition, like Gramsci and Althusser, have developed concepts like ‘ideological domination’ to explain how the dominant ideas of a society are actually the ideas of the economically powerful in society.
Rejecting the deterministic implications of “ideological domination”, Bourdieu instead focused on how people actively contribute to the maintenance of the cultural hierarchy.
He wanted to demonstrate that cultural beliefs and practices are neither independent external forces nor internally cemented forces but instead are actively cultivated by people. Using French society as an example, he questioned “taste”, or the appreciation of fine arts like music, architecture and literature, as a naturally occurring phenomenon.
Instead he studied the distribution of tastes across groups of people to look for the logic behind the “economy of cultural goods” (Bourdieu, 1984, pg.1).
Bourdieu found that the logic behind the consumption of cultural goods lies in group or class dynamics. He found that “taste,” or the ability to understand and appreciate the finer things, was not best viewed as an individual attribute but instead as a collective force; that is, taste is a group property and, as such, distinguishes groups from each other.
Thus, the “fine taste” of the affluent can clearly be contrasted with the cultural practices of the economically less equipped. For the economically less equipped he said,
Legitimate culture is not made for him, so that he is not made for it….it ceases to be what it is as soon as he appropriates it. Bourgeoisie has the legitimate gaze where as petite bourgeoisie imparts a charming mediocrity to all that he recognizes. (Bourdieu, 1984, pg.327)
15 This is an interesting point that Bourdieu makes. Although it is the objective
conditions that mark the difference in the ‘gaze’ between the petty bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie, the more significant difference lies in the meanings that each confer on cultural practices. Therefore the difference lies entirely in the meaning given to the object
rather than on the cultural object. What makes the difference is that the petty bourgeoisie
does not have the necessary social location to validate his knowledge and all he/she
imparts is mediocrity. He called this difference in meanings the pursuit of exclusivism or
a form of symbolic violence that the economically affluent perpetuated over others.
Although his larger project was to understand how cultural items perpetuate inequality he
made another equally important point. For Bourdieu, cultural knowledge is not enough
for being cultural competent, something that Swidler had proposed, but also requires a
distinct social position. Thus, the members of the bourgeoisie enjoy a cultural edge or
cultural capital (a term he coined) not only because of their cultural knowledge but also because of their social location in society and the natural familiarity with cultural items that they develop in these locations that cannot be duplicated.
This is what Bourdieu means by habitus: a socio-cultural environment linked to social positions that get expressed as individual cultural dispositions. But at the same time, habitus are not merely the sum total inclinations and behaviors of people in similar social positions but are also unique dispositions generated from the different social spaces that people in the same social location share. According to Bourdieu, habitus consists of two systems, one that produces “schemes” that generate classifiable practices and another that produces the perceptions and appreciations of those classifiable practices. Taken
16 together, these two systems produce classifiable practices that result in distinctive signs
or lifestyles.
Bourdieu’s theory is not without precedent. His work corroborates what Marxist
and critical theorists have long been arguing that cultural practices are markers with
classifying properties that contribute to the structure of inequality in society. But what
was new about his study was, first, that he focused on the seemingly innocuous phenomenon of cultural tastes and, second, that he exhorted the need to look beyond individual tastes to the function they have in maintaining differences in larger society.
Therefore everyday practices, like body postures, the kinds of food people eat, the bars and clubs people go to, and the museums they visit, became social documents worth investigating as indicators and expressions of class distinctions. In sum, Bourdieu’s work further entrenched the argument that in most societies there are widely established cultural markers or meaning systems ranked in a hierarchy of differential worth (Lamont and Laureau, 1988).
So, what are some of the implications of Bourdieu’s theory? First of all, culture irrevocably loses its transient/inexplicable quality and becomes a medium used by people to validate differences between groups. Moreover, cultural practices are hierarchical in such a way that some practices are bestowed with more legitimacy or social recognition than others thus leading to an inherent inequality in the way cultural practices are ranked.
Most importantly his works shows that people sift through meanings with the strategies they acquire in their habituses and not through random engagements of them. In this sense, Bourdieu argues strongly against the notion that culture equips all equally. In
Bourdieu’s understanding even if people have the requisite knowledge in particular
17 cultural fields, they way they use it still depends on the values and appreciations that are
generated by habitus. According to Bourdieu, then, in every society there are marked
cultural fields of meanings and access to these meanings are differently distributed in
society.
While Bourdieu’s influence on cultural sociology is undeniable, he is not without
critics. Here I cover three major criticisms that have been lodged against Bourdieu that
affect our understanding of how people negotiate meanings. First, because his theory is
anchored in the well defined and rigid hierarchical system of French society it may not
help explain how cultural capital gets manifested in societies where cultural hierarchies
are less defined and not necessarily divided on binary distinctions (Lamont and Laureau,
1988; Hall, 1992). Lamont and Laureau (1988), for example, have speculated that meanings in the United States are less contested than in France for a variety of reasons,
including high social and geographical mobility, an ethnically and racially diverse
population and the presence of an undifferentiated mass culture. In a cross cultural study
between the United States and France, Lamont (1992) found that in the United States, in
contrast to France, the use of cultural practices and preferences to distinguish oneself
from people occupying different social spaces is less prevalent. Therefore, how meanings
are contested is specific to particular societies and theories have to be modified
accordingly.
Secondly Hall points to another shortcoming in Bourdieu’s theory of distinctions,
this one derived from Bourdieu’s linking of culture to the market economy (Hall, 1992).
According to Hall,
18 Even in an occupational social world, then the idea of an objective field of distinctions measured in a legitimate cultural capital of general tender masks the reality of incommensurate cultural standards (Hall, 1992 pg.265).
By “incommensurate cultural standards” he is referring to cultural practices that
reside outside market dynamics, like practices typical to one’s gender, race or ethnicity.
Hall therefore argues that we need to stretch the boundaries of class based distinctions to
also incorporate the ‘polymorphous’ character of status group dynamics that cannot
simply be reduced to material conditions. In other words, both economic and non-
economic cultural goods can be used to create differences between groups. Lamont
(1992), for example, has shown that people do distinctions based on moral dimensions that have more of a social value than a market value.
Finally, Bourdieu’s theory has been much criticized for leaving out the lower
income groups from his equation of how cultural capital is realized and used to maintain
the structure of differences (Lamont, 2000; Gans, 1962; cited in Hall, 1992). He does not
assign any agency to the people in the lower class because “the dominated classes are in a
poor position to resist” (Bourdieu, 1984 [1979], pg.48). Many argue that Bourdieu’s
argument is premised on a zero sum assumption that only the dominant class uses cultural
activities to mark their status and the dominated class has no such agency (Sewell, 1992;
Lamont and Laureau, 1988).
But later research has shown evidence to the contrary. For example, in contrast to
Bourdieu, Halle (1992) found that appreciation of abstract art has more to do with the
‘exclusiveness’ attached to abstract art than with a distinct knowledge or training in art.
He concluded that, “moving from one taste culture to another may not require elaborate
cultural training; rather, it may be a simple step, involving little more than the decision to
19 use abstract art in decoration” (Halle, 1992, pg.146). Halle is challenging Bourdieu’s claim that people of low income groups cannot exercise their cultural capital because they do not have the capacity to engage in it convincingly. Halle finds that there is no significant difference in the knowledge people have of abstract art. He concludes that decisions about abstract art do not require elaborate training but instead are based on information acquired from the media or from viewing homes of friends and acquaintances.
In his study he shows there is no real difference in meanings and appreciation, that is, the rich talk about their abstract paintings in the same terms as the poor talk about their landscapes: nice colors and shapes. Therefore the notion that upper class has an exclusive understanding of abstract art is maintained symbolically. The difference does not lie in the knowledge of art but the value assigned to the cultural object and the decisions that people make of what kind of art they want to be displayed in their houses.
Based on Halle’s finding, it can be further argued that the disinterest shown towards abstract art by the economically less affluent is a kind of agency they exercise in resisting high or abstract art, thereby challenging Bourdieu’s understanding of proletariat culture.
In sum, although Bourdieu can be credited for drawing attention to the fact that the struggle over meanings is inherent to every society, the problem with Bourdieu’s theory is that his theory is based on a society with rigid hierarchization of cultural practices and clearly demarcated habituses in which people operate. Subsequent scholars have questioned Bourdieu’s conclusion that people live in closed habituses and are limited in their knowledge of cultural fields.
20 In a series of studies done in the United States, Petersen and his colleagues have
shown that people are ‘omnivorous’ in their knowledge and appreciation of different cultural genres (Petersen and Simkus, 1992; Petersen and Kern, 1996). For example, they found that people who liked high brow music (like opera and classical music) also admitted to knowing and appreciating popular music like country, pop or easy listening music. They concluded that people have become more encompassing and appreciative or omnivorous of less aesthetic music and, accordingly, that cultural practices and meanings are not always contained in their respective habituses.
Erickson (1996) found something similar. In her study of people’s familiarity with the cultural genres of fine arts, sports and entertainment, she found evidence that people at managerial level knew about popular culture, like “sport’s knowledge”. She was specifically interested in testing one of Bourdieu’s assumptions that cultural knowledge and familiarity is necessarily used for domination or exclusion in social relations. What she found challenged Bourdieu’s argument that cultural insights are used only to maintain a structure of inequality and are confined by habitus. Rather than always serving as a source of distinction, cultural knowledge – like sports knowledge – can also be used to bridge differences between groups. Therefore she concluded that some cultural knowledge is “classless” because of the possibility of using information to build bridges of communication; like for example, between managers and workers in workplaces.
What these later theorists have pointed out is that cultural meanings are not wholly contained in predetermined habituses. At the same time they have indicated that social location is consequential for what kinds of meanings people have access to and,
most importantly, in the validation they develop for their practices. For example, Warde
21 et al. (1999) tested the notion that the contemporary world is marked by cultural openness
(which Peterson calls being culturally omnivorous) which makes it possible for people to
engage in diverse cultures on equal terms. Posing the question if being open to diverse
ethnic cuisine is a measure of being culturally tolerant, they found a clear class- dimension in the clientele of ethnic restaurants; it was the educated middle class that was the most knowledgeable of different kind of cuisines. They concluded that a broad
repertoire of culinary expertise or being omnivorous in terms of taste was a ‘tool of intra-
class communication’, and as such served as cultural capital for the middle class. Thus, a
display of tolerance in cultural preferences and tastes in reality serves as a mark of social
status, a status that requires a comprehensive knowledge of ethnic cuisine.
Instead of people inhabiting different social spaces demarcated by fixed practices,
as theorized by Bourdieu, there is a now a “cultural omnivorousness” where people know
about other cultural practices and behavior. In other words, people have more knowledge
of culture than ever. Hannerz (1996) calls this phenomenon “global ecumene” which
means that people living in contemporary societies have a much greater reservoir of
cross-cultural information than ever before. At the same time, however, sociological
studies have revealed that the possession of cultural knowledge does not necessarily
translate into people using culture as they wish. Instead it is dictated by what Erickson
(1996) has identified as “rules of relevance”. While some cultural information is used to
bridge differences between groups, other information is used to build “intra-group
communication.”
Theories inspired by Bourdieu have correctly pointed out that culturally
omnivorous people use meanings as required by the social location that they occupy in
22 society. In other words, what might seem as arbitrary or random cultural preferences are in reality a consequence of affiliations to social groups. What later theorists have shown is that meanings are more fluid and more dispersed across cultural fields than portrayed by Bourdieu, but like Bourdieu they have also found that social location is crucial to any understanding of how meanings are processed and assigned to practices.
Another finding common to these studies has been that cultural fields of meanings are being constantly redefined and their boundaries shifting. Unlike Bourdieu’s claim that people live in insulated cultural fields, studies done by Petersen and Kern (1996),
Erickson (1996) and Warde et al’s (1999) show that people actively use meanings to assert their social membership. Lamont and her colleagues have worked extensively to show that culture in most cases provides the tools with which “individuals and groups struggle over and come to agree upon definitions of reality” (Lamont and Molnar, 2002;
Lamont and Fournier, 1992). A long standing argument in sociological theories is that
“humanity is made of social groups that are differentiated by their practices, beliefs, and institutions” (Lamont and Fournier, 1992, pg1). Therefore each of these studies confirms the idea that meaning-making is a crucial component to the differentiation of practices.
Thus, according to Lamont and her colleagues, it is important to determine which social meanings serve as sources of social differentiation. Unlike Bourdieu she argues that the cultural hierarchy is shifting along dimensions that are historically and culturally distinct.
Hence, the question of how cultural hierarchies are formed can only be answered empirically and not assumed a priori.
These findings and observations have implications for my question of how people make sense of contradictory meanings. They indicate that the struggles individuals
23 face when confronted with contradictory meanings cannot be studied simply as individual
level variations. Instead the above studies suggest that the meanings people give to their
practices in most cases have collective referents and hence cannot be studied separately
from the social locations to which they belong. Meaning-making as a concept was
introduced by Lamont (2003) in her article, “Meaning-making’ in Cultural Sociology:
Broadening Our Agenda”. Reflecting upon sociological theories of culture, she concluded
that meaning-making is the one overarching concept that underlies most cultural theories
of recent times. It gives insights into how people use their cultural membership to
understand group differences and develop personal strategies. This helps understand how
larger cultural frameworks influence personal understanding without falling into an
“essentialist”3 trap.
Therefore understanding meanings given to cultural practices is more significant
now than earlier, since meanings strike at the core of how individuals navigate through their lives at a time when it seems that culture is available for all. The task is to go beyond the role of culture as simply providing a hollow “reaffirmation of the constructed character of identity” (Lamont, 1999, pg.11) to understanding the larger struggles and conflicts that get manifested in cultural practices as well as the meanings given to those cultural practices.
Conclusion
In summing up my argument, I would like to revisit the question that I asked at the beginning of this section, that is, how do people negotiate contradictory cultural meanings. In trying to answer this question I have looked at three sets of theories that
3 By essentialist I mean a theoretical stance where the focus is exclusively on the individual or one looks for innate causes for beliefs and actions.
24 provide different tools for understanding how people negotiate cultural contradictions: (1) culture as values, (2) culture as resources, and (3) culture as contested fields of meanings.
Culture as a set of given values or beliefs that people have at their disposal to be used unproblematically in their lives seems to be the least feasible theory. This is so in part because empirical studies have shown that explanations given to beliefs and practices are often disparate and disjointed. More importantly, the underlying assumption of the culture as values approach is that once values and beliefs become ingrained in people, they provide a protective garb against contradictions or dilemmas at the cultural level.
Culture as resources is a more viable approach for it takes account of the fact that people might use meanings differently. Several studies have shown that cultural meanings work like resources, that is, meaning are used for strategic purposes. However, what culture as resources theory does not tell us is how struggles over meaning are encapsulated in the social positions that people occupy. Relying only on ‘culture as resources’ perspective leads to the notion that, everyone does culture as they wish. It also overshadows the purpose cultural objects serves in maintaining difference between groups (Warde et al., 1999; Erickson, 1996).
Of the three propositions, culture as contested set of meanings challenges theoretical assertions that people are culturally ready (encapsulated in terms like cultural omnivorousness, cultural readiness and such). Instead, it proposes that cultural items are dictated by rules of relevance (Erickson, 1996), particularly the purpose it serves in maintaining group distinction (Lamont, 2000).For example, both Erickson and Warde (et al.) found that social competence in the use of cultural information was class specific with the middle class being more conversant in information and skilled in using rules of
25 relevance (as to where the knowledge can be used). These findings indicated that people in higher social positions are more competent in navigating meanings. It also indicates that the display of this social competence served a strategic purpose for the middle class; it fostered inter-class solidarity and communication
It is hard to ignore Bourdieu’s theory of distinctions ( and theories following him) for studies have repeatedly shown that meanings, especially those given to cultural practices and symbols are key tools that people use to chalk out their personal identities and to mark their group affiliations. They are simultaneous processes and cannot be separated. Another remnant of Bourdieu’s theory of distinctions that has extensive empirical support is that social location is a key factor in understanding how people negotiate cultural meaning systems.
But at the same time, Bourdieu’s theory of distinctions has been criticized for being heavily based on a rigidly defined Parisian society that cannot be extended to study contexts where cultural boundaries or hierarchies are less clear and rigid. Also, by treating cultural behaviors as natural dispositions, he conceives them as fixed entities. In this sense, Bourdieu does not take account of how individuals can impact their situation or account for social change (Sewell, 1992). In contrast, Lamont’s makes the study of meaning making and boundary creation (between groups) contingent on an empirical investigation of meanings that mark distinctions in practices. Therefore she gives more agencies to individual (than Bourdieu) in terms of what kind of meanings we create to mark distinctions. However at the same time she argues, analyses of individual or group’s engagement with culture needs to be based on the cultural repertoires to which people have access and the structural contexts in which they live. Lamont’s theory takes on a
26 special significance since we live in times where it is strongly believed that culture is
available for all. Instead, through her empirical work, she has suggested, we live in
distinguishable cultural enclaves.
In this project, I have set out to study how individuals negotiate contradictory
cultural messages. Following Lamont, in my study I would like to theoretically prioritize
the examination of two processes: one is the process of meaning-making and second the
structural context, determined by social class, in which meaning-making gets its
exclusivity. By combining these positions, I will be locating conflicting and contradictory
expectations in the cultural terrains in which it gets manifested and focus on the strategies
and rationales people use when negotiating cultural divides. I would like to adopt
Lamont’s framework that meaning-making is bound by the “structured context in which
we live” (2000, pg.244). But at the same time I also want to take into account the variety
of meanings that people have at their disposal to see how it affects the process of
meaning-making. Therefore, while I would like to elaborate on Lamont’s argument that
the cultural boundaries and hierarchies are shifting along dimensions that are historically and culturally distinct, my contribution lies in extending the framework to contexts where meanings contradict each other or are incongruous in nature.
Inconsistencies and discrepancies in people’s account of culture might give the impression that cultural meaning system has lost its affect. Yet at the same time meaning making is emerging as one of the ways people negotiate their identity and group affiliation. If meaning making is emerging as a key area of investigation, understanding how people solve contradictions in meanings would take us a step further in the process.
27 In the next chapter I will be describing a setting rife with contradictions, ambiguities and juxtaposition in its cultural content.
28
CHAPTER THREE THE STUDY
Introduction
This study is generally concerned with how one negotiates and makes sense of
conflicting cultural expectations and the cultural divides surrounding them. Oppositional
cultures entail conflicting meanings systems, where one set of meanings are formed or
stands in contrast to others. Living in oppositional cultures exposes a ‘cultural’
conundrum facing people at the threshold of two or more cultures problematizing the
assumption that culturally endowed meanings naturally guides people through their lives.
Since culture purportedly provides meanings and rationales for people to convincingly
engage in them, the understanding of contexts where culture leads to ambiguity is an
important enquiry.
If we turn to available theories in the field of culture, one framework that is
gaining credence is that culture is like a ‘tool-kit’, where meanings are not one-
dimensional but a repertoire, or a collection or a set of meanings available to its people
(Swidler; 2001,1996). So what ensues is that people are engaged in a process of meaning-
making where cultural meanings are being constantly defined, re-articulated and negotiated (Swidler, 2001; Lamont, 2000). However there is also evidence for the fact that meaning-making does not happen in a vacuum where individuals are suspended on
their own figuring out culture, instead meanings are negotiated in the cultural territories
that people navigate (Erickson, 1996 and Warde et al 1999). Therefore in order to see
how individuals negotiate contradictory cultural messages one has to focus on the cultural
29 repertoires available to people and the structural context in which people live to
understand how meanings are being processed.
Therefore my study will be guided by two assumptions discussed above; first,
that people are constantly engaged in the process of meaning-making, and second that
meaning-making gets its exclusivity in cultural terrains. By combining these positions, I
will be locating conflicting and contradictory expectations in the cultural terrains in which it gets manifested and focus on the strategies and rationales people use when negotiating these cultural divides. In order to do so, I will be using urban metropolitan
India as my site of investigation and the new Indian woman as my subject of investigation. In this chapter I will be providing a rationale of why I chose India and the new Indian woman to investigate my theoretical concerns.
I. The cultural site: urban metropolis India
In order to address the concerns surrounding oppositional culture, I will be looking into a cultural field that is ‘expected’ to be rife with contradictions, and as an illustration use the urban social landscapes of India. Urban metropolitan India is a fitting illustration of a contested cultural terrain because of dissensions in determining its cultural character. While my context is the Indian metropolis, my subject of analysis is the ‘new woman’.
One feature of the Indian societies that has taken theorists of social change by surprise has been the emergence of dual societies in non-western contexts (Giddens,
1990; Myrdal, 1968; Bose, 1965). This is contrary both to the premonitions of early sociologists like Durkheim, Weber, and later theorists of modernization; that the onset of industrialization will bring a decline in traditional institutions and their accompanying
30 values and beliefs.4 Instead we see in these non-western societies the existence of both
elements of tradition and modernity; hence the dual nature of its culture.
The dual nature or the co-existence of traditional and modern institutions in
Indian societies is most prominent in the urban centers of the country. The urban
population makes up twenty eight percent of its total population while the rest of its
million people still live in its villages. Urban centers are also fast growing, although not
in the same proportion as its population. Currently, as late as 2001 there were 35 cities
that had more than one million people living in them and the number of town have also
been increasing. But even now it is the four main metropolises of Delhi, Kolkata,
Mumbai and Chennai that still attracts people from other cities and villages.
The two distinctive forces that have shaped its contemporary nature are the years
it spent under British colonial rule and later its integration into the world market
economy. The Indian sub-continent was greatly affected by the coming of the British imperialist ruler like setting up of political, administrative and educational institutions.
Although social historian Spivak (1988) is quick to remind us that hundred years of colonial rule did not naturally result in “modernization” or “westernization” of its colonial subject, in the years following independence the rhetoric of growth was embedded in a state- sponsored, western- styled industrialization. Under the leadership of its first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, plans of industrialization and urbanization were
4 In contrast, in western societies, discussions of traditional-modern divide have become non-existent with focus on forces unleashed by processes beyond modernization. However now there is an acknowledgment, as Giddens in his Reith lectures (1999) argues, tradition as a concept is contemporaneous to modernity since it emerged to understand phenomenon distinct from experiences of modernity. He also suggested that there are still elements of tradition in the western context that needs to be identified.
31 launched to build a new India.5 This discourse of a new India has surfaced again. This time it is has come with the lifting of the protectionist strategy in the 1990’s when both investment and trade was liberalized. In the years following the opening of the Indian markets; the coming of cable television, proliferation of IT industry and diversification of service sector economies has resulted in the second phase of westernization.
The amalgamation of imported and traditional items has resulted in a unique cultural terrain. Appadurai (1996) referred to India as a ‘spatial vortex’ alluding to the futility of categorizing experiences in the language of the traditional- modernity divide.
Most onlookers were convinced that its cultural terrain was imperceptible; an emergent space where the traditional-modernity distinctions are being constantly ‘played’ with no end in sight.6 This indeterminateness of the Indian society is further augmented by the lack of consensus about the hierarchical distribution of elements of modernity or tradition. Both traditional and modern values are given equal importance and both are required for maintaining a balance.
5 In this period of time India, under the leadership of Jawaharlal Nehru and architect planner Le Corbusier made a bold attempt to make a break with her past by doing a socio-urban experiment that included, along with an innovative master plan, modernist buildings, new land-use patterns, provisions for education, recreation, medical and social services, the careful and deliberate inclusion of ideas that had their origin in a culture far removed from her own (Kalia, 2006)
6 The more contemporary understanding of these dual societies has come from the fields of cultural/urban anthropology, best represented by the following statement by Bhaaba (1994), leading theorists of the hybridity postulate. According to him, “What is theoretically innovative, and politically crucial, is the need to think beyond narratives of originary and initial subjectivities and to focus on those moments or processes that are produced in the articulation of cultural differences. These 'in-between' spaces provide the terrain for elaborating strategies of selfhood - singular or communal - that initiate new signs of identity, and innovative sites of collaboration, and contestation, in the act of defining the idea of society itself” (Bhaaba, 1994, pg.1, emphases added). Bhaaba belongs to the camp of theorists like Appadurai (1996) and Hannerz (1992) claim that dual societies actually represent the ‘in-between spaces’ or the ‘third space of enunciation’ (Bhaba, 1994) generated by the collapse of cultural borders and unprecedented flow of cultural connectedness. Its character therefore is undetermined and evolving.
32 A good example of the dichotomous nature of society can be grasped in the phenomenon of beauty contests that has become popular in the last couple of decades.
Women who take part in these pageants project their participation as an individual
accomplishment and a step towards a career in the glamour industry. Women who
succeed in these pageants go on to live the ‘lives of liberated wealthy women’ and often
venture off into other careers when their years in the ramp light come to an end. Yet the
pageants’ participants make vows of family and traditional values in front of select
national and international judges. The popular perceptions of these women are that they
model contemporary Indian womanhood, a perfect mix of traditional and modern
elements. While feminists remain critical of the consumerist motives of beauty pageants
(Kishwar, 1995), for young Indian women pageant participation implies being careeristic, competitive and successful (Runkle, 2004; Ahmed-Ghosh, 2003).
In the realm of culture, Indian society is of a mixed character, where what it means to be traditional and modern is shifting in nature, and being constantly redefined and renegotiated. Therefore following Appadurai, it is difficult to pin down the character of contemporary Indian society as experiences of modernity, and conversely of tradition, is layered with “complex forms of subjectivity, agency, pleasure and embodied experience” (Appadurai, 1996, pg. 4).
Others are skeptical that modernity is representative of a new India that has conclusively shed its past as a country divided along the lines of caste, region and religion (Gupta, 2000; Kishwar, 1995). In fact in case of India, there are still high rates of dowry (bride price) related violence and death, and female infanticide in both rural and urban areas stemming from the subordinate status that women have in these societies. In
33 spite of the influx of women in the work sector, corporate India remains highly sex
segregated (Datta, 2005). Also the political climate is often marred with religious and
ethnic violence. These facts about social life are overshadowed by an urban, English-
speaking, middle class, who in the popular consciousness has been marked as the people
who will bring change in larger society. Ganguly-Scarce (2003) in her study found that
for the middle and lower middle class people, the “new way” of doing things like
endorsing values of achievement, material possessions or being competitive is favorable.
What is equally interesting about her study is that she found her subjects making the connection that globalization will make an overall difference in the economic and social status of women. In their personal accounts, young women talked of owning a car, renting apartments or choosing non-traditional occupations like hair dressers, air hostesses or owning boutiques as new career options. Material changes witnessed in society with the coming of a consumerist, global life-styles is viewed positively and linked to changes in the social and economic status of women
In a separate instance, we see similarly how modernity is viewed. When United
States won the war against Afghanistan, success was interpreted as a victory for women’s rights. This was further showcased by the display of unveiled smiling faces of women and stories of the opening of the first beauty salon on the front pages of leading national dailies (Ahmed-Ghosh 2001). In most non-western societies a consumerist life-style, especially women adorning these styles are looked upon as signs of new opportunities that were not available to them earlier.
But Gupta (2000) contends that the middle class has adopted a consumerist lifestyle as a proxy for progressive liberation while most social relations remain un-
34 egalitarian in nature. Quay am and Ray (2003) have documented how the upwardly
mobile urban middle class grapple with traditional practices like domestic servitude and often demarcate spaces and boundaries in their relationships with those providing labor.
Both these studies allude to the fact that while a consumerist lifestyle provides an opportunity to ‘wear’ and ‘speak’ the modern language, there still exists traditional institutions like domestic servitude and practices of bride-price that are remnants of an old society.
The only consensus about Indian metropolises is that its character is in constant
flux, where on one hand traditional values and institutions remains entrenched while
imported ideas, values and lifestyles makes inroads into society. What is unique is that
they are constantly appropriating each other’s language and giving it a new form that at
best is inexplicable.
II. The ‘cultural’ subject: The new Indian woman
A. The new Indian woman
The traditional-modern dichotomy has been played out most extensively and
prominently in the phenomenon of the ‘new Indian woman’ (hereafter the new woman),
which I will turn to next.
i. The new Indian woman
The term “new woman” is academic in its nature as it surfaced in the writings of
social and gender theorists as they tried to capture a distinctive representation of women
that had started showing up in urban public spots like magazine covers, newspapers, TV
commercials and billboards. So, what is the distinctive feature of the new woman? The
new woman is a contemporary identity of the Indian woman who is confident, outgoing
35 and accomplished and yet has modest traditional values. In the print and electronic media
she is portrayed as a person willing to experiment with different aspects of their lives;
ranging from buying new domestic products to exploring their sexuality. Public
billboards on streets show women working out in gyms, experimenting with western
styles, being athletic and health conscious. For example a commercial in a magazine
reads, “Yesterday he [the husband] burnt the breakfast. Thank God, birth control is totally
in my hands (cited in Munshi, 1988).” In the commercial mentioned above, the woman is
portrayed as independent and decisive.7 This is only one example of thousands such portrayals which forms the landscape of major metropolises in India. It was the popularity of such representation that has led to a plethora of studies by social theorists
(Thapan, 2004; Basu, 2001; Chaudhuri, 2001; Munshi, 1998).
However I would like to contest the argument that the new woman is only a creation of the media, instead the media was tapping into a large mass of college going, professionally trained young girls and women who had recently started reaping the initial benefits of the open market. The image of the new woman got a major impetus when in
1994 she became a real entity. The winners of the national beauty pageant went on to win the two top international pageants of that year which was unprecedented in the history of international pageants. Both these women were very articulate, spoke immaculate English and were academically well qualified that gave them an edge over other contestants.
The victory created a near euphoria in the country and both these young women immediately assumed iconic statuses. Television coverage of the pageants showed how these young girls preserved their authentic national identities despite their success in the
7 Some of them also have a pun intended for the men implying that the new woman is a step ahead of her man in her wits and accomplishments.
36 global arena (Parameswaran, 2004). Daily newspapers and the news channel covered
both these pageants as occasions of unimaginable victory not only for the girls but also
for the middle class households that they represented. The success of the women in these
international pageants became symbolic for the burgeoning middle class of India for it
now meant that people with similar background can reap benefits at the international
level. It also served as a landmark year for the crystallization of the new Indian woman
into a real person from an advertising strategy and for fueling the possibility of every
middle-class, educated, English- speaking girl to accomplish similar fetes.
Some argued that the agency bestowed to the pageant winners authorized the
ideological interests of India's consuming classes. Kishwar, a noted feminist thinker
argued that the victory of both the young girls was a guise used by multinational
corporations to gain popularity with India’s emerging consumer class. She argued that,
“To the inferiority complex ridden Indian elites, the Indian beauties who won
international crowns gave them a hope, that if they continue to ape the West in its mannerisms, lifestyle, consumption patterns, fashion designs, they will one day make it to world class just as Sushmita and Aishwarya did by learning to walk, talk, dress, smile and wear makeup like Hollywood stars (Kishwar, 1995, pg.1).”
Irrespective of such speculations, the winning of the young girls had an impact on the aspirations of many young, educated, professional women. Both Ganguly- Syracuse and Ahmed-Ghosh found evidence of such aspirations when talking to young girls.
Ganguly-Scarse (2003) found her respondents making the connection that globalization
of the economy will usher in new opportunities for women and make an overall
difference in their economic and social status. In their personal accounts, young women
37 talked of owning a car, renting apartments or choosing non-traditional occupations like
hair dressers, air hostesses or owning boutiques as new career options.
However it is important to keep in mind that in its origin the new woman is a distinctively urban phenomenon used to describe the English speaking, college educated, and urban woman and therefore does not represent the vast majority of Indian women who still live in rural areas with limited access to education (Chaudhuri, 2001).
Additionally women who are in low- paying, unorganized sectors of work in the cities or are migrant laborers from the adjoining areas of these metropolises are also not included in the category of the new woman. It is believed that only women in middle class positions in urban societies feel the need to be the new woman as they are exposed to the many images of the new woman as they traverse the urban landscape. The new Indian woman is distinct from the traditional image of the woman. ii. The traditional woman
This public portrayal of the new woman stands in contrast to the popular perception of women living in non-western societies as home-bound and abiding of family duties. Within these societies as well women’s primary identities are those of mother, daughter, and daughter in law, and their social status and remunerations are tied to male relations in all the different stages of their lives. Historically, women have typically fulfilled the traditional duties of homemakers and, hence, submitted their personal interests to those of their families. The need to be a good wife can be traced back to the religious-moral order of society in ancient times. In popular Hindu texts, women are portrayed as full of vices. According to the Mahabharata8, “the vices and
8 Mahabharata is an important Hindu Epic which was initially in the form of a ballad in the 1500 B.C. The original written version has one hundred thousand stanzas making it one of the longest epics of the world.
38 faults of women were so numerous that a man would find it inadequate even if he had
hundred tongues, lived for one hundred years and did nothing else but narrate all of them
(Mukherjee, 1978, pg.12).” Her salvation from such an innate evil tendency was to be
tied into a marital bond. Therefore good Hindu women were obedient and faithful to her
husband, and had virtues like piety and truthfulness.
The idealism of the sacrificial Indian women got further consolidated in the years
building up to the formation of the independent India. Chatterji (1989) in an important
essay has shown that the need to protect the sanctity of the pan-Indian woman was first
raised during the last quarter of British rule over India. As nationalist leaders rallied
people against the injustices and discrimination of an imperialist rule, the social and
political climate of the time made it imperative to give woman equal roles in that fight.
While women fought along their male comrades there was some caution exercised in
defining the woman’s role in the movement. On one hand they were encouraged to adopt liberal and progressive values of education and liberty in their public roles but in their
personal lives were expected to maintain traditional norms.
Therefore while women could move into the public sphere and receive all its
material advantages like their western counterparts, they were simultaneously expected to
maintain a particular form of femininity that could be found ‘internally’ in India’s unique
heritage of spirituality. Gandhi too while establishing his ideology of non-violence used
mythical Hindu characters like Sita and Savitri to epitomize the value of endurance
against all kinds of inflictions, particularly those that were coming from the imperialist
While the central story is about a war between two branches of a ruling family of a warrior caste and a lengthy battle that followed to establish the supremacy of one over the other, it also enunciated the Hindu way of life.
39 rulers.9 In contemporary India, Sita and Savitri are pasted in popular consciousness as women who found spiritual emancipation in serving and protecting their husbands’ lives.
This celebration of the Indian woman as the ideal mother, in conjunction with the coupling of loyalty towards the nation with a mother’s loyalty to her family, is according to critics not only patronizing but also one of the most regressive aspects of the Indian nationalist movement (Katrak, 1992).
Radhakrishna (1992) further corroborates this point by eliciting that the Indian nationalist woman was based on an inner-outer dichotomy, to adopt the reason and rationality of the west and yet build a shield against excessiveness of materialism by protecting the inner sanctity of the country and its people. It must be noted that with the end of the nationalist struggle, women retreated to their homes after playing an active
(often public) role in the movement; and the role of women in the nation building completely disappeared. The above mentioned studies show that the nationalist movement was the first stage of essentializing the role of the Indian women, in which she came to be the inner/spiritual/essential nature of being an Indian.
Historically, the sanctity and spirituality of India has been invested in its women.
Therefore even now in the Indian context there is a strong tradition of identifying women as being ever sacrificial, a protector and nurturer. Mazumdar found evidence for it when
9 Sita was the wife of the mythical figure of Rama in the epic Ramayana. Lord Rama is believed to be the reincarnation of the Hindu God, Vishnu who came to earth to fight the demon, Ravana. Ravana abducted Sita and kept her captive for many years. The legend is that Sita remained loyal to her husband in her captivity and used her devotion and righteousness to fight the evil intentions of Ravana. Sati is similarly a mythical figure. One version of the story is that when Savitri's husband Satyavan died, the Lord of death, Yama arrived to take his soul. Savitri begged Yama to restore Satyavan and take her life instead, which he could not do. So Savitri followed Lord Yama a long way. After a long way in which Yama noticed that Savitri was losing strength but was still following him and her dead husband, Yama offered Savitri a boon, anything other than her husband's life. Savitri asked to have children from Satyavan. In order to give Savitri her boon, Lord Yama had no choice but to restore Satyavan to life and so Savitri gained her husband back. Women who are dutiful and loyal towards their husbands are often called Sita or Savitri, which is also a moniker for noble women.
40 she found that despite contemporary laws giving equal claims to daughters, educated and
professional women still find it difficult to claim parental property out of a family
allegiance (Mazumdar, 2003). This is where the problem lies; the ‘new woman’ stands in
contrast to the practices and sentiments that intricately tie women’s responsibilities and
actions to her family and her nation. In fact, social theorists are concerned that being a
new woman is fraught with contradictions.
B. The hurdles of the new Indian woman
The cultural maze facing women lies in the responsibilities that women face in balancing their traditional and modern roles. Like for example, in the recent past there have been multiple incidents that have indicated that women can find themselves in the middle of a culture clash. One of the most recent has been the public kissing of a popular
Hindi film actress by a Hollywood film actor in an AIDS awareness program. While the
actor later explained his behavior as a token of appreciation for the actress’s involvement
in the campaign, it nonetheless created a public furor. A police case was charged against
the actor, and another case was filed against the actress for violating publicly endorsed
ethical behavior. The allegation against the actress was that she did not resist attempts at
being kissed.
Earlier in the year public cases were filed against another internationally
acclaimed actress for kissing her co-actor on screen and for wearing revealing clothes.
Although these public cases where filed at separate times and against two different
actresses, the common clause in these allegations was that the actresses had transgressed
from their responsibilities of upholding traditional norms of conduct. Both these actresses
have parallel careers in the film and glamour industry at the international level and are
41 often touted as the unofficial ambassadors of the country, but in their home turfs their
behavior both on and off screen/stage is under constant scrutiny and held in contempt.
They also exemplify that in urban India there are deep seated traditional pockets that
control and regulate individual conduct.
One of the more alarming revivals of traditionalism has been the endorsement of
Sati, a medieval Hindu practice of burning widows in their husband’s funeral pyre.
According to Rao (1999) these are efforts at restoring a ‘pre-colonial indigeniety’ by
invoking the popular iconography of the sacrificial, noble Hindu woman burning on the
pyre. Another place where one can see the reclaiming of the traditional Indian woman is
on prime time soap operas. Cable networks have opened the doors to global styles of
fashion and entertainment. But parallel to the success of syndicated shows like “Friends” and “Frazier”, there has been popularity of shows like Kahani Ghar Ghar Ki ( The story of every other household) and Kyunki Saans Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi ( Because the mother – in- law was once a daughter- in -law). Most people have expressed astonishment at the fact that these series have become one of the longest running prime time shows on television.
The success of these series can be explained by the fact that the central characters are self- sacrificing, strong matriarchs who are faced with the challenge of keeping together big extended families amidst sibling rivalry and individualism of its characters.
Accosting the strong matriarch are the entrepreneurial women, who are vilified for being overtly individualistic and forever scheming to break the unity of the kin- based family.
For the traditionally inclined people, the appeal of these series lies in the constant pitting of these two sets of interests; individualistic, self - interest driven motives and those of a
42 higher moral stance of protecting the integrity of family ties and values. These seemingly
disparate set of events caters to an internal discourse that is continually trying to reclaim
the women’s body and her lifestyle lest they fall into the decadent ways of a materialistic society. 10
In fact Basu (2001) found that even in social spaces that are marked as liberal and
progressive, like women’s magazines with feminist agendas, which run front page
articles on women’s sexuality, issues of promiscuity or novel ways of being
domesticated; there is scrutiny of behavior. She found that women writing columns about promiscuous relations are given very limited options of what to do with their sexuality.
She found that first of all the confessions are done in a shroud of secrecy and secondly that the guidance given to these women is often ambiguous but generally falls within the larger norms of patriarchy.
C. Existing theories to understand the new Indian woman
The cultural maze confronting the new woman are two forces working in the urban Indian context; one where (seemingly) there are ample opportunities that lure women to careers and independent styles of living and on the other are expectations around family obligations that remain entrenched in household arrangements. Therefore often women find themselves in the midst of a maze of expectations from both worlds.
What is ironical is that although different in nature, both these forces have been impacted by the opening of the market and the rise of a consumer culture. These two forces are often identified in the literature as processes of recolonization and reterritorialization.
10 This and other instances like closing of KFC in the city of Bangalore, India are indicative of a part of a conservative ideology that tries to rectify western and American influences on its people.
43
i. Recolonization:
It is a generic term given to processes that consolidate capitalist relations of
domination made possible through the fluidity of global capital (Thapan, 2004). Since
India liberalized its economy in the late nineties, it has been exposed to both a global
capital and a global cultural style dominated by the west. This has triggered the fear of re-
colonization, this time, of values and styles of people living in these parts of the world.
Being a part of the globalized world, the new woman faces re-colonization of their life-
styles and bodies in which she is accosted by the trappings of a growing global, consumerist culture.
Overt adulation of a consumerist lifestyle could result in women abandoning indigenous and/or local definitions of womanhood. The problem lies in the fact that in a country like India there are still traditional bastions of domination along lines of gender, caste and religion. Therefore it is no surprise that families that asked for land and cash in dowry demands, now ask for televisions, refrigerators and other electronic gadgets that the modern household requires. The larger concern is that consumer values will be absorbed by the existing patriarchal structures thereby adding weight to existing practices of domination. ii. Re-territorialization
If re-colonization is one of the concerns, the other concern is re-territorialization.
‘Reterritorialization’ is a counter-force to cultural globalization that involves decisive
efforts to protect the indigenous culture made by the guardians of tradition, like passing
of policies or launch campaigns. In the name of indigenous culture, life-style patterns and
44 choices are being strictly patrolled and as a result there has been public scrutiny and policing what women wear and how they conduct themselves in public. Fernandes (2000) identified how the recent cleansing projects by right wing political parties to free society of the ill effects of western influences have been directed primarily at women and have filtered into concerns about women’s moral conduct, especially of film and fashion personalities. It can be argued that the new woman is partially a consequence of recolonizing forces that have created newer opportunities in the economy and of lifestyles. In the last couple of years, women have found themselves at the behest of opposing cultural expectations, which are growing in complexity as both forces of re- colonization and re-territorialization become stronger.
So far I have built the argument that India is fast emerging as a site for rapid modernization as forces of global capital makes inroads into the country. But parallel to it are traditional institutions and sentiments that are equally valued by its people. The new woman with her newly found aspirations stands at the threshold of these two meaning systems. Next, in keeping with my theoretical interests, I turn to the question of what consequences does living in oppositional worlds have for the prospect of the new woman?
D. How does the new Indian woman make sense of these oppositional worlds?
At present there are very few empirical studies, with some content analyses of media and magazine portrayals of what it means to be a new woman. However the consensus amongst critics is that the ‘new woman’ is more constraining than liberating as it does not constitute a break from tradition, but instead involves a web of contradictory expectations with potentially destabilizing consequences. Others argue that the
45 juxtaposition of meanings will make women a timeless entity, fluid and open to
interpretation (Thapan, 2004).
I would like to single out theoretical frameworks that view the new Indian woman
as a timeless entity. The theoretical pre-suppositions are that the juxtaposition of
meanings will make women a ‘timeless’ entity; and an ever- changing fluid concept
where she is ‘firmly entrapped in a timeless space of an evolving modernity enshrined in
tradition’ (Thapan, 2004, pg. 441).The use of the word “timeless” is of importance here
as it refers to an unidentifiable process in which the woman keeps on evolving, indigenizing the global to suit her needs. At this extreme it implies that being the new
woman is an entirely open-ended and undetermined process that gives women a variety
of choices.
Thapan (2004) calls this balancing of roles and synthesis a “respectable
modernity”, a hybridization or localization of modern and western values, where the new
woman portrays a “good” or “respectable” modernity. By exhibiting respectable
modernity she has arrived at a balance between the good values associated with
modernity, like being competent in public spheres like in academics or at work and also
being traditional in her responsibilities towards her family. However this approach is in
keeping with the post-modernist approach that identity is fluid and fragmented.
Others argue that women occupy an ambiguous social location that is neither
traditional nor modern (Das, 1994). For yet others, this ambiguity has resulted in new
emergent forms of negotiation as women try to accommodate both traditional and modern
demands. For Munshi, the very concept of a new woman is a strategy in itself that women
use to walk the tight rope between tradition and modernity. The new woman is a strategy
46 in itself developed by women who are trying to achieve a balance between traditional and modern styles. However while the new woman is a negotiated stance that is achieved by women, this balancing is still precarious in nature as there is always an omnipresent threat of transgressing traditional clauses of behavior.
Admittedly the new woman is a fairly new phenomenon that has only recently become a subject of investigation. While scholars have persuasively documented how women occupy the center of this cultural contradiction, they have rarely addressed how, when faced with these contradictions, women negotiate them in their own lives. Based on my review of literature I would like to argue that the new women have limited possibilities when faced with contested meanings; one is that women succumbs to these contradictions and thereafter discards one identity for the other. The other is that women are caught in situations of ambivalence and uncertainty. For women who are trying to become a new woman, we see that ‘destabilization’ or ‘imbalances’ has been essentialized to understand the contradictions or dichotomies that they face. The other option given to women is that she is constantly redefining herself and therefore lacks stability. The problem lies is that in existing frameworks, the new woman is not anchored to the social setting of which she is a part, but instead is viewed as an entity that is forever changing or perennially trapped and ambiguous.
IV. Problems in understanding the new Indian woman:
In this section of the paper, I would like to argue that the limited options given to women when confronted with cultural ambiguity can be attributed to the way the relationship between women and culture is conceived. Existing theoretical frameworks show that women in comparison to men are identified as cultural beings. In societies like
47 the United States, empirical studies have shown that women are more likely than men to be over-users of culture, more likely to participate in traditional high status leisure activities (Lizzardo, 2006), and more likely to use cultural venues like book-clubs to build personal and collective identity (Long, 2003). Wolf (1991) in her now acclaimed book, “The Beauty Myth” made the argument that when women entered the male dominated work force, they encountered a discourse in which they were expected to project their feminity by embellishing their appearances and dressing styles. But women’s status as cultural beings comes primarily from their roles as producers and keepers of family, or as upholders of the cultural integrity in their community (Collins,
1999). Therefore women do the ‘expressive’ work of communities. In the non-western context as well, women’s status as cultural landmarks of their community or nation becomes more visible.
Women in non-western societies are paragons of their culture. For instance a textual analysis of the “new Indian woman” will show that while the public persona of the ‘new woman’ in the Indian context is the executive or the model, tourist travelogues designed to lure vacationers to India as a land of tradition and a rich culture have pictures of women in their traditional attires. On the contrary, when India scrambled to stake a claim in the global economy, its women emerged as unofficial cultural ambassadors of its country (Ahmed-Ghosh, 2003).
In modern, urban India both men and women have been exposed to global, trendy, consumerist life-styles (Chaudhuri, 2001), but it is woman’s body, her life-styles and the choices she makes, that has emerged as a site of the traditional-modernity divide and as a target for solutions. Therefore researchers have repeatedly pointed out that while women
48 are expected to adopt the progressive values of consumerism; they are still expected to maintain, and in some instances protect the decorum set by tradition and patriarchal norms (Thapan, 2004; Basu, 2001 and Fernandes, 2000). This is a typical case of women finding themselves at the thresholds of two opposing cultures; that is, women are exposed to not only the demands of both cultures, but also to their respective ambiguities and risks.
At present the new Indian woman faces a threat of becoming marginalized, someone who is caught between two cultural worlds; a traditional and a modern world. Menon
(2005) calls the either-or nature of the argument of the traditional-modern divide a case of the ‘prison of the pendulum’, where the pendulum can swing only two ways, and thus provides only two alternatives for understanding how people make sense of their lives.
The pervasive understanding of the new Indian woman as trapped in a cultural maze stymie further investigations of how women negotiate contradictory expectations.
V. Resetting the theoretical framework to understand the new Indian woman
The existing studies on the new woman are of limited utility for understanding how women negotiate the traditional-modern divide for the following reasons. First of all the majority of studies discussed above in this area have focused on social space marked by a cultural conundrum of juggling traditional values with consumerist life-styles. The rhetoric around the tradition- modernity divide is built along the lines of a culture trap facing women. This kind of theorizing is based on the assumption that cultural meanings represent collectively held values or beliefs that are internalized.
I would like to contend that the destabilization part of the argument becomes unavoidable because of the priority given to ‘culture as values’ perspective. For a long
49 time culture has been thought of as being primarily about collectively held, and
internalized, values and beliefs. From this perspective, challenges to such self-
conceptions might have destabilizing consequences for the individual with consequences
for larger society. But the problem with this conceptualization lies in the assumption that the problem is internal (or innate) to woman and analyses is directed at how women themselves have interpreted or organized their understandings of the traditional-modern divide. Moreover it becomes wanting when one wants to look into discrepancies and ambiguities caused by conflicting cultural meaning systems.
While ‘culture as values’ theory has faced criticism in other areas, in this area of academic enquiry the problem of the traditional-modern dichotomy is still primarily posed as a personal dilemma in which the management of women’s roles as bearers of
tradition and modernity happens at the individual level. Although the theoretical discourse has located women in contradictory positions, it has not taken the analysis to
the next step of what women do with these contradictions.
In this study I take the next step and argue that the contradictions or ambiguities
that women face are not merely individual struggles but represent the cultural fields in
which women move around. Both individual lives and major cultural fields have been
significantly impacted with the coming of the cosmopolitan, global society. There has
been considerable work in the field of cultural studies to show that cultural meanings
cannot be thought of as given, static sets of explanations of practices and life styles, and
that people do not indiscriminately take on these meanings. Instead meanings are
constantly negotiated and sometimes contested in different social settings (Warde et al
1999; Erickson, 1996). Meaning-making as a process does not happen in a vacuum but
50 instead in ‘territories’ that are marked by specific cultural practices; hence meanings are
highly contextualized (Lamont, 2001).
Based on these observations, I argue that when the meanings that people give to
their behavior or practices are contradictory or ambiguous, we need to look beyond
individual renditions of these interpretations to the cultural territories in which they are
situated. In this project I would like to exorcise the contradictions given to the new
woman from the woman herself and instead direct it to the ‘cultural fields’ in which she lives her life. In other words, I would like to theoretically prioritize the way meanings evolve in cultural terrains in order to understand how such meanings are interpreted by
women and, in turn, inform their lives.
Secondly, there is a ‘class’ bias in understanding the traditional-modernity dilemma. For the new woman, the only cultural field that has been taken into consideration is that of the middle class, which means that women in lower social statuses have not contributed to our understanding of the contradictory cultural location that women occupies. Datta (2005) makes the connection that McDonaldization and consumerization can lead to identity crisis in women who cannot afford the gadget- driven, consumerist life-style. She writes there is a “danger of an identity crisis for the poor whose sense of real and perceived deprivation would be heightened as their low levels of income do not allow their lifestyles and gender roles to be Mcdonalized [sic]”
(Datta, 2005, pg.133). Others feel that with blocked opportunities, there is a possibility that women in lower social positions will be especially susceptible to the forces that are trying to preserve the traditional image of the Indian woman (Ahmed- Ghosh, 2003).
51 This amounts to a “zero-sum approach” ( Lamont and Laureau, 1988) where
women in lower income groups and with less social status are thought of as being outside
the purview of the western- borne, consumerist culture. So far the findings have
identified the traditional-modernity dichotomy as a problem facing middle class women
only. It stems from the assumption that it is the English speaking, college educated
women who is better equipped with the cultural faculties needed to understand and
negotiate consumerist language.
At the same time, the new woman is a ‘public phenomenon’, pasted on walls, big
hoardings (or billboards), splashed in magazines and therefore available to most women.
Therefore any position that woman in lower positions lacks cultural repertoire is difficult
to maintain in the face of empirical evidence that in contemporary societies there is a dilution of cultural symbols. Some even contend that now there is a disjuncture between meanings invested in symbols and the meanings people give to their practice (Schudson,
1989; Swidler, 1986) which makes it all the more necessary to understand how these meanings are constructed. At this moment, there are only conjectures about what it means to be new woman for women in lower income positions.
Moreover, the exclusive focus on middle-class women repeats the theoretical fallacy that scholars in other fields of gender studies have observed. Thompson (1992) first brought it to attention when studying the problem of eating disorders among
American women. For a long time, eating disorders was thought of as a problem unique to white middle class women; hence the epidemiological portrait of the typical anorexic woman was the ailing, frail, white woman. As a result, problem facing women in other class, ethnic and racial groups were neglected. Since the reigning portrait of the new
52 Indian woman is the middle class, English speaking woman; there is a similar threat of leaving out women in lower income groups with less social status from any study of the new woman.
Finally, there has been no systematic investigation or empirical work that looks into how these contradictory definitions affect the lived experiences of women. The majority of studies are still textual or content analyses of how these contradictions exist in the written and visual images of popular magazines. Therefore my project will be one of the first of its kind that seeks to understand how women from different social backgrounds understand the traditional-modernity divide that exists in larger society.
VI. Understanding the traditional-modernity divide: Fasting as a traditional practice and Dieting as a modern practice.
In order to compare traditional and modern cultural practices, I have chosen the two practices of fasting and dieting. Both are practices of self-starvations that co-exist in
Indian metropolises, and yet represent diametrically opposite sets of meanings in popular parlance. Moreover they are cultural practices done primarily by women and therefore have been subjected to much feminist analyses. All of this caters to my understanding of how women negotiate cultural messages particularly cultural messages of food and body, when exposed to both?
A. Fasting as a traditional practice
In the Indian context, fasting has a distinct religious connotation, which stems from
Hindu texts like the Samhitas, Brahmanas and the Puranas. In these texts fasting is referred to as Vrats (or Vartas), which literally translates to ‘taking a vow’ to take correct action and are guided by rules of conduct that involve how to choose the good over the
53 bad. But the piety of vrats comes from the fact that it is a ‘vow’, a dedicated effort
towards a noble cause. In the religious texts vrats have been linked to esoteric purposes;
tapah or the subjugation of one’ senses, mukti or salvation of one’s soul and bhakti or
devotion.
In spite of its strong religious connotation, vrats over the years have taken on
regional meanings; one can find a vrat being done for the God Ganesh in the western
state of India, and the others being done for Goddess Kali in eastern cities, with
difference in the religious emphasis and its ritualistic nature. Other than Hinduism,
religions like Jainism and Islam also extol fasting as a practice of virtue. Therefore,
fasting has acquired a unique cultural significance in the sub-continent; it has become a
pan-Indian feature commonly done by both men and women living in regionally and
culturally diverse settings. However in the Hindu and Jain traditions, women do more
vrats than men (Khare, 1976; McGee, 1987; Pearson, 1996).This is an interesting turn of
events given the fact that, according to the Hindu texts, women could not engage in vrats.
In Manusmriti one of the oldest Hindu texts states that married women must get
permission from their husbands, the unmarried from their fathers, and the widows from
their sons before they observe a vrat.11 The question that has fascinated many is; how is it
that a practice that was once forbidden for women is now one of their most commonly
practiced ritual?
Cultural anthropologists studying the prevalence of fasting among women have
concluded that its popularity can be attributed to two reasons; first, its patriarchal origin
and, second, its folk nature. While fasting is an integral part of any Hindu religious
11 Manusmriti is a Hindu law book; that was written by Manu, a mythical figure who is believed to be the first human. But Manusmriti is also known for being discriminatory against women and of lower castes.
54 ceremony, there are fasts that are done only by women; shiv ratri, karva chauth and
shosti (to name a few).12 These fasts are done for the welfare of husbands and sons, in
case of married women, and for the purpose of finding a good husband, in case of
unmarried women. But at the same time while fasting is rooted in patriarchal
arrangements and still serves some of its functions, women have appropriated some of the
ceremonial aspects of it and turned it into occasions of festivity.
Vratas originally were practiced by women living in rural economies and still maintain a
stronghold in these communities (McDaniel, 2003) Das (1953), however, notes that the
popularity of fasting in rural economies can be attributed to the communal function it
serves in these communities. It is through detailed arrangements like cooking, decorating,
and preparing for the festivities that fasting ceremonies have become sites where women gather to pray for collective social prosperity. Also unlike other religious ceremonies, in
vrats the role of the Brahman priest is limited to the making offerings to a deity. In stead
women play active roles in making arrangements of offerings of food and flowers and in
organizing collective readings of mythological stories of women who rescued their
husbands from death and disease through difficult fasting. Das’s fits closely with
Durkheim’s thesis on religion that the ceremonies and rituals in religions serve a symbolic function of group solidarity. The only difference is that here we see women taking on the responsibility of praying for the welfare of family and the community.
In spite of its origin, the practice of vrat is also found in the cities. Women when they migrated to cities took their fasting practice with them. Pearson (1996) in her study found dedicated fasters who piously followed the rituals and rules when maintaining
12 Shosti, Karva chauth, Shiva-ratri are all fasts done by women. While Shosti and Karva Chauth are done by married women for children and husband, shiv ratri is a favorite among unmarried women.
55 these fasts. But she also found some changes in the meanings given to vrats in urban,
metropolitan contexts. She found that women gave primarily non-religious reasons for
their fasting; for example, that fasting once a week cleanses the digestive system or that
fasting is good for health. Pearson identifies this as a recent trend among urban, educated
Indians and concluded that the woman incorporates the traditional aspects of fasting in her daily life by making “all kinds of adjustment in her mind to accommodate what
others might find conflicting points of view (Pearson, 1996, pg. 206).”
Her study shows that the practice of vratas is not exclusive to rural societies;
rather, both rural and urban women fast, but they do so for different reasons. In spite of
modern renditions of fasting, the value of fasting stays embedded in women's obligatory
duties; that is, to maintain the highly auspicious status of being married and to act as the
guardians of the well being of their husbands and children. While feminists sees fasting as normative practices that reproduces submissiveness and reinforces structural subservience of daughters to fathers and wives to husbands (Kishwar, 1986); the practice
remains widespread. Existing studies have consistently shown that women across urban
and rural contexts invoke either family values or religious duties to describe their fasting
practices which are indicative of the fact that fasting constitutes a traditional practice of
Indian women. Simultaneously the discourse around fasting is continuously informing
women of what it means to be an ideal woman, thereby contributing to the construction
of Indian womanhood
B. Dieting as a ‘modern’ practice
In contrast to fasting, dieting is a ‘modern’ practice, a response to western,
consumerist standards of thinness; that is, research has shown that it is primarily in
56 consumer-based market economies that body-modification practices like dieting emerges
( Bordo, 1993). In consumerist societies bodies come under public gaze; billboards, magazine covers, and TV commercial are full of sharp, chiseled and sculpted bodies and also under an endless pressure of being controlled and shaped. But in reality the aesthetically pleasing, chiseled bodies often conceal the work it takes to maintain such bodies, including starvation and extreme self-denial (Bordo, 1993). Bordo argues that these unreal images of perfect and celebrated bodies serve to increase intolerance towards real bodies. However the need to control the body is realized differently by men and women.
Many feminists have argued that dieting falls under the same disciplinary regime that confronts women in any patriarchal setting. In some societies, we find practices such as purdah (or the veil system), ritualistic of self-mutilation, and foot binding as markers of women’s subordinate status. In the feminist literature, practices like dieting, corrective surgery, bodywork and appearance-enhancing techniques fall into the same general category of bodily practices that discipline women’s body (Bordo, 1993; Bartky, 1988).
Wolf (1991) argues that the spurt in the beauty industry in the last couple of decades in the west emerged as a counter discourse to supplant the growing participation of women in traditional domains of male power. The beauty/appearance industry now works as a painful reminder that appearance is still a marker of womanhood, even as women find other avenues (like politics, economy and administration) to realize their self-worth.
Given these discourses, women will constantly find themselves at the behest of a disciplinary discourse that monitors, regulates and dictates their bodies, their eating habits, and eventually their lives (Hesser-Biber, 1996). But they all agree that dieting and
57 other similar types of bodywork become acute in consumerist, appearance based
societies.
The western-bound phenomenon of dieting is not contained in the west but is
spreading to other urban, consumerist societies as well. There are studies showing that
the thinness norm is becoming prevalent in non-western societies like China, Malaysia,
India and Singapore where being thin was not previously a cultural standard of beauty
(Lee, 1995). These countries have also started showing many cases of eating-disorders
which is believed to be caused by the excessive monitoring of the body that accompany
market-based consumerism. In a study done in Fiji, researchers found that when
American television was introduced to the island, only three percent of girls reported
bulimic behavior but in three years time they found that seventy four percent reported
“feeling too fat” and sixty two percent mentioned they had dieted (Becker et al. 2000).
This further attests to the fact that it is the unique condition of consumer based modernity that creates an appearance based society with differential consequences for women and men.
The “dieting” phenomenon is not novel to urban Indian societies, magazines like
“Woman’s weekly”, “Reader’s Digest” and “Femina” (Johnson, 1981) that have been in circulation since the seventies have been providing tips of eating and exercise to urban women to lose weight. But in the last few decades there has been a drastic change in the content of these magazines. The editor of the leading fashion magazine Femina in referring to contemporary beauty images had to say, “They have changed amazingly in the last five or six years because of the multinationals coming in. They brought images of beauty with them which are very different from what we had, therefore we
58 internationalized our image of beauty, and today we see that reflected in the way young
people look.” (cited in Runkle, 2007, pg.1) The new image harbors a distinctive look; it is
cosmopolitan, contemporary but most importantly internationalized. Dieting falls under
the spectrum of tasks that women are being encouraged to follow to achieve this new
cosmopolitan, internationalized look.
There are no studies that have looked into the interface of a religious institution
like fasting and a modern institution like dieting. The only study that comes close is one
done by Griffith (2004) on devotional diets in the United States. The purpose of
devotional diets is religious; to build a close, satisfying relationship with a loved one
whom practitioners aim to please through obedient self discipline. In case of devotional
diets the relationship is with a sacred figure like God or Jesus, and the practice is
accompanied by the belief that the human body’s fitness affects the relationship in both
direct and indirect ways. Griffith finds that religious metaphors are being played out in
the “so-called secular” diet culture of America (Griffith, 2004).
The use of religious metaphors was also found in a study by Stinson (2001) that looked at a weight loss group. Recently in the United States there has been a spurt in devotional diets where religious faith is used as a motivator to go into diets and get the body into shape. Although Griffith’s purpose was to look at the intersections of a religious practice and the customs of a body-centric culture specific to the US context, it nonetheless establishes that meanings are not intrinsic to practices and develop in unique ways. The case of a devotional diet or Christian diet exemplifies how a bodily experience can be appropriated to serve a religious purpose.
59 In the urban Indian context, one can see topographical evidence of dieting and
fasting practices. For example, urban locales are dotted with gyms, health clinics and
temples that are built right next to each other. Although the relation between fasting and
dieting has not been systemically investigated, some have started making the connection
that dieting is a modern rendition of yesteryear’s practice of fasting (Agarwal, 2005).
According to Agarwal, a journalist with Times of India (a leading newspaper), fasting
done by grandmothers and mothers were ancient ways of detoxifying the body and
cleansing the system, very similar to the modern, health imperative dictums of dieting.
Therefore before dismissing fasting as archaic and redundant Agarwal argues young girls
should look into the non-religious benefits of fasting. Agarwal’s argument represents a
belief becoming widespread among middle class urban woman, fasting has health and
bodily benefits, and therefore is an ancient example of modern day dieting.
The argument that I am making here is that both the fasting and dieting have become pervasive institutions in urban India. On one hand they are parallel institutions
and belong to separate spheres. Fasting represents traditional sentiments that are
intimately tied to home and hearth. Dieting, in contrast represents a modern practice
where women engage in weight loss efforts to take on a contemporary look. But on the
other hand, some are drawing a link between fasting and dieting in larger society
(Agarwal, 2005). It is against this backdrop that I ask the question, how do women from
different social backgrounds negotiate these cultural messages about eating, food and
body?
60
Conclusion
In this project, I will be using fasting, as it is done in the Indian society as an illustration of a traditional institution and dieting as a phenomenon shaped decisively by marketing and cultural strategies of an appearance based society. By asking women about both their fasting and dieting practices, I intend to find the meanings constructed around these two practices and most importantly elaborate on the theoretical understanding of how, and with what kinds of rationales, people negotiate different cultural worlds.
In order to address these concerns, I will be investigating the following questions:
What kind of ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ practices do women engage in? What kinds of meanings do women give to their cultural practices? Since I am interested in unraveling the cultural repertoires specific to cultural territories, I will also examine how social positions or institutional memberships, such as family ties, and educational and occupational experiences, influence and inform the meanings that women give to their practice. By asking these questions, I want to find out how similar and different the
meanings are that women give to their practices. The purpose of these questions, in other
words, is to understand what women do with the rhetoric of the traditional-modern
paradox that confronts them on a daily basis.
61
CHAPTER FOUR METHODOLOGY
Introduction
In this chapter I turn from theoretical and empirical explorations to
methodological issues, including an assessment of qualitative methodology, the selection
of location for the study, and the selection of interview subjects. In the first section, I
explain why in-depth interviews are best suited to meet my theoretical goals. In the
second section I delineate my research design, including choice of location, question
guide, sampling strategy and sample description. In the third section I reflect on the social context of the interviews, including the kinds of relations I formed with the subjects, the setting of the interviews, the use of language and its impact on my analysis.
I. Qualitative methods and Interview technique
Social science researchers are quick to remind each other that the nature of social reality is complex, dynamic and forever changing. This aspect of the social has remained unaltered since the time of Durkheim when he described the social world as “reality sui generis” (1912) meaning that the social has a reality of its own. Since then, researchers have come up with various methods to examine the nature of the social.
In this study I explore how the “new Indian woman” traverses the traditional- modernity divide. I decided to do a qualitative study and to use the interview as a method of data collection. My choice of method was dictated by two concerns; first, the need to capture the nuances of being a new woman in terms of meaning-making and, second, the need to
62 give voice to the new Indian woman across different social backgrounds. Sangari and
Vaid have pointed out that in most cases Indian women have been spoken about and not spoken to. Therefore the image of Indian women is one where “womanhood is often a part of an asserted or desired, not an actual continuity” (Sangari and Vaid, 1990, pg.2; cited in Rao, 1999). Rao further elaborates on the powerful images of the Indian woman that have pervaded contemporary and historical discourses. She argues that, in relation to tradition and religion, women are “symbols of sacrifice,” whereas in the context of modern nation-making women have become “symbols of progress”. These are passive symbols, she argues, “…because they require the women to remain voiceless, discourse less and displaced from the constitutive processes of symbol-making” (Rao, 1999, pg.319). Therefore, asking women about their understandings of “traditional” and
“modern” gives them an opportunity to engage in the “constitutive process” of symbol making.
Interviews are unanimously accepted as the method best suited to explore the subjective dimensions of social reality, especially the interpretations and meanings that people give to their objective conditions. Hence, interviews best suited my theoretical and empirical goals. Theoretically I address the ways people negotiate contradictory cultural
messages, and empirically I examine the rationales women give to traditional and modern
practices of eating. Qualitative interviews treat subjects as active meaning makers rather
than “passive conduits for retrieving information from an existing vessel of answers”
(Holstein and Gubrium, 1995).
In-depth interviews serve my purposes well as subjects are given the opportunity
to describe their worlds. This is called the narrative approach where, “by abandoning the
63 attempt to treat respondent’s accounts as potentially “true” pictures of “reality,” one
opens up “for analysis the culturally rich methods through which interviews and
interviewees, in concert, generate plausible accounts of the world” (Silverman, 2003,
pg.343). In this study I was interested in the “plausible accounts” that my subjects
constructed to make sense of the traditional-modernity divide that characterizes the urban
Indian context. This method facilitates and understanding of the culturally endowed
meanings subjects bring to their own analyses, where the ‘hows’ (style) of storytelling is equally important as the ‘whats’ (content) of individual experience.
Unlike surveys where questions are structured and responses pre-determined, open ended interviews generate “thick descriptions” as subjects dig into their stock of experiences or meanings that they have accumulated over the years. Moreover, and unlike participant observation, “the lens of the interview is verbal- what people say and mean- but its temporal range is biographical extending into the past and the future”
(Warren, 2002, pg. 85). Furthermore, in contrast to methods like participant observation where the researcher is fixed to one setting, interviews can help establish, “common patterns or themes between particular types of respondents (Warren, 2002, pg.85).”
Since I was interested in finding the repertoires of meanings that emerge from the accounts of women in different social locations, the interview seemed the most appropriate method as it provides an opportunity to compare the meanings across and within social locations.
The qualitative method, as other methods, lends itself to “theoretical innovation and generalization” (Orum, 1991, cited in Warren, 2002, pg.). Qualitative interviews yield real life accounts of people that make it possible to compare subjects’ explanations
64 with existing theories of behavior. For example, Miller and Glassner, in a study of gang
membership, found that, for members, gangs become alternate homes as they provide a
sense of belonging , thereby challenging the assumption that relationships in gangs are
always conflict-ridden or pathological ( 1997; cited in Silverman, 2003). That is, the
narratives generated lived accounts of gang members that challenged theoretical
presuppositions on the subject.
Similarly, Read and Bartkowski (2000) found that in some instances, women of
Islamic faith think of the wearing of the veil as an expression of their community identity
and not necessarily a religious or family identity. In my study, interviews are important as
they make possible the examination of the meanings women themselves give to the
practices of dieting and fasting. Since so far there have been only textual analyses of the
“new Indian woman”, my study sheds additional light on women traversing the
traditional-modern divide typically associated with being a new woman.
Finally interviews yield subtle nuances of the social world (Orum, 1991, cited in
Warren, 2002) not only by providing thick descriptions but also by providing access to other aspects of the subjects’ social reality. The interaction between the interviewer and the interviewee, for example, provides insights that cannot be gleaned in mailed responses or phone interviews. In my study, the location of the interview was not the same for all subjects. Some women preferred their homes or offices and others chose a neutral setting for the interview. In retrospect I realized that their houses and offices were
the most productive settings as they gave me access to aspects of their lifestyles that I
would not have known about otherwise.
65 The new Indian woman is a historical phenomenon, along with being a social- cultural phenomenon; that is, the liberalization of the market has ushered in new opportunities and new definitions of what it means to be a woman. The purpose of my study is not to understand how well women are striving to become the new Indian woman but rather how differently located women negotiate the mixed and often contradictory cultural messages of womanhood. In this sense, the experiences of my interview subjects are comparable to those of other women who live their lives in contexts that are showing
similar trends. As a result my findings are generalizable to the extent that they shed light
on negotiation patterns that typically emerge when women are confronted with mixed
cultural expectations.
II. Research Design
The next step of my study was to design questions to ask my subjects and decide
on a location for my study. First, I describe the location of the study, then present the
theoretical and empirical considerations in preparing the questions, and finally discuss
some of the challenges that I faced in conducting the interviews.
A. Location of Study: Deciding on an Urban Metropolis
All the women in my sample live in the city of Kolkata in India. Kolkata, with a
population of thirteen million has emerged as a metropolitan, urban hub along the lines of
other cities like Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore, Mumbai and Hyderabad, which are the big
metropolises in the country. These cities, like other cities in third world countries, have
both traditional and modern institutions, and therefore have been designated as “dual”
societies (Myrdal, 1968).
66 I have chosen the city of Kolkata for its many years of exposure to western
influence, firstly from its years under colonial tutelage and now as part of a liberalized
economy. Nirmal Bose, the famous Indian geographer called Kolkata a “premature
metropolis”as the city acted as a magnet for the large agrarian population living on the
fringes of the city (Bose, 1965). After more than four decades Kolkata still retains this
particular character. It is expected that by 2015 it will attract another 4 million people to
its already 13 million people.
Kolkata for a long time was believed to be have been created by Job Charnock, a
British trader who in the seventeenth century combined three small villages to form the
city Calcutta.13 In the year 2001, after many years of independence, the name of the city
was restored to its original name, Kolkata. In fact, the very naming of the city has been
caught up in the modern –traditional divide as Calcutta is thought of as the anglicized
(British) version of the Bengali word, Kolkata or Kalikata. The cultural commentators
were divided on the changing of the name; on one side were the people who argued that
the word Calcutta signify the city’s colonial heritage and its changing trajectories over
the years and on the other were the traditionalists who believed that it signifies the
continuation of British (western) hegemony as the word was coined by the colonial rulers
and not the people.
As mentioned earlier, Kolkata like other cities in India is fast emerging as a
metropolitan, consumerist society with western styles of living (Chaudhuri, 2004;
Runkle, 2004; Appadurai; 1996), including big multinational companies setting up their
13 Kolkata High Court has revoked 24th August, 1690 as the foundation day of the city on the grounds that the city existed before the British came. The Division Bench and a commission led by historians have directed the government to correct official documents that names Job Charnock as the founder of the city.
67 offices, multiplexes showing recent Hollywood films, cable televisions running
syndicated American shows, and Tommy Hilfiger, Pizza Hut, and United Colors of
Benetton opening up stores around the city. During my stay in the city I collected documentary evidence such as pictures of billboards and newspaper articles that espoused
“cosmopolitan” habits of living. For example, a billboard about an upcoming apartment
complex shows pictures of manicured lawns, a gym equipped with modern gadgets, and a
woman emerging out of a swimming pool in her bathing suit. There were also billboards
advertising weight loss programs and clinics (Appendix 1). These are just a few examples
of thousands of similar portrayals which form the landscape of the major metropolises of
India and which propagate a “modern” lifestyle.
Yet, Kolkata also has many traditional elements, especially when it comes to
religious sites and organizations. I personally attended some of the fasting festivals that coincided with my stay in the city. While the Hindu women in my study chose to fast individually or with someone in the family, most of them also went with other women to the neighborhood temple to make their offerings. In many cases, the rituals around fasting also became occasions for festivities as women would wear newly purchased
clothes, prepare delicacies, and enjoy the company of friends and neighbors.
B. Question Guide: Rationale and Challenges
The purpose of my study as stated earlier is to investigate the meanings that women give to their traditional and/or modern practices of eating. For that I wrote questions on fasting and dieting that I got approved by the Institutional Review Board at the University of Cincinnati. I prepared two sets of the questionnaire, one in English and
another in Bengali, the official language of the state of West Bengal. Given the
68 cosmopolitan setting I was aware that there would be women who would be speaking
other languages. But, because all the women I interviewed spoke either English or
Bengali (with one exception), I did not have to hire a translator.14
In preparing the questions I was guided by the theoretical model that meanings
are constantly negotiated. I was interested in the rationales that the women used for
fasting and dieting, and the variety of meanings that emerged in the women’s accounts.
Keeping these goals in mind, I designed semi-structured questions that probed the
meanings women give both to fasting and dieting. The following themes guided my
questions; a) self-identification (with the practice), b) meanings: prescribed and others, c)
satisfaction with the practice d) learning of the practice, e) knowledge of practice of
family and friends (Appendix 2).
The first challenge that I faced was to get women to self-identify with their
practices. I framed questions which would give them a chance to identify with one of the
practices instead of my directly asking them if they dieted or fasted. Hence, my first
question was if they had placed any restrictions on their eating. This introductory question was followed by two more specific questions: did they refrain from eating on particular days and were they generally conscious of what they ate. I chose the first of these questions because religious fasting in South Asia is done on designated days in the religious calendar. With the second questions I hoped to get the women to speak about their dieting.
In most cases I followed the same order of questions, but sometimes I would have to deflect if the interview took a different turn. For example, in response to a
14 There was only one woman who gave her interview in Hindi. She spoke both Hindi and Bengali and although she begun the interview in Bengali, she later switched to Hindi.
69 question if they fasted for religious reasons, some women started talking about how they had first begun the practice, and the influence their mothers had on their practice, thereby answering questions I had intended to ask separately. Thus, in several cases, the order of the questions was changed to accommodate the flow of the women’s narratives. More generally, this experience serves as a good reminder that interview subjects do not always follow the same thought trajectories as those imagined by the interviewer. In some of
these cases I would ask for a three to five minute break to make sure all my topics of
interests had been covered.
In addition I asked structured demographic questions (Appendix 2) and gave the
women options to choose their social class position from three categories: Upper class,
Middle class and Lower class. In keeping with my theoretical interest of seeing how
social location influences meaning-making, particularly in urban contexts in India, I
deliberately chose class over caste or religion and region. With the secularization of
Indian societies, social class has become more relevant in the public spheres of life than
caste in urban societies.
Since I hypothesized that social location is an important attributor of the meanings women give to their practices, I wanted to further determine the class that women were most comfortable identifying with. Some of the times the income they reported did not correspond with the standard measures of the social class they identified with. Moreover the women were the least forthcoming about sharing information about income; two women refused to divulge their income and many others were evidently reluctant to do so. For the women who provided no income information, I relied on their occupation to determine their social class. One of the women was a theatre actress and lived in a rented
70 apartment with her husband who was a private tutor. I determined her social location as
lower middle class. The other woman was a housewife, but her family owned a medical
store and she had her own apartment in the city. I placed her in the middle class category.
Although the women signed a consent form and were told that their identities would be
protected, most women still expressed discomfort in sharing personal income.
There are two reasons that I can think of to explain the women’s reluctance to
share information about their income. First of all I was an outsider, which no doubt acted
as a deterrent for sharing private information like income. Also, it is possible that
superstitious beliefs like “nojor” (“nazaar” in Hindi), or the evil eye, acted as a deterrent
for some of the women. In most Indian communities there is a belief that parading personal achievements or wealth brings unwarranted attention and the envy of family and friends, which in turn erode the benefits of such fortune. Income acts as a marker of
personal and family achievements and is kept private and not discussed with all.
C. Analyses and Themes
Each interview was transcribed using a transcriber and, in case the interview was
conducted in a language other than English, translated by me. I read the interviews more
than once to categorize the themes that emerged from the transcripts. If there were
responses outside the theoretical categories that I had designed – a) self-identification, b)
satisfaction with practice, c) meanings: prescribed and others, d) learning of the practice, e) knowledge of practice of family and friends -- then I made a special note of them in the
transcript and, if they re-emerged in other interviews, I coded them as a theme. For
example, in the case of fasting, I did not ask questions about the “festive” nature of the
events. But in several of the interviews I noticed that women referred to the days of
71 fasting as days of festivity and enjoyment when they could wear new clothes and meet
friends and family. Therefore festivity emerged as a separate theme from others like
religion, health and family.
There were also sub-themes that emerged from the questions that I had asked. In
these cases I marked them as emerging themes to be included in the analyses.
D. Selecting the Interview Subjects
In this section I describe the interview subjects and the strategies I used for
securing them.
i. The Number of Subjects
Since I was interested in getting as much variation as possible I had originally
planned to talk to at least ten women in primarily three social categories; lower class,
middle class and upper class. But I soon discovered that three class locations were not
enough to represent women’s lives. As a result I ended up with four class positions; labor
class, lower middle class, middle class and upper middle class. I also wanted to make
sure I spoke to women of different ages which further increased the number of categories
I wanted to cover.
In the end I spoke to forty eight women spread across eight categories, labor class
young (18-30); labor class adult (30- 45); lower middle class young; lower middle class adult; middle class young; middle class adult; upper middle class young and upper middle class adult. I decided to speak to at least five or six women in each of these categories which led to a sample size of forty eight. I was influenced by the rule of thumb in the field that when the focus is on comparison, a larger sample gives the investigator
72 the confidence that there is enough “range and redundancy” to make “unsuspected
differences between categories apparent (Weiss, 2003).” ii. Strategies for Identifying Subjects
My first strategy was to start a snowball in my extended circle of friends and family. I looked for someone in my residential area and soon found Molly; a family friend whom I knew had lived in the area for a long time. Molly (or as I like to call her
Molly “mashi” [Bengali for aunt]) is a single woman who earns her livelihood by selling home goods to friends and family. Given her occupation as a door-to-door salesperson I knew she was well connected with people living in my area. Molly mashi declined to be interviewed herself but she referred me to my first subject. Thereafter I asked my interviewees to refer me to other people they knew who would be interested in being interviewed. While effective in securing subject, I soon realized that this strategy led me to respondents who came from similar social backgrounds; for example, the women had similar educational achievements, similar family incomes, and lived in the same or comparable neighborhoods in the city. I would attribute this to the fact that Molly mashi’s social network was mostly men and women belonging to the lower middle class.
Molly mashi was a single woman who earned her living as a door to door sales person for companies selling beauty products. As a high school drop out and no formal degree, her chances to improve her economic situation was limited.
Therefore the women I spoke to during my first month of stay in the city all belonged to family that had a monthly income of 5000 rupees. At this stage I evaluated my criteria for selecting interview subjects. First, in order to locate women with a family income of more than 10,000 rupees I had to target other parts of the city. Although I was
73 not seeking regional representation I wanted my interviewee tree to branch out to other areas of the city and, most importantly, I wanted to talk to women from diverse socio- economic backgrounds. At this point I started a new snowball, or a parallel search, by initiating contacts in my extended family from different social background. In other words, I made a concerted effort to maximize the class differences among my respondents in order to get a variety of meanings given to fasting and dieting. Once I had secured women from different social backgrounds I used their leads to contact more women. Another strategy I used was to ask the women I interviewed if they could name five women they knew who either fasted or dieted. If so, I asked the interview subjects if they could introduce me to some of these women.
E. Sample Description
The findings presented in this study are based on in-depth interviews with 48 women, aged 18 to 54, from different class locations and with different educational achievement (from no formal education to a PhD). All interviews were conducted in
2005. Based on a combination of income, years of education and occupational affiliation,
I was able to place all the women in one of the following four categories; labor class; lower middle class; middle class and upper middle class. Table I provides a detailed description of my interview subjects in terms of class, income, occupation and age.
Table I : Descriptive of the Sample: Class, Age and
Occupation
Old [45
Class Abbrev. Income yrs+] Total
Labor Class Young LCY 6
74 Less than
Labor Class Adult LCA 5000 6 1
Lower Middle Class
Young LMCY 6
Less than
Lower Middle Class Adult LMCA 10000 7
Middle Class Young MMCY 5
Less than
Middle Class Adult MMCA 30000 6 1
More than
Upper Middle Class Young UMCY 30000+ 6
Upper Middle Class Adult UMCA 4
48
Age
Young 18-30 23
Adult 30-45 23 2 48
Occupations
College Student 8
Housewife 19
Professionals 9
Teachers 2
Domestic Help 10 48
75
i. Social class:
As already mentioned my original plan was to interview women from three distinct social categories; lower, middle and upper class. Using well-established cut-off points I determined that women with a family income of less than 10000 rupees (250 dollars) would be lower class, women with a family income between 10,000 (250 dollars) and 30,000 rupees (750 dollars) would be middle class and women with a family income of more than 30,000 (750 dollars) rupees would be upper class (Ganguly-Scarce, 2003).
However when talking to the women I noticed some discrepancies in the social class that I attributed to the women according to their income and their own choice of social location. One of them was that majority of the women thought of themselves as middle class irrespective of their income. Part of this discrepancy between actual income and status can be attributed to how the middle class is perceived in Bengali society
(Mukherjee, 1970).
“Modhobitto” or middle (modho) ranked (bitto) is a term used to identify a middle class status. Being modhobitto also means belonging to a community of respectable people. The modhobitto emerged as a social group in the late eighteenth century in Bengal under colonial rule and was comprised of people who moved to the cities to do managerial or administrative work for the British rulers. Therefore this class of people was not big “zamindars” or rich merchants who would fall under the category of “abhijat bhadralok” [aristocratic gentleman]. Instead they were shopkeepers, small merchants and white collar workers who were identified as “grihastha bhadralok”
76 [household gentleman] or as belonging to the “modhobitto sreni” (middle class category)
(Mukherjee, 1970).
During that time they were known for their cultural, literary and academic
pursuits and earned the nickname of “educated natives” by the British even if they did not
have a lot of personal wealth.15 At the same time modhobitto was used to distinguish
people from the menial workers and craftsmen who came from the villages to find work
in the cities. In fact, Mukherjee (1989) documents how the modhobitto, influenced by
colonial education, began to look down upon the cultural products (like songs, theatre or
jatras) of lower class groups as manifestations of vulgar taste.
Therefore being modhobitto has a distinctive urban connotation and represents a
combined economic and status group. In popular parlance modhobitto designates people
who have a regular income, are respectable, and who do not engage in menial work.
Ganguly-Scarse writes that, “In Bengali culture, the image of a regular salary earner is a
powerful one distinct from menial wage work and earning from trading” (2003, pg.552).
However, in reality the middle class comprises a more heterogeneous group due
to the large differences in income that come with different professional skills. But small
entrepreneurs like shop-owners still claim a modhobitto status because of a long standing
family status. One characteristic of modhobittos that remains from old times is that they
“still seek education above all for their children and maintain a veneer of their once high
social status by engaging in writing, music and the arts” (Ganguly-Scarce, 2003, pg.552).
15 Yet the grihastha bhadralok or modhobitto would not qualify as the bourgeoisie of Europe because they were not entrepreneurs. In Calcutta, India there was no Industrial Revolution, and therefore there was no conflict between trade and land. But with the growth of cities and new opportunities in commerce and trade, the bhadraloks took on managerial or administrative work. While they accepted the leadership of the zamindars, they also emulated British lifestyle.
77 Therefore there were some women whose families made as little as four thousand rupees
a month who identified themselves as middle class.16
The challenge that I faced was to differentiate between groups of women who
claimed the “modhobitto” status and whose earnings were less than 10,000 rupees per
month. I found that other than the domestic workers who were recent rural migrants into
the city and clearly saw themselves at the bottom of the social structure, most women identified themselves as “modhobitto” But as I will demonstrate in the following section, the term modhobitto hides diversity in lived experiences and does not capture the variations in income, educational qualification and occupational engagement.
In the end, and irrespective of how the women identified themselves, I put the
women in categories of lower class, lower middle class, middle and upper middle class
strictly on the basis of their income and educational qualifications. As I will illustrate
next, within the category of women earning less than ten thousand rupees (250 dollars) a
month, there were several notable differences, especially regarding education and social
integration, or what I call social stability.
Labor class women (Table I): This group of twelve women was mostly comprised
of women who had migrated to the city in the recent past, who were illiterate or at most
had finished primary education, and who were working in the cities as domestic helpers.
Of the twelve women, two commuted to the city daily as they lived in the outskirts of the
city. The least amount made by the women in this category was 500 rupees (12.5 dollars)
and the maximum amount was 5000 rupees (125 dollars). Their primary source of income
was domestic work, and many worked two or three shifts every day as live-out domestic
16 For non-Bengali speaking women I asked them to identify the categories in English ; upper-middle class, middle class and lower middle class
78 workers. Out of the twelve, four did not have any formal education and could not write.
The rest of the women had begun formal education but had dropped out of school.
Ironically, even if they were earning as much as 5000 rupees their lives were less stable
as both their work and living arrangements were susceptible to change according to the
discretion of their employers.
In India, men and women who work as domestics are not unionized and hence are
susceptible to the whims of their employers. Further, Qayum and Ray (2003) have shown
how domestic workers are subject to rigid social and physical barriers in their interactions
with employers. Some of their experiences are comparable to the cultural and physical
segregation that African-American men and women faced in the first half of the twentieth
century in the United States. The only difference in the experiences of domestic workers
is that the boundaries are not as clearly marked and thus have to be constantly negotiated
by the employer and the worker. The women who identified as labor or working class have a marginal status in society and, although they live in and inhabit urban spaces, are often invisible. I identified them as labor class women in order to distinguish their experiences from those of other women. It is also worth noting that these women rarely thought of themselves as middle class and generally were more aware of their social status location than most other women in the study.
Lower middle class women: The women in this group had family incomes
between four thousand (100 dollars) and ten thousand rupees (250 dollars). Although
some of these women were as poor as the labor class women, their experiences were
qualitatively different from the women in the labor class. Most importantly, they were more educated; most either had a baccalaureate degree or were pursuing one at the time
79 of the study. Moreover, these women were not doing paid work; they were either housewives or students and generally lived within a nuclear or extended family arrangement (the only exception was Krishna, a thirty something old woman who worked as a stage actress). Most of the women in this category were housewives (ten out of fourteen) without an independent source of income. They were economically dependent on their husbands or their fathers who in most cases were the primary earners in the family. Therefore, although they did not have independent incomes, their lives were more stable in that they were not subject to the whims of either employers or landlords.
Despite their meager resources, almost all of these women identified themselves as middle class to distinguish themselves from the poor sections of the society. Ganguly-
Scarse (2003) refers to the discrepancy between income and status that characterizes this segment of Indian society as a “paradox of globalization”. She argues that given the liberalization of the economy, the members of the lower middle class are the most optimistic about their career prospects because of their access to education.
Middle Class women: This group is comprised of women whose monthly family incomes fall between 15,000 (or 375 dollars) and 30,000 rupees (750 dollars). This was a diverse group regarding both years of education and employment status. The older women in this group had at least a bachelor’s degree and one had a Ph.D. in English literature. The younger women in the study had at least a bachelor’s degree and were at the time of the study pursuing professional degrees in medicine, management or law.
Only four women (out of twelve) were housewives; the rest were either working or waiting to join the workforce.
80 Upper Middle Class women: In this group are women whose family or personal
income was more than 30,000 rupees per month. Only three (out of ten) were housewives
who did not have a personal income. The rest were professional women with personal incomes. All except two had Master’s or professional degrees. ii. Age and Martial Status:
Table II : Descriptive of Sample : Age, Marital Status and Children
Single Separated
Social Class Married (w/c) (w/c) Widowed(w/c)
w/c without/c
Labor Class Young LCY 6
Labor Class Adult LCA 3 1 1 1
Lower Middle Class
Young LMCY 1 2 3
Lower Middle Class
Adult LMCA 6 1
Middle Class Young MMCY 5
Middle Class Adult MMCA 5 1
Upper Middle Class
Young UMCY 6
Upper Middle Class
Adult UMCA 4
Lower Middle Class
Old LMCO 1
81 Middle Class Old MCO 1
Total 15 1 2 18
w/c: with children; without/c: without
children
In addition to class location, I also used age and marital status as selection criteria.
The literature on dieting and eating disorders has consistently shown that young women
are especially susceptible to concerns of appearance. Also, fasting is highly correlated
with marital status as many of the fasting practices in the South Asian religions are done
for the wellbeing of husbands and children.
The youngest woman in the study was nineteen years old and the oldest was fifty
eight years old. I constructed two age categories for each of the class positions; young (19
-30) and adult (30-45). The distinction between “young” and “adult” is somewhat
arbitrary, but represents an attempt to capture the experiences of women above and below
thirty years of age. There were an equal number of women in the young and adult
categories (Table I).
Twenty of the women in the sample were married, eleven were either divorced or
widowed, and seventeen were single (Table II). Of the seventeen single women, eleven
were in the labor class and lower middle class categories. It was generally the women in
the upper middle class with bachelor’s or professional degrees who were married. This is
in part at least a consequence of the fact that the average age of the women in this group was twenty nine years which is higher than the national average and therefore it was
82 expected that women by this time would be married.17 Finally, twenty five of the women
had children (Table II).
III. Social Aspects of Interviewing: My role as researcher
A topic of contention amongst social scientists is the role of the interviewer in the
interview process. On the one hand is the traditional school of interviewing (also called
the Chicago school) that views the interviewer as a vehicle of information. From this
perspective, the social characteristics that the interviewer brings to the interview are seen
as inconsequential to information gathering. On the other hand, there are those who have
found evidence that in face-to-face, open-ended, in-depth interviewing interviewers have
an impact on the information collected. In other words, the social location of the
researcher - her class, gender or ethnic background - may affect the information provided
by interviewees in such a way that they adjust the information they provide in order to
present favorable or unfavorable pictures of themselves. Warren (2002) cites the case of
Nancy Ammerman whose subjects were apprehensive about providing the “right”
answers to someone who was getting a PhD from Yale.
In the last few decades, feminist and post-modern researchers have stripped the
interview processes of “neutrality” and have brought attention to the assumptions and
preconceptions that the researcher brings to the setting. One consequence of these
concerns has been an effort by many researchers to “match” their interviewers and
interviewees on major social characteristics, especially gender and race. Others argue that
such matching practices may not be enough. Using gender as an example, Luff suggests
that even in the case of women interviewing women; the interviewees may not share the
17 About 5 percent of girls between the ages of 10 and 14, slightly over 35 percent of adolescent women between the ages of 15 and 19 and about 82 percent of young women between the ages of 20 and 24 are married in India (Census of India, 1991).
83 “standpoints” of the researcher in terms of “religious/secular, feminist/antifeminist, or
liberal/heterosexist” beliefs (Luff, 1999 cited in Warren, 2002, pg. 95).
Since I have never fasted myself, I made a concerted effort to prevent my
personal judgments and biases from making their way into the interviews. But I also
realized during the course of the interviews that the women I interviewed were also
forming perceptions about me. I often faced questions about my life in the United States
and the purpose of my research. Often there was an element of curiosity about me. For example, one of my interviewees questioned my choice of attire. I usually wore a two piece dress (“salwaar kameez”), which is commonly worn by young women, to the interviews. My intention was to take attention away from me by wearing something simple and familiar. However one of my informants asked me if I wore jeans in the US and when I told her I did, she asked why I was not wearing them on that day.
I was initially surprised at the question and did not want to divulge the real reason for not wearing trousers. I was also tempted to dismiss the question as mere curiosity on her part but later realized that given the fact that I lived in a foreign country my subject was expecting me to be westernized or Americanized but my choice of clothes belied that. It also made me think of how clothes are markers of modernity. I think she was also commenting on what she expected someone in my social location to wear. Another
subject when talking about her eating habits repeatedly sought confirmation from me by
saying, “I am sure you also do this.” By “this” she was referring to her practice of
avoiding particular foods when she is on a diet. She had made the assumption that I was a
very health conscious person and as such I was expected to practice some form of food
regulation.
84 Another thing that I found of interest was that all the women except for the women in the labor class without fail asked me if they should sign the consent form in
English. In fact, the women from the middle and the upper middle class were surprised that the consent form was written in Bengali and asked if it would be fine if they signed in English and gave the interview in English. They also wanted to know why the consent form was in Bengali when I was doing my PhD at a foreign university. For most women in the study signing in English came naturally as most official work is done in that language. But it was mostly women in the upper middle class who were bilingual; a few of those chose to do the entire interview in English. Although these women spoke
English with ease, it is still possible that they used language as a way to mark and exhibit their status.
I also noticed class differences in my ability to build rapport with the subjects. It was easiest to start a conversation with women in the middle and upper classes, and especially so when the women were young. I attribute their willingness to answer my questions to two factors; one was the comfort level that the women had with me who they identified as someone from a similar social background. Second, the metropolitan context in developing countries has become what Atkinson and Silverman (2002) call an
“interview society”. The proliferation of television channels and international programming has made “interviews” a popular module of communication. The TV- viewing public is constantly exposed to interviews with people on the street about any number of public and political issues.
The ease with which I spoke to women in the middle and upper middle class can be contrasted with the awkwardness that often characterized my interviews with women
85 from the labor and working classes. In some cases difficulties arose even before the interviews started, especially in terms of negotiating the space where the interview was
conducted. It is common practice that domestic helpers do not share the same space with
their employers. However, the rising cost of apartments and the shrinking of square
footage of space available for living have brought domestic helpers and employers in
close proximity. As a result, a new form of distancing has emerged. Domestic helpers are
not allowed to sit on the same level – that is, on dining chairs, couches, or beds – as that
of their employers even when they are living in the same space. Instead, they either sit on
the floor or on stools that are kept aside for them.
In some cases, this practice made the interview process difficult. The women in
the labor class were the most reluctant to invite me to their houses and instead offered to
be interviewed in their employers’ houses. There was often a moment of awkwardness
when I had to decide where to sit, and I found myself caught in the “politics of sitting”
(Qayum and Ray, 2003). In these cases I tried to sit on the floor with my subjects, but this
evidently made some of my subjects uncomfortable to the point that they would insist
that I sit on the couch or a chair while they sat on the floor. Thus, although finding labor
class women to interview was not difficult, findings spaces where they could be
interviewed was difficult. Unfortunately I could not challenge some of the restrictions
facing me while talking to the women in the labor class but I tried to make the most of
the circumstances. I also came to realize that it might have been better to conduct the
interviews over multiple visits instead of a single visit; that way I might have been able to
build a rapport with the women so they would feel comfortable inviting me to their
personal spaces.
86 Sometimes I also encountered comments like, “they cannot tell because they do not know” from the employers about the women’s knowledge of their practice of fasting. The assumption underlying the fasting of labor class women was that these women followed the practice blindly. I treated such remarks as data that I would keep in mind when analyzing the meanings given to the practice. Also the interviews with lower class women were much shorter than the others, averaging only thirty minutes. It was during the course of these interviews that my privileges as a middle class, educated woman became most visible to me.
Conclusion
In this chapter I have discussed my rationale for using qualitative methods, the questions that I asked, and my choice of location for the study. I have also presented descriptive information of my informants, including their social class location, age and marital status. In the following two chapters I present the findings from the interviews pertaining to fasting and dieting. Analytically, I use thematic quotes to explore the different meanings given to these two cultural practices and I use the class categories to determine the extent to which social membership influences how women use and assign meanings to these two cultural practices. While both fasting and dieting involve restrictions on eating, they are situated very differently in terms of the tradition-modern divide.
87
CHAPTER FIVE FASTING
Introduction
This chapter is devoted to the fasting practices of women living in an urban metropolis of India. I have organized the chapter around the two main queries of my research project; first, how do women exposed to myriad cultural meanings interpret the traditional practice of fasting and, secondly, how does the cultural field, including the women’s social location and institutional membership (occupational status, number of children, marital status) frame their understanding of the practice. In keeping with these questions, I present two major sets of findings: women’s actual experiences with the practice and the assemblage of meanings associated with fasting that emerged in the accounts of the women. In both sections I emphasize the process of meaning-making in women’s interpretation of fasting. Also, throughout the analysis I point to the influence of social location in making sense of the women’s accounts.
Fasting, also known as “vrats”, “upaavas” or “broto”, is an ancient, religious, pan-
Indian practice that involves self-administered starving (without food or drink for a designated period of time) done out of piety and devotion to a higher being. Fasting as a religious ritual that confers blessings of deities can be traced back to ancient Hindu scriptures like Puranas and the Nibandhas. Also given the polytheistic nature of the
Hindu religion, different kinds of fasts done for different deities can be found both regionally and locally. Fasting is also an important component of other Indian religions; in the Moslem religion, for example, people do a month long fast called “roja” which
88 entails eating only after sun-set.18 Fasting therefore can be called a revered pan-Indian
practice.
As a result, it came as no surprise to me that all but two of the women in the study
were currently fasting or had fasted at some point in their lives. However, although on the
whole the women had extensive experiences of fasting there were considerable variations
in the different fasts that they did, the stipulations they followed, and the meanings they
gave to their practice.
I. Understanding fasting: Practice of fasting
The women’s fasting experiences varied in terms of the number and frequency of
fasts, the kinds of fasts (e.g., regional or popular), and also the particular deities the fasts
were directed at (e.g., fasting for Lord Shiva or for Goddess Laxmi).
At the very beginning it is worth noting that fasting is integral to the practice of
“pujo” (“pujo” or “puja” is used to describe the ceremony or the whole act of saying
hymns, offering fruits and saying one’s prayers) or the practice of making offerings to
deities. Additionally, events like marriage, rites of passage and funerals are religious
ceremonies in the Hindu tradition and therefore it is customary for the participants to fast.
In Hindu marriages, on the day of the wedding both the bride and groom fast until the
moment holy words bind them in alliance. Also it is believed in the Hindu culture that
any act of religious offering done for deities or for religious events like “Dusherra” or
“Diwali” or to deities like “Ganesh”, “Shiva” or “Laxmi” should be done on an empty
stomach. Therefore, participation in any such events involves fasting of some kind. As a
result, when I asked if they fasted, some of the women said yes but in most cases they
18 For Moslems it is considered one of the most auspicious months of the year where they are expected to do good deeds to expiate their sins. Therefore fasting is a revered pan-Indian practice.
89 were referring to events which came only once a year. However these sets of fasts were
secondary in importance to the main event which was the “pujo”.
In addition to the religious ceremonies mentioned above there are occasions in
which fasting is central to the practice of pujo and the fast is the main offering. For
example, popular religious occasions like “Shiva raatri, “karva chauth”or “jai Santoshi
ma” are known primarily for the fasting involved in the events. Since fasting is the main
component of these religious occasions, women (and men) are expected to refrain from
eating and drinking till the auspicious time (measured in hours) is over. The event is deemed as successful if one does not break the fast till the “pujo” is over. Other similar fasts (where fast is the main ritual) include “janmashtami”, “ neel shosti”, “Ashok shosti”, “itu pujo”, “Monosha pujo”, “mongol chandi”, and “bipod tarini”. Some of these fasts are done only by women, like “neel shosti”, “ashok shosti”, “karva chauth” (done by married women with children) and “ekadashi”(done by widowed women).”19 There was only one woman in my study whose husband had died and she did the “ekadashi” fast.
The kinds of fasts that the women did also varied by region of origin and the deities worshipped. While “Shiv raatri”, “jai Santoshi ma” and “janmashtami” are found in more than one part of the country, “karva chauth” is popular primarily in the northern sections of the country. Similarly, “neel shosti”, “Ashok shosti”, “itu pujo”, “Monosha pujo”, “mongol chandi” and “bipod tarini” are regional fasts done mostly by women of
Bengal. The women in my study were largely from Bengal, except for three whose families had migrated to the region in the past. Although these women were raised in
Calcutta and were familiar with the Bengali culture, they did fasts like “karva chauth” which is not commonly done in the Bengal region. Therefore, there were women who did
19 Please see Appendix 4 for more descriptive information of the different fasts that the women mentioned
90 both nationally and regionally known fasts. Additionally, the women of Islamic faith in
my study, four in total, did the yearly “roja” or “ramzan”.20
Another distinction regarding the kinds of fasts the women did can be made on
the basis of the purpose behind the fasts or the “pujo”. For example, fasts like “itu pujo”
(for a good harvest) and “Monosha pujo” (to protect people from physical harm like snake bite) are especially popular in rural areas. The chances of being bitten by a snake or other dangerous animals are much greater for people working in fields or living in mud houses; therefore fasts done for the deity “Monosha” and fasts like “bipod tarini” and “itu pujo” were mentioned only by women who had rural ties or had migrated into the city after getting married.
Also worth noting is that these fasts come at different times in the Hindu calendar.
For example, the “shiv raatri” fasts come once a year while the fast for “laxmi pujo” comes every “purnima” (or full moon). Most of the women did more than one fast per year; on average the women did three to four fasts a year with a maximum of six and a minimum of one per year. Also I found that the women varied in terms of the stipulations that they followed during their fasts. They generally agreed that the ideal kind of fast was a “nirjola”, which involves staying without drinking water (in addition to starving) for a stipulated time. But I found various renditions of what the women did in practice.21 Some
drank water, milk or tea during the fast and ate light food like biscuits and fruits. There
was one young woman who maintained that she ate a “full plate” (of food) and fasted.
20 Also the very term used for fasts differs from one region to the other. The word used by Bengalis in the sample was “uposh”, the Hindi variant of “upavas” or “broto”, which again is the Hindi variant of “vrat” or “vrata”. The non- Bengali speaking women in the sample, totaling three referred to their fasts as “upavas” or “vrats”. The Muslim women referred to their fasts as “roja” or “ramzan”.
21 It was followed most rigidly by the Muslim women in my study whose roja required staying without water and food till sun set
91 The fact that the young woman was going against the established practice of fasting and
yet called her practice fasting reflects Bourdieu’s argument that cultural practices are
rarely “perfectly ‘univocal’ (1984, pg. 21). In addition, the univocality of cultural
practices has been seriously interrupted with the globalization of these settings, which means that some of the women pluck meanings from modern discourses about food and body to make sense of their fasting practice. In the rest of the chapter I document the different meanings that are being given to fasting in contemporary urban India.
II. Meanings given to fasting
Fasting, in the Hindu tradition, reflects the highly esteemed and auspicious status of being married. Most studies on fasting explore the “religion: home: women” theme believed to underlie the fasting practices of women in India (Pearson, 1996). In this study, in contrast, I unpack the religious and familial content of fasting instead of treating them as self-explanatory concepts. Also, very few studies have explored how women negotiate the religion: home: woman theme in contexts where traditional and modern institutions of eating and the body are competing for women’s attention. In the following section I present the meanings women invoked they described their fasting rituals. Not surprisingly, most of these meanings revolve around religious and familial themes, but it is also evident that fasting as a practice is no longer unequivocally traditional.
A. Fasting and religion
In the Indian context, fasting has a distinct religious connotation; fasting as a practice was first mentioned in religious texts like Puranas and Samhitas. Secondly, men and women fast to accrue blessings of deities. But it is also believed that in the Hindu and
92 Jain traditions women do more vrats than men (Khare, 1976; McGee, 1987; Pearson,
1996).
I got mixed responses when I asked the women to elaborate on the religious nature of their fasting. On the one hand there were responses like, “I cannot say anything about that (religion). I do my fasts; and I do it for my children and the happiness of my family” (Piya, 43, Domestic Help, Lower Class Adult), or something like, “What about religion? I just do it” (Saara, 28, Housewife, Lower Middle Class Young, Bengali).
Others, like Sita said, “No, I would not say for any religious reason. Religious maybe a little bit and the rest is my “manoshikota” [mentality or how one feels]”. On the other hand there were women who clearly linked their fasting to religious ends:
Definitely for a religious reason, not just like that, I am doing it with a purpose. I told you it is out of superstition, this is what happens when you are god fearing. [Alaaya, 42, Married, Accountant, Middle Class, Bengali, words in italics said in English] 22
But most of the women in the study did not want to elaborate on the religious
nature of their fasting even if they were willing to talk about fasting. This was surprising
given the fact that fasting has distinctive religious connotations in society. In this section
I present narratives of how and why the women distanced themselves from the religious
components of their practice. These findings imply that religion does not provide the
women with a clear set of meanings around fasting; rather, fasting as a practice is open to
multiple interpretations. Thus each woman interpreted the religious aspects of her
practice differently.
22 Most women in the study were bilingual and spoke in both Bengali and English words while some speaking only in Bengali or only in English. Against each account I will be notifying in what language the interview was done and also specify if they used Bengali, English or Hindi words. I will be italicizing the words said in English.
93 i. Fasting is an act of devotion
Both in Hindu and non-Hindu ceremonies, days assigned for fasting
commemorate religious events/rituals surrounding particular deities. Therefore they also mark days when particular deities are celebrated. One of the themes that emerged when women started discussing the religious nature of their fasts was the personal bond they established with a deity. In fact, this was the first connection the women made when asked to reflect on the religious nature of their practice.
Alaaya, whom I mentioned earlier, called herself “god-fearing”. She was one of the women in the study who clearly linked her fasting to religious considerations. She
also said, “It is good to do a fast for Shiva and that is the only reason. Another problem I have is that I am indoctrinated [dikhita], for that I have to do the fast for Shiva. I am bound to it (Alaaya, 42, married, accountant). Being “dikhita” meant that she was ordained by a “guru” or a religious mentor. She was the only woman in the sample who mentioned that a “guru” [spiritual teacher] had asked her to fast. 23 But at the same time she identified that she did the fast for (god) Shiva.
Others similarly mentioned that they fasted out of loyalty and devotion to a deity that they felt connected to.24 For example, the following two accounts are from women
who, like Alaaya, were “bhakts” or devotees of the Hindu god “Shiva”. Although they
were not affiliated with a sect or specifically ordained by a “guru” these women
maintained that they fasted out of a personal connection with the deity.
23 Gurus are men or women who claim to have been reformed (sometimes reincarnated) by a divine presence who then go on to indoctrinate their devotees with holy words or “ mantras”
24 In the Hindu tradition, people are “bhakts” or devotees and are often identified by the deity they worship and believe in. Therefore a Shavite, is a Shiv Bhakt while a Vaishnav is a bhakt of Vishnu. Shiva and Vishnu are the two gods of the holy trinity.
94 I like it a lot, mainly Shiv raatri. I am a big devotee of Shiv, also I like Itu pujo, but more than that I like the Shiv raatri broto” (fast) that is what I like the most. I have been doing that now for six years; because of God’s blessing I have not had any barrier while a lot of women face barriers [Kaveri, 25, Lower Middle Class, Housewife, Bengali]
I told you about (the fast on) Monday, I like doing the fast for Shiv. I do not know why but from the beginning I have always wanted to do the fast for Shiv. Seriously, I like doing the fast and I would always think I will do the fast sometime in the future. [Saara, 28, Lower Middle Class, Housewife, Bengali]
The women spoke of doing fasts for their favorite deity out of an inexplicable
affinity that they felt towards that deity. Fasting in these cases was a way of expressing
their affection for a higher being and therefore came most naturally to them. Kaveri, for
example, to capture the magnitude of her devotion stressed the word “big”. She also felt
that her devotion was being reciprocated as she had not faced any barrier when fasting for
this particular deity. By “barriers” she was referring to her menstrual cycle; a woman’s
body becomes polluted when menstruating and she therefore is prohibited from engaging
in any religious activities or entering sacred places like temples and venues of worship
during her menstrual cycle. Kaveri interprets her not missing a single year of fasting as a
sign that she is a true believer of the deity and also as a sign that she has his blessings. 25
Saara also felt that she was naturally drawn to the Hindu god Shiva from a very
young age and that it was futile to explain why she felt like that. For the women mentioned so far, fasting was an act of showing affection or reverence for a deity of their
25 The concept of “pollution-purity” is central to the understanding the Hindu way of life. Louis Dumont (1970) in his famous work “Homo-Hierarchicus: The Caste System and its Implication” called the “pollution-purity” axis as one of main organizing principle of the caste system and individual life in Hindu societies. Originally believed to be the principal of segregation on which the caste system thrived, it soon spread to encompass most aspects of Hindu life. Bodies of the “shudras” (lower caste) were thought of as polluted and hence they could not share the same social space as higher caste Hindus. But at the same time individual bodies could be polluted. Death in the family is considered an inauspicious and polluted time when other religious activities like marriages are stalled. A woman’s menstruating body is also believed to be polluted. The pollution and purity is extended to understand other aspects as well; time of the day [where day (pure) and night (polluted)] and parts of the body[ where feet (polluted) and head (pure)]
95 liking. Others were less particular about the deity that they fasted for as long as they were doing it once a year. For example, Baani said that, “I think doing one fast in a year is good, at least you should do one. Suppose I do “Shiv raatri” one year, then the next year
I do something else. As long as you are doing a fast once a year, does not matter which one” (Baani, 26, Lower Middle Class, Housewife, Bengali). She went on to say, “It is religious because I believe in praying to god. It is better to believe in one person, it is better to do it for a “sohodhormiyo” (common duty) reason.” With this statement, Baani was combining different deities into one entity that represented a collective good. Baani’s case represented the majority of the women in the study who spoke of “God” generically and stressed the positive benefits of fasting, which I will turn to next. ii. Fasting as means to cultivate spiritual virtues
Fasting as a religious practice emerged out of the spiritual quest of sages and wise men to hone absolute virtues like devotion [bhakti] or subjugation [tapah] or meditation
[sadhana]. Both in the scriptures and mythological stories fasts appear as means of pleasing gods and goddesses by cultivating the above mentioned virtues. But the fasts done for the welfare of the family by women fall into a non-spiritual category (Khare, and are believed to be “familial fasts” (Khare, 1976).
Some of the quotes seemed to corroborate this distinction made between spiritual and familial fasts. Several of the women did not assign any spiritual significance to the practice. For example, Piya said, “I am not a big believer in god”, also said, “Everyone does it (fast). Not everyone understands what they are doing. But praying to god is our dharma that is why I do it.” The word dharma in the Hindu terminology means one’s calling or duty. Dharma is also used colloquially in reference to activities done out of a
96 sense of obligation without expecting tangible or immediate returns. Piya is categorizing
herself as one of those people who does not understand the intricate philosophy of fasting
but does it because it is her duty [dharma]. For Piya, her fasting is her dharma, an
unquestionable and given part of her life. There were others like Piya who did not want
to engage in any rigorous philosophical analyses of their practice.
Instead the women strongly believed that fasting was a “good practice” with
alleviating properties. Mina shared, “My mother fasted for a religious reason and that it
will be for the good. I cannot tell you what good it will bring. I know at least that it is
something good.” Baala, like Mina, linked to fasting to the goodness it will bring,
They say it is for your good, a lot of people do it, everybody says if you do this it will bring good results. [Baala, 24, Domestic helper, Labor class, Bengali]
Saara, similarly, said, “I have not heard any one say that fasting is not a good
thing. So I understand it as something good.” Several of the women were vague about what good meant, but others clarified the goodness of the practice. They used terms like
devotion [bhakti] or strength [shakti] from the Hindu textual and philosophical tradition to explain their fasting.
When I fast I have some “shakti” [strength] in it, that if I do this (fast) then it will bring good results, my mind will be strong. [Alaaya, 42, Middle Class, Accountant, Bengali]
It is a feeling of “bhakti” [devotion] that is for sure. [Aarti, 18, Lower Middle Class, Student, Bengali]
As I have mentioned earlier, the fasting done by women are categorized by fasting scholars as familial fasting with the spiritual component missing. However the quotes presented above indicate otherwise. What makes these accounts interesting is that none of
97 the women had read any religious scriptures on fasting or were familiar with the larger textual history of fasting but nonetheless used some of the terms to describe the esoteric goals of their fasting. If probed further, most made vague references, such as, “It is there in the shastro [religious texts]” (Ira, 55, widowed, housewife).
Pearson (1996) argues that in recent years women have appropriated the spiritual frameworks that they have traditionally been denied. I found a similar trend; when asked about the religious significance of fasting the women spoke of spiritual benefits. While the women mentioned above used popular terms like “bhakti” or “shakti”, others stated their feelings in banal expressions like “it is a good thing to do.” The goodness of the practice came from the fact that religious fasting gave them opportunities to cultivate virtues of perseverance in learning to endure the physical discomfort of starving, as the following quotes demonstrate.
You can interpret that the religious part of it (fasting) is not very important; that is not the case. The way I see it is that when you are asking for something from God then you need to suffer. Unless there is suffering there will be no gain. Maybe that is why it is not enough to do the “pujo” [or say your prayers]. [Sita, 43, Married, Middle class, Housewife, Bengali]
The fasting is for mental satisfaction that I am dedicating one day to god. A lot of people say that if you face difficulties, you will be rewarded. This is somewhat like that; I am enduring some physical pain to get some blessings of God. [Sarika, 24, Middle class, Marketing executive, Bengali]
I will think, that this (fast) needs to be done (for a desired goal), and that fasting is important. But only by offering prayers will it happen? No, it will not happen like that. You need a personal strength, there has to be a desire for that, and strength of mind. Saying your prayers is not enough, you have to put your heart in it, you have to keep praying. [Baala, 24, Labor class, Domestic helper, Bengali]
Thus fasting provided women with a challenge to stay without eating (and in some cases without drinking) and test their capacity to endure suffering. Moreover, the
98 fact that they were doing it on an auspicious day added to its appeal. In fact, these were some of the virtues of religious fasting that persuaded some of the young women to begin the practice. Anita’s case is a prime example of that;
I have been doing it (fasting) for the last two years. I went to a friend’s house and saw the “pujo” at night. I really felt good and also felt an immense strength. You need to have a faith in something. I belong to a very religious family. I believe in God but I also know that before offering to God we need to serve people. I did it till last year, I do not know whether I will continue to do it or not but I did. But I used to eat well and then make my offerings. [Anita, 21, Student/Part-time Modeling, Middle Class, Bengali]
Unlike Sita and Sarika who found gratification in the self denial and hardship involved in not eating for a day, Anita was skeptical of it. In another place she exclaimed,
“Where is the need to starve?” Instead she maintained that she ate and fasted thereby rejecting one of the central principles of fasting. What is interesting is that she still called her practice of eating and offering prayers a fast. Although it seems like a contradiction, I would like to argue that Anita is not very different from Sita and Sarika because they all thought of fasting as an expression of their faith in a higher entity that leads to feelings of perseverance, strength and accomplishment. The rituals involved in fasting were deemed less significant than the faithful offering. Neither Sita nor Sarika were meticulous about the rituals and Anita went so far as to reject the ritual at the heart of fasting: not eating.
Radha similarly was a non-conformist. What is interesting in her case was that she followed the ritual of not eating on the designated day, but she went against tradition by choosing not to given a rationale for doing a popular practice.
I feel like doing it (fasting); it makes me feel good, nothing else. I mean I do not know, there is no reason behind why I do it. There is a year when I did not do it. I had to travel some where and it was too inconvenient to do it. I did not do it and did not feel bad about it. It is something that I do out of choice. I happen to do it;
99 no reason, nothing, no religious, no health. [Radha, 28, Upper Middle Class, Marketing, English]
Therefore Radha, like Anita, defied tradition to follow tradition. Pearson has
correctly pointed out that studies done on fasting practices of women have
overemphasized the familial nature of fasting. Instead she argues that it is because
women “derive a great deal of spiritual significance for themselves from their
performance of vrats apart from any concern with duty” that the vrat tradition is as
vigorous as it is among Hindu women (1996, pg. 221). The women in my study also
believed that fasting helped them develop virtues of perseverance, commitment and
strength. I also found that this aspect of fasting was drawing in unlikely adherents who
did not see themselves as very religious but still wanted to partake in a spiritual event. As
I have demonstrated, they exercised personal discretion over which rituals to follow
while holding on to larger spiritual goals. iv. Fasting as a family tradition
Swilder wrote, “cultural meanings, often remain fluid, waiting to be filled” (2001,
pg.183). In a similar way the women I interviewed used religion as an empty “cultural
repertoire” that the they filled up with their own explanations. My purpose was to see
what women thought of the religious nature of their practice. For a lot of the women
fasting was entrenched in tradition and therefore something that had to be continued for
the rest of their lives. For example, Piya shared that “These are things that have been
passed down through generations. I cannot bring myself to stop doing something that I
have been doing my whole life (Piya, 43, Labor Class, Domestic Helper, Bengali). Most
women spoke of fasting as a tradition.
100 Kaveri talked about the chains of tradition; to her, fasting was a practice that
cannot be questioned because of its normative nature;
Not eating (in fasts) comes from the fact that it is religious, the religious rituals, ceremonies and things like that. Everyone follows that in society that is the “riti” [tradition]. It has been happening for so many years, if you do this fast you cannot eat rice. There is something of the society [in this].When we do our marriage ceremony we take everybody into consideration when we do it, that is how religious events happen, [it is] the thing that everybody follows. If everybody thinks that you have to stay without eating then that is how you have to stay.
Kaveri justified the practice as normative. But that did not imply that the women had passively taken on tradition. There were other accounts that showed how the traditional practice was punctuated with appraisals and adjustments. This was especially evident in the women’s discussion of fasting as a family tradition (to be discussed below), but also in their accounts of fasting as a normative and habitual practice. For example, some of the women were skeptical of the ritualistic nature of the practice.
It is not important. I told you earlier, I do it to maintain the rules. That is all there is to it. If I have a health problem, then will I do it? If I cannot do it now, can I not do it ever? By not doing it will I be harmed? Suppose I have malaria, will I do it then? [Mina, 34, Lower Middle Class, Housewife, Bengali]
I told you earlier that it is not important to me. It is not that I have to fast, if I do fast, it is also fine. [Why do you still do it?] I still do it, now it has become a habit. If my mother-in-law had eaten and fasted, maybe I would have done that [laughs] [Sita, 43, Middle Class, Housewife, Bengali]
What was striking about both Mina and Sita is that they fasted on a regular basis, but still questioned any kind of proscription placed on the practice. For example, Mina was not sure if she would continue with her practice if her health did not permit it and, later in the interview, anticipated reconsidering her fasting when she grows older since she assumes it will get more difficult to starve her body as she ages. She also maintained
101 that if eating was allowed she would have said her prayers after eating. Others also
pointed out that the element of starvation in fasts was only customary and did not add any
value to the “pujo”. But the fact that Sita had seen her mother-in-law starve before the
“pujo” was enough for her to do so as well. Eventually her fasting became a habit rather than serving any intentional religious motive. Mina similarly elaborated on how her fasting had become part of her routine.
I told you, once you begin doing all this; you cannot stop. And once you start doing it then it becomes appealing. If you do not do it then you feel bad, you start thinking to yourself, “Why did I not do it?” I think of all this and do it. Unless there is some difficulty (in doing the fast) I will continue doing it.
For Mina fasting had become a matter of habit; she had been doing it for so long that now it came naturally to her. But at the same time, her conclusion that “once you begin ….you cannot stop” indicates that she is cognizant of the potential retribution of stopping her fasts. In this sense, her account represents a dominant religious sentiment amongst Hindi women that the rituals should be followed with utmost devotion and should not be neglected. But although a fear of consequences was operative, eventually it became a matter of habit.
When the women referred to fasting as a tradition they essentially meant that fasting was part of a family tradition—a legacy from the past—that had to be carried on.
The women reminisced about the fasts that their mothers and aunts did, particularly their
mother. For example,
I have seen my mother from a very early age saying her prayers, I liked seeing it. She used to say her prayers in the day time and then in the evening. My mother was very “adhatik” [spiritual]. I got my inspiration seeing her, my mother had ‘baaro maashe tero porbon’ [thirteen festivals in twelve months] [Alaaya, 42, Accountant, Middle class, Bengali]
102 I would see my mother, my mother would do all kinds of fasting, in a week sometimes she would fast for two or three days, she would go and get the flowers ( for the pujo)and do it with a lot of joy.[ Kaveri,25, Housewife, Lower middle class, Bengali ]
A lot of women who fasted regularly were inspired by their mothers. Seeing mothers fast for the well being of others acted as inspirations. Sometimes the mothers would warn their daughters of the difficulty involved in fasting. Like Kaveri shared,
“When I was really young, my mother did not let me do it, when I became older, she said
“now you can do it.” This is worth noting since some scholars would argue that women are under a pressure to fast under a kin based obligation. In Kaveri’s case and for many other women in the study their mothers at the initial stages of their practice did not actively play a role in women taking up the fasts. For example, Aarti shared, “My mother warned me that I will not be able to follow the rules and that I was too young to do it methodically. I told her I will be able to do it.” But then again there were women like
Piya who shared,
My mother taught this (fasts) to me, she would say that these things need to be done. After marriage you need to do all these things, when you are in your husband’s house you have to do these things. There is no way around these fasting and the rituals. Since then I have been doing this [Piya, 43, Domestic helper, Labor class, Bengali]
Piya reminisced about her mother’s lessons to her in taking up these fasts. Her mother in asking her to fast was clearly preparing her for a life as a married woman with familial responsibilities. After marriage, mother-in-laws played a part. Ira who had recently lost her husband did the popular “ekadashi” [the eleventh day of every lunar fortnight] fast done by most widowed Bengali women. Ira did her “ekadashi” fast despite the dissatisfaction of her son, her siblings and her friends. In the Hindu culture it is
103 believed that eating meat and alcohol increases worldly [tamasik] feelings in a person.
Therefore Hindu women after the death of their husbands are expected to renounce non-
vegetarian food for life as a way of mourning their deceased husbands and also to prepare
for a life in which worldly desires have no room.26 In Ira’s words,
When this (her husband’s death) happened, I could not eat (non-vegetarian food). But my brother, my sister told me I have to have non-vegetarian food. There has been a change in how I feel. Now I cannot even touch fish or chicken. I have seen my mother-in-law, my sister in law do it. I feel “khotka” [strange] if I do not do it. Whatever I have seen my mother-in-law do, I do it now in her remembrance [Ira, 55, Housewife, Middle class, Bengali]
Both Ira’s mother-in-law and husband are now deceased. Although her taking up
the fast seemed a dutiful act done by most Hindu widows, Ira added that the fast also
commemorated her ties that she had with her mother-in-law. So she reminisced about a
time when her mother-in-law did her own “ekadashi” fast: “I would clean the kitchen first
and then cook for her and serve her in a pure [sucha] manner.” Moreover, in following
Hindu practice, Ira did not use the same cooking utensils for vegetarian and non-
vegetarian food in order to prevent the contamination of her mother-in-law’s vegetarian
food. Ira now felt that it was her turn to follow the same rules.
Ira also talked about becoming more religious. She shared with me that she had
started reading books on the lives of religious gurus. She said, “Now I feel different. I
read books like ’Sri Sri Ma’ or ‘Shatarupe Sharada’, books like that. When my son sees
me reading these books he gets very angry and asks me ’why are you reading such
books?’” Ira’s son’s discomfort represents some modern sentiments about fasting. He is
26 In fact a childless widow is often referred to as having experienced a social death (Chakraverti (1995); cited in Lamb (1999).This is true for not only widows but also for older men and women. Getting old means breaking free of bonds of “maya”[ illusion] and retreating from public spaces to develop closer bonds with god in preparation for death. Therefore women who were widowed at a very young age led very oppressive lives for they were believed to have experienced a “social death” and lead lives that was based on suppression of needs and desires.
104 irked by the fact that she is exhibiting behaviors associated with aging and renunciation of social life. But for Ira, her vegetarianism, reading religious books and being steadfast about her “ekadashi” fast is indicative of not only her newly found religious heart but also her ties with her deceased mother-in-law and husband. With the above mentioned instances, I establish the relation between religious practices and family ties. In most of the cases mentioned, the women continued with the practice to remember and honor family ties even if they were not religiously inclined to begin with.
In this section I have listed some of the meanings that the women gave to their fasting when asked to reflect on the “religious nature” of their fasting. The women’s reflections clearly demonstrate that the influence of religion on their practices is quite variable. Developing closer ties with a particular deity, cultivating esoteric virtues of strength and perseverance, and carrying on a family tradition constituted the religious make-up of fasting. However, while describing the religious nature of their practices, they interspersed their narratives with a number of qualifiers. Several of the women said they were not religious, with some going to the extent of saying that they did not believe in god. Others maintained that their practice was not a craze or a blind rush to follow others. What was interesting was that in spite of such self reflections most of these women continued to fast.
Pearson (1996) believes that fasting, in spite of being an ancient practice, remains vibrant in contemporary India because of the overall spiritual nature of the practice. The women I interviewed consistently maintained that fasting was a way of expressing and establishing a personal connection with a higher being (or a god-figure). They also said that days of fasting provided them with a challenge of exercising control over their
105 hunger and developing virtues of perseverance.27 As a result, some of the younger women in the study with professional careers and high academic qualifications felt an attraction to the practice because of the personal challenge that fasting poses (even if they rejected the rituals as superstition).
The spiritual component acted as a leveler of class differences as women across social class positions believed in the inherent goodness of the practice. The only difference was that the women with formal education enunciated the spiritual components whereas the labor class women simply called it a good practice. Moreover, when the women conceded that fasting were part of tradition, they did not think of it primarily as a compulsion but instead as an expression of family ties and bonds.
The fact that the women were doing fasts without ever having read the scriptures shows their independence from the religious dictums of fasting. None of the women sought permission from a religious authority, for example.28 The reluctance that women
expressed in being called religious was largely due to the distance they wanted to
maintain from rigorous forms of fasting. The stories of Sita and Savitri speak of the great
sacrifices these mythical women made for the safety and protection of their husbands. In
this sense, fasting – severe fasting – represents absolute forms of sacrifice and devotion.
27 One of the McDaniel’s subjects shared a similar thought; the women enjoyed fasting in her youth because she thought of it as a game because they showed her that she could be strong.
28 Some women mentioned reading “Meyeder brotokatha” that translates to a story [ies] (katha) of fasts (broto) for women (meyeder) which is more like a handbook on fasting. Some of the women mentioned that the book gave instructions on the rules to follow on the day of the fasts. Mina shared, “There is a book called the “broto katha”. I have heard that in the Hindu religion there is a fast called “Bipod tarini” that protects us from trouble. “Durga” [goddess of Shakti] represents “shakti” [strength], and “Durga” protects us from evils. [Mina, 34, married, housewife, lower middle class, Bengali] What is interesting about the above quote is that Mina refers to “broto katha” as a source of information when it would not qualify as a religious scripture. The book is a vernacular publication of the different kinds of fasts that women can do for various occasions. The availability of this book is limited to stores that sell pictures and paraphernalia of a “pujo” in “melas” [carnivals, fetes]. [clarify the link between this book and it’s availability and link to religious texts] But this was the only length that women would go to explain for the religious nature of their practice. If they mentioned religious texts at all, they were not able to specify a particular source for fasting.
106 The women I talked to believed that staying without food and water as a sign of absolute devotion was oppressive in nature. Instead the women tried to find a “middle path”
(Baani) where they could continue fasting as an expression of their faith without having to attach ultimate or absolute values to the practice
The only exceptions were the Muslim women in the study. When I asked them about the religious nature of their fasting, they said that fasting during the month of
Ramzan was mandatory and had to be done. They were also among the few women in the study who assiduously followed the rituals involved in the daily fasts for a month.
However, all the Muslim women in my study were in the labor class and worked as domestic helpers, and like their Hindu counterparts did not want to elaborate on the religious nature of their practice. I believe that if I had interviewed Muslim women from upper classes they too would have elaborated on the religious-spiritual nature of their fasts.
B. Fasting for the well being of the family
Cultural anthropologists have maintained that the popularity of fasts amongst women can be attributed to two reasons; first, its patriarchal origin and, second, its folk nature (McJune, 2003; Khare, 1976). Stories of popular (female) mythical characters revolve around hardships that women overcame through severe fasting. The women are glorified not only because they made a strong vow and fulfilled their wishes but also because of the hardship they embraced for the welfare of their husband and children.
These images worked as social controls; women were expected to make sacrifices and adjustments for the sake of family and extended kin. Although the cultural icons of Sita
107 and Savitri provided the ideological background for these practices, the popularity of this practice also needs to be located in the structural arrangement of rural economies.
Vratas originally were practiced by women living in rural economies. While some argue that festivities around fasting served a function of developing and strengthening community ties (Das, 1953), others maintain that in rural communities they acted as
“problem-solvers” (Pearson, 1996). Fasting to accrue the blessings of god was a way of preventing and ameliorating droughts and epidemics that these rural communities were susceptible to. Pearson further claims that given the patriarchal setting of these communities, the women fasted to prevent their own social status from being dismantled with widowhood or premature death of their children. Overall the welfare of the rural community was closely tied to the religious practices of the women. In rural India, fasting still serves a similar purpose; it is geared towards the making of virtuous daughters and wives of rural women (McDaniel, 2003).
In contrast, all the women in my study inhabited urban, autonomous spaces and some lived in non-traditional nuclear households. But in spite of having independent incomes or educational qualifications, the women still fasted primarily for the welfare of the family. Judging from the women’s accounts, however, there have been some shifts in what women mean by the wellbeing of the family. Praying for the welfare of the family meant diverse things, ranging from financial wellbeing to the protection of children and parents. For many, fasting for the family was part of a family arrangement.
One group of women spoke of the material benefits they hoped to gain for their family through their fasting. For example, Aarti mentioned (as documented earlier), “It is a feeling of bhakti [devotion] that is for sure.” But she continued, “I told you, I am the
108 only daughter of my parents. I have to stand up for the family and that is what I wish for when I fast.” [Aarti, 18, Single, Lower Middle Class, Student, Bengali]
Malini, another of the interviewees, described how her family was going through a lot of problems, and she too linked her fasting to the material wellbeing of her family.
Earlier as a family we were struggling, nowadays I do not see that anymore. We had a lot of problems, I had a big accident and then our house caught fire. In the beginning I used to see other people and do it. I did not think of why I was fasting. But now I think if you ask from God, you will get what you want. By fasting I have been able to please [santhushto] God. [Malini, 19, Single, Labor Class, Domestic Helper, Bengali]
Others spoke of fasting for their children. Piya, a mother of three, unequivocally stated that she fasted for the wellbeing and happiness of her children.
I do it for my children and the happiness of my family. I go outside the house to work so sometimes I do pray that I do not encounter trouble on the road. My children go to school, that is why I do the fast. I also pray that they do not fall sick, but then do they not fall sick? They keep falling sick [Piya, 43, Married, Domestic help, Labor class, Bengali]
Sita, similarly, said that she fasted for the wellbeing of her son.
I do “neel shoshti”, it is my wish. What is the wish? They say that this fast is done by mothers for the well being of their son. There is a little bit of that. I am doing it. Some times I feel by doing this, it will be for the good of my son. By putting yourself through pain if you call God, maybe your wishes will be granted [Sita, 43, Married, Housewife, Middle class, Bengali]
Sita, throughout the interview, gave individualistic explanations for her fasting, but admitted that she believed that her fasting would bestow benefits on her son. Even women who did not have children, like Mina, maintained that just like staying at home and taking care of children is a “niyom” or rule that women follow, fasting is also a rule to be followed.
109 Women stay at home and take care of children. Women raise their children, do men stay at home? Like that. This is the niyom [rule] that has been happening [Mina, 34, Married, Housewife, Lower middle class, Bengali]
Therefore, for many of the women, fasting stemmed from their primary identity as caretaker of the family. The two following quotes illustrate this point:
Mainly for my family, the whole thing ( fasting) is for my family, once you have a family there is not much to call your own [ Alaaya, 42, Married, Accountant, Middle class, Bengali]
I obviously do it for my family. I live with my son and my husband, they are my world. If they are not doing fine, then I cannot stay well. Can I? [Mona, 48, Married, Housewife, Upper middle class, Bengali]
The women talked about fasting in terms of the centrality of family relationships and duties in their lives. Kaveri said that,
Yes, the fast that I do I will have an interest (vested interest), or else, why will I starve for the whole day. I will want my family to do well and the people that I am staying with to do well, that is what I will want. The family is the most important, because with society and with friends the link does not stay, it stays only with your family, only with your parents, husband and child. A lot of people do different kinds of fast; the only fast that I do is I pray to God that my “samsar” [family] is happy [Kaveri, 25, Married, Lower middle class, Housewife, Bengali]
For Kaveri, family ties are lasting in nature while other relationships die out.
Alaaya indicated that, once she had children, her role as a family caretaker consumed all other aspects of her life. She now finds “nothing to call my own”. Both Kaveri and Alaya fast on the auspicious days that are delineated for the wellbeing of the children. Although both women are mothers, Alaaya is an accountant with an adult son and Kaveri is a young stay-at-home mother of a two year old son. In spite of the differences in their age and occupation, both women prioritize their responsibility as homemaker, and locate their
110 fasting practice in that role. All women who fasted regularly spoke of women’s family responsibilities as key to their fasting practices.
The common feature turned out to be family commitments. It was a similarity of life experiences like financial struggles or relationship problems stemming from their family ties that influenced these women to keep similar kinds of fasts. For example, the women said,
They (friends) do it( fasting) for the same reasons that I do. They do it for the family, or maybe they have a personal reason. What they hear about fasting is that this has to be done [Saara, 29, Married, Housewife, Lower middle class, Bengali]
The (women fast for the) same reasons (as mine). They believe that if they fast their families will be blessed, their health will be taken care of, and there will be “shanti” [peace]. [Mina, 34, Housewife, Married, Lower middle class, Bengali]
I also found this belief amongst the younger women in the sample. Malini and
Gini, for example, took up fasting at a very young age to share the responsibility of the household with their parents.
(Now) I pray for the house, some times I do it for my education but I mostly do it for my family, I do not ask anything outside that. [That is all?] If our parents are doing fine, then we will be fine. Who else will I say my prayers for? If they are not there, then where will we go? Right now I need it more for the house. If we keep the fast, we keep the fast for god. My father does not keep good health, so in his place I keep the fast. [Gini, 18, Single, Labor class, Domestic help]
I resumed fasting when I was fifteen years old. Now I do it because my mother cannot do it anymore, so I do it on her behalf. [Malini, 18, Single, Labor class, Domestic help]
Malini is the eldest daughter in a family of four children and Gini is the third daughter of five siblings. Both girls were also working as domestic helpers to supplement their families’ income during the time of the study. The young women had willingly
111 taken on fasting as an extension of their familial responsibilities when their parents fell ill. This process is similar to what Beattie calls adultification (2003); that is, adult roles
and responsibilities becomes attractive options for young boys and girls from working class backgrounds when they face structural blockages in mainstream institutions. Beattie found that working class high school students aspired to become mothers in order to gain the respectability associated with adulthood. Therefore, adult responsibilities are sometimes willingly taken on by young people for the appreciation and respect they receive in return. Gini shared with me that she liked fasting as people complimented her on her willingness to fast at such a young age. At the same time fasting was an extension of the adult responsibility she had taken on in her household.
The women in the study thought of fasting primarily as a responsibility associated with womanhood, but some went further and suggested that the willingness to fast was a personality trait that women had and men did not. In the following quotes I found evidence of this.
Girls tend to be family-oriented, boys are not like that. The whole day they spend outside, the only time they come home is to eat. Some boys do fast when they are involved in the festivities. Women do it more, why? I do not know. Maybe they are family oriented, maybe for their parent-in-laws, I cannot tell for sure. [Malini, 18, Single, Domestic helper, Labor class, Bengali]
In our case, both the girls and boys do the fast. The only thing is that men are not doing the house work, but girls are doing the housework and also doing the “roja”. Boys in spite of keeping the fast will use foul language. But girls keep the fast in a better manner than the boys. [Gini, 18, Single, Domestic helper, Labor class, Bengali]
Both women made the connection that fasting comes natural to women because the character of women differs from men. For example Gini felt that boys cannot refrain from saying foul words which is prohibited when someone is keeping a fast in the name
112 of “Allah”. She treated this as evidence that boys cannot be relied upon to do such a
serious task responsibly. This belief was also held for older men. When asked why
women fast more than men, one of the typical responses was,
Because women are family oriented, women have the ability to become mothers, they think of their children and of their husbands, it is in the women’s family that there are so many troubles. Men do not stay in all these “problems”, as a father you do not have any responsibilities, his responsibility ends with giving birth, and after that he has no role. A mother has greater role, she will have to give the medicine, she has take the child to the doctor, a mother takes more care, in this “jogot sansar” [world, mankind]
[Why do you see it as the duty of a woman?]
That is because men can skirt their responsibilities, women cannot do that; men will get up in the morning, eat and leave the house. Women stay at home the whole day, when they see their child is sick in front of their eyes she has to take care, if the man has to take care of the child then who will work and who will earn? [Kaveri, 25, Married, Housewife, Lower Middle Class, Bengali]
Kaveri thought that women fast because they have more time on their hands and
also because they spend more time at home. But at the same time she made a leap in her
argument when she concluded that fasting is part of women’s essential nature. She
believes that women’s ability to give birth naturally disposes them to taking care of the children. Similarly, fasting for the wellbeing of children comes naturally to women and therefore cannot be done by someone else. Fasting therefore reflected the essential nature
of being a woman.
In the Hindu culture in particular, the fate and fortune of the family is strongly
tied to the women of the family. Therefore it was no surprise to see these ideas emerge
again and again when women talked of fasting as part of their family responsibilities.
Kaveri’s use of the words “it is in the woman’s family” represents a popular sentiment in
the Indian culture that the abode is the exclusive domain of women or, in other words that
113 the home is her territory and not the man’s. Therefore all events circumscribed between
the walls of the house become the responsibility of the women.
The belief that the family is the domain of women was even more pronounced
among the women who lived in extended family settings and resulted in women keeping
more fasts than they did before getting married. The following two quotes is a testament
to that,
They tell me I have to do it, so I do it. I did not do so many fasts before my marriage, my sister in law told me; “it needs to be done, so I do it.” Everyone does the fast. Here, there is nothing to call your own. [Saara, 29, Married, Housewife, Lower middle class, Bengali]
But it was after marriage that “mainly” my fasting started. There was always something or the other. Now I do it, my mother-in-law does it, sister in law and then it becomes together [You live in a joint family?] Yes, that is when it ends up being together [Alaaya, 42, Accountant, Middle class, Bengali]
Even if the women fasted in the beginning out of curiosity or excitement, they realized the seriousness of these fasts when they entered extended family arrangements.
Saara had married into a family where kins of two generations lived together. When I visited Saara’s house, I found that although she had her own room, she shared the kitchen and restroom with others in the family. After her marriage she realized that “there was nothing to call her own”. Saara could have been talking about sharing her space with other people, but she was using “nothing to call her own” metaphorically to talk about her own wishes and desires. Fasting was something that everyone in the family did together and it was expected of her as well. Alaaya who similarly lived in an extended family setting reflected that religious activities are collaborative in nature and as a result they
“ended up in becoming an activity done together.”
114 In addition the women were also very cognizant of how their actions would be
perceived by people in their immediate surroundings, both family members and people living in the neighborhood. For example, Kaveri shared,
Everyone in my family does it; of all the people that I know, most people do it. What will they say? They know everybody does it; this is part of the rules and regulations that has to be done. [Kaveri]
By “they” Kaveri was referring to people in her family and people in her
immediate surroundings, like her neighborhood. Piya who lived in a crowded squatter
settlement where her neighbors had become her “fictive kins” also mentioned a similar
concern, “what will people say?” Their decision to continue fasting seemed to be driven
by a need to fit in with like minded blood and fictive kins. More so fasting became
necessary to avoid scrutiny from others.
Feminists think of fasting as a normative practice that reproduces submissiveness
and reinforces structural subservience of daughters to fathers and wives to husbands
(Kishwar, 1986). The women in my study did not think of fasting as oppressive, rather it
was important to them in fulfilling their duties as mothers and daughters and it had
become part of a family arrangement. Moreover none of the women mentioned that they
fasted exclusively for their husbands. The “vested interest” in their fasting was linked to
the happiness and success of their children, or parents (in some cases) but not their
husbands. Folklores of Sita and Savitri tell stories of the austerities that women endured
in order to save the lives of their husbands. Yet the women in my study hardly made any
acknowledgement of their husbands. This is clearly a shift from the traditional meaning
of fasting where women fast to maintain the highly auspicious status of being married
(Khare, 1976).
115 I suggest that this is an effect of the “new Indian woman” image that has pervaded
urban societies. The core elements of the image of the new woman as independent,
accomplished and responsible has been disseminated throughout the larger society. The phenomenon of fasting is now being interpreted through these lenses even by women who do not fit the image of the new Indian woman. Some of the young women spoke about supporting their parents to improve the family’s financial situation. This is a different set of expectations than those associated with women’s traditional sacrifices.
In northern India, women after marriage were traditionally expected to keep minimal contact and in some instances sever contact completely with their “family of orientation” (Goode, 1964). For example the women could meet their parents’ family only once a year. Also the parents and kin of the women were not welcome in their husbands’ or in-laws’ house. The fasting rituals also reflected this arrangement between families. Most traditional fasts were done by married women for the wellbeing of their husbands and the husbands’ family, and only rarely done for the women’s own parents.
In contrast the young women in my study spoke of fasting for parents’ health and happiness. They believed that in addition to their contributions from work, fasting or praying would help to improve their families’ situation.29 Fasting therefore was not done
out of dependence on male figures but out of responsibility towards children and parents.
Therefore I would like to reiterate that responsibility for family chores or duties acted as
an incentive for doing the fasts. At the same time, as I have demonstrated, in their need to
fast, the women were not subservient to particular individuals but to the structural
arrangements of their households.
29 Popular fasts like Karva Chauth, Neel Shosti and Bipod Tarini are done for the well being of husband, children and husband’s extended family.
116
C. Fasting helps maintain health
The ancient scriptures do not address the physical benefits of fasting; instead they focus on the esoteric and spiritual gains involved in fasting. But recent research has
revealed that in urban settings there is a parallel belief that periodic fasting benefits the
body (Pearson, 1996). This belief has penetrated the modern mind in recent years
Although the source of this belief is difficult to identify, one possibility is that Ayurvedic medicinal beliefs originating in the practices and prescriptions of Hindu ascetics (who
also fasted) have come to inform people of the benefits of regulating one’s eating .
Moreover in recent times, the knowledge about health benefits is disseminated by
Ayurvedic centers and shops selling medicinal herbs and also by yoga instructors who are
trained in this tradition.
A third of the woman in Pearson’s study made this connection (1996). The
women I interviewed also spoke about the health benefits of fasting. The human body
was compared to a “machine” which required some “rest” from time to time.
Yes, one day if you are not eating, it is not too difficult. It is said that once in while you should fast, then you are giving your body some rest. Sometimes it is difficult but then the next day I feel fine. It is not that I cannot work the next day or feel very sick, instead I feel good. [Saara, 29, Lower Middle Class, Housewife, High School graduate, Bengali]
It is good for the stomach, it is good for the fat, good for your health, and if you are on fast you get your glamour back. Like if you exercise, the “mastaar” [experts] says once in a while stop it, then your fat will be “relaxed.” Daily you are continuously doing something and that has to be put to a stop. Sometimes doing a fast is good, and then your body becomes a bit cold. It is good in all respects; your mind is good, your “mostishko” [brains] also stays good. [Kaveri, 25, Lower Middle Class, College graduate, Housewife]
117 In Pearson’s study, the women who made reference to health were highly
educated and yet traditional. This led Pearson to argue that the women were using their educational capital “to make all kinds of adjustment…to accommodate what others might find conflicting points of view” (Pearson, 1996, pg. 206). I similarly found evidence that the women did not think of fasting as a contradiction to their modern beliefs. But, unlike the women in Pearson’s study, it was not the highly educated women, with professional and master’s degree, but instead the lower middle class women with no more than a high school and/or bachelor’s degree who emphasized that fasting gave rest to the body. The women who were highly educated did not generally fast, and in some cases were critical of fasting. But they still made the connection between fasting and health in that they believed that fasting, as an ancient practice, fulfilled a physical need for women: nutritious food.
Dora, for example, came from a family where few people fasted, but her mother- in-law did. When I asked her if she was aware of the reasons behind her mother-in-law’s fasting, she told me,
I think that there is some scientific reason behind doing these fasts, I am going out of the discussion a little bit but let me share this with you. I think for some time this tradition has been going on, and maybe my mother-in-law is doing it and is not aware of it. In earlier days, women did not have a strong position in the family. Like now a days we can eat fruits and drink milk but in earlier days this was not the case. But on days of the fast they could have milk or fruits maybe to help in their digestion. This was a kind of scientific dieting. But they did not do this knowingly and so the reasons would seem obviously religious. [Dora, 30, Middle class, School teacher, Masters, Bengali]
Dora provides a very interesting hypothesis of why women used to fast in the past. She believes that given the subordinate status of women in the family most women did not have access to nutritious food as it was the duty of the women to give up the food
118 for the men and male children in the family. Dora argues that maybe on the days of the
fast the women could eat food with high nutritional value like fruits and milk without having to worry about saving it for other kin members. Moreover these were days of abundant food for the women.
There seems to be some truth in Dora’s hypothesis. One of the rural subjects in
McDaniel’s study of vrata rites in Bengal (2003) reminisced ; “I think the reason why women liked bratas so much was that traditionally the men got all the best food, and the women got only the leftovers. But on the brata days, the women got the best food. It was allowed because it was for the benefit of the family. This is one reason that women always did bratas- the men had to give them good food at the end” (2003, pg.112). It is plausible that the opportunity to eat food that was inaccessible to them on regular days appealed to the women. But I would like to point out that they did not necessarily identify these foods as healthy or nutritious food or that these foods would benefit their body or health. Moreover, in rural communities the food offered for deities was coveted food.
Thus the overt association made between fasting and health is a modern phenomenon.
Dora’s speculation that health benefits were at the bottom of women’s traditional fasting practices, even if they did not realize it, can be seen as an effort to rescue fasting from religion. 30
Again, it was the women who had some formal education that were most likely to offer the health rationale. Fasting for physical health is a subsidiary explanation as it is
not a purported goal of the practice. But for these women the health argument showed
30 Such explanations were common in the explanations of women n with college education. Even religious scholars who analyze fasting similarly ordain that fasting had health benefits. For example Pearson cites Ram Pratap Tripathi, who is a modern interpreter of the Dharmasastra. He says ; “The reasoning for observing Vrats are , usually for obtaining spiritual or mental power; for purification of mind and soul,……and it is done for physical health.”
119 that they were aware of the science of fasting and the benefits that fasting can have for
the body. It also helped them to reconcile any contradiction that fasting might otherwise
pose to their modern, liberal views. In other words, the women with formal education
claimed a health motive to explain their commitment to a practice steeped in religion.
Another association that is distinctly modern is the one between fasting and losing
weight. Moira, who had completed high school and was about to begin college, compared
fasting to a kind of diet control. “For one whole day you are not eating, that is a rest, it is
a “diet control”, the whole day you are on a “diet”. It is a rest, complete rest. [Moira, 21,
Lower Middle Class, Student, High school, Bengali] In this way, she appropriated a day
reserved for religious fasting as an occasion to lose weight.
Everyone does it, so I started as well, once a day I am not eating. I am gaining a lot of weight; I have to become a lit bit slim. Sometimes I think I am becoming fat, one day if I do not eat, what is there? If I stay on a fast then I can lose some weight [Moira, 21, Lower Middle Class, High School Student, Bengali]
What is important to note here is that, although few women made an overt
connection between fasting and weight control, the women’s accounts nevertheless
demonstrated that the boundary between fasting and dieting occasionally got blurred.
There can be no doubt that fasting is still heavily entrenched in the “religion: home: women” equation. However, in the urban context, where there is a parallel culture of being weight conscious, occasions of fasting are sometimes used to starve and control one’s weight. Sometimes, when explaining their dieting practices (to be discussed in details in the next chapter), the women would use the term fasting. For example, Meera shared with me;
I used to do it (fasting) a long time back for some time in my life for health reasons. I had kept a Tuesday fast which was not to have any solid food was just
120 liquid, could have juices, milk, coffee. But that was a long time back when I was fifteen to eighteen years old. The entire family used to do it. And we used to do it on Tuesdays. [Did some one ask you to do it?]
No, [also] I do not know why it was a Tuesday, it could have well been a Monday, and there was no religious reason for it. [Meera, 28, Upper Middle Class, Market Researcher, Masters, English]
Fasting as an equivalent to “diet control” or “scientific dieting” is one of the ways
an ancient, religious practice was being reinterpreted to suit a modern life. The health
motive was claimed by women who wanted to take attention away from the religious and
compulsive aspects of fasting. Instead, defining fasting as a scientific pursuit gave a more
modern legitimacy to the practice. Also, providing a scientific explanation spoke to their
informed, scientific minds.
In sharp contrast, none of the women from the labor class referred to the health
benefits of fasting. For example, Baala, a twenty four year old woman with a fifth grade
education showed her discomfort with the question by responding, “No, not for my
health, I feel like it[ fasting] And that is why I say my prayers. I do not do it for my
health; I just wanted to do it (fast).” Almost all the women in the labor class, who also
happened to have the least amount of formal education, were dismissive of the health
benefits of fasting. It indicated to me that women in the labor class did not seek logical-
rational explanations of fasting because their practice (of fasting) did not come into conflict with what they considered to be a legitimate reason for it.
D. Fasting and feasting
A fast is a festive occasion, a community event where men and women (typically more women than men) gather at a place to offer prayers and enjoy the food and fruits for the event. Religious events are also occasions for artistic creativity. These occasions are
121 known for floor art where women use color and white powder/chalk to design elaborate
motifs and figures. It is also a time to clean and decorate the house and wear new clothes.
These events are “community and shared activity between women at different ages”
(McDaniel, 2003, pg. 106). This seemed to be the case for my subjects as well. The
women mentioned wearing new clothes, eating food together, and doing ritual art.
Sometimes it was simply mentioned as an occasion for happiness.
See it is there in our Hindu dharma, all the things that we are doing. I will be following the dharma, right? Like “Durga pujo” [festival for goddess of Shakti] I can choose not to do it, but you cannot. I am doing all the other festivals; this is also a kind of festival. So in our house there are lot of “pujos”, even seeing it makes us feel good. Everyone is doing the “pujo”, everyone is giving “alpona” [ritual art] [Ira, 55, housewife, middle class, Bengali]
First of all, the day of Saraswati pujo is a day of “anondo” [happiness] I will wear a sari, and then I will say my prayers with everyone. This is one reason. Also all my friends are doing it, and I will not do it? How can that happen? And during “Durga pujo” [festival for goddess of Shakti], everyone is doing it, it is a beautiful day. I am fasting, some kind of fun; we say our prayers together, that is a different kind of happiness. [Moira, 21, student, middle class, Bengali]
Fasting as a festivity was mentioned by almost all women, irrespective of social
location. Traditionally, the rituals around fasting involved group effort by the women;
like collecting fruits, decorating the deity or preparing different forms of ritual art that
together symbolically contributed to the building of the community. Contemporary women as well, both in urban and rural settings, view fasting feasts as opportunities to strengthen social bonds and celebrate communities. Moira’s quote captures this feeling.
Although she fasts only once a year, she talks about how it is an occasion when she can wear a traditional dress for the ceremony and makes it clear she does not want to be left
122 out from the “fun” surrounding these events. Rather than extolling the religious significance of fasting, she was more enthusiastic about the fun she had with her friends.
Festivities around fasting also meant a break from the daily schedule of work for these women since on the days of fasting they were reprieved from daily chores. So for some women, it was a day of relaxation. Like for Kaveri,
The whole day I am taking rest, lying down quietly, will not have to cook, that is good, once in a while if you can stop it, is that not good? You can go out a little bit, otherwise our lives in a Bengali household; is to get up in the morning and go inside the kitchen, cook food, have your tiffin, have your afternoon meal, take your afternoon nap, again in the evening cook, and then go to bed at night. So once if you are fasting, you can go out, you can be a little bit free the brain also gets a rest, did you understand? (Laughs) [Kaveri, 25, Lower Middle Class, Housewife, Bengali]
E. Fasting is ‘just superstition’
So far I have documented the different meanings given to fasting in an urban context. In this section I present some narratives of another set of meanings around fasting. Fasting is an ancient practice and is as old as the Hindu civilization in South
Asia. Also since fasts originated in rural communities they have a distinctive folk element; for example, some fasts involve nature worshipping in the form of trees, animals or plants. They also entail elaborate rituals; preparing the place of worship, the fruits and nuts to be offered, the hymns to chant, the stories to be told and, finally, the need to do all of this on an empty stomach. Moreover, because of the Brahmanical (religious) features of fasting, the rituals have to be done in a “pure” manner and failure to comply with rules implies the wrath of gods and goddesses.
The “pure” aspects of fasting have at least in part been circumvented by modern, urban women. As I have shown, the women would bend and adjust the rules while recreating its original style. Some of the women drank tea or fruits on the days they were
123 fasting. Others ate and fasted. But there were some women who were highly critical of
the practice as such. These women believed that the need to maintain pure standards is
‘just superstition’. While some were critical of the rituals, others were critical of the very
practice of fasting. Chandi (43, Upper middle class) who has stopped fasting, believed
that women fast out of a blind belief that fasting will bring benefit to their family. She
said, “It is there in our Hindu religion, that if fast you will get something, or it will bring
upon well-being [mongol] to your family. That is why they do it.”
Similarly, Sumita said that it is people who are very religious are the ones who fast. “They are very religious, they say their prayers everyday. They believe in God, they worship god, they are very religious people per se. I think they are told to please and that you should not eat to show respect.” On a similar note, Laali shared that people who fast are “religious; they have been doing it for so long that now they feel uncomfortable with the idea of stopping the fasts.” The pervading belief was that women fast because they are either bound by tradition or fear of retribution if they stop.
What is interesting is that both Laali and Sumita fasted; Laali fasted once a year while Sumita fasted only for major religious occasions. But when it came to describing the fasts of other women they were critical and described fasting as a form of personality defect. In Dora’s words, “I think there is a fear hidden in it, something that is working in these women, that if I do not do it then there will be consequences. I am doing this for the
well being of my daughter and son and if I do not do it then what will happen? There is a fear.”
Anita, similarly, was critical of fasting and believed that woman who fast are
“People with weak personality; I have also done it, but I feel that others depend on
124 getting closer to god. I mean, where is the need to starve? Food is something that is important for us, and is a requirement (for the body). Some priest long back had circulated all this information and that is how people have learnt.” Anita viewed women who fast as dependent on both the practice itself and on the religious figures who endorse it. The women mentioned above all belonged to middle or upper middle class. In the study they were the most critical of fasting as an old, regressive practice. Although some of them fasted, they differentiated their practice from others. The women claimed that their practice was neither a duplication of others nor a sign of dependence, but instead a well-thought out practice that confirmed rather than undermined their status as modern, well educated women.
Conclusion
In conclusion, five meaning themes emerged from the accounts of the women, whether they themselves fasted or not; fasting for spiritual satisfaction, fasting as a family responsibility, fasting as a community activity, fasting to keep good health and, finally, fasting as just superstition. As fasting (unlike dieting; which I will elaborate in the next chapter) is an established cultural practices, there is an assumption that women fast for either religion or family. In this chapter I have elaborated on established themes with a particular emphasis on how the themes are being reinterpreted in urban contexts. In addition I have also listed other meanings that are associated with fasting.
In the literature a distinction is made between spiritual fasts and familial fasts
(Khare, 1976) or Brahmanical fasts and folk fasts (McDaniel, 2003). If spiritual,
Brahmanical fasts help the practitioners attain virtues of austerity, devotion and self discipline, the familial folk fasts are believed to accrue material benefits to the family.
125 The corollary assumption is that men do spiritual fasts and women do familial fasts. But
recent studies have shown that women sometimes infuse family oriented fasts with
spiritual meanings (Pearson 1996).31 This was clearly evident in the accounts of the
women I interviewed as well, which add support to Pearson’s argument that fasting
continues to be a robust practice in contemporary India because of its spiritual
component.
I found additional empirical evidence that educated, professional women who are
unlikely candidates of fasting were still attracted to the practice. In cases where women
reflected on the religious nature of fasting, they emphasized either a personal affinity
with a deity of their liking or a family tradition that had to be followed. And yet, most
women made sure that their practice did not come across as overtly religious (except for
the Muslim women). The women distanced themselves from the religious nature of their
fasts because fasting is used as a statement of religious and familial piety. In the past, the
fasting practices of Sita and Savitri were used as symbols of the devoutness of women. It was this devoutness – the expectation that women must make sacrifices at the altar of god as a wife, mother or daughter- in-law – that the women I interviewed distanced themselves from.
And yet, even if the religious motive in the “religion: home: women” theme has been greatly altered, the family motive remained strong. The women thought of fasting as an extension of their duties and responsibilities as caretakers of their family. Some of the
31 Pearson argues, “… to separate, as Khare does, women’s fasts from men’s on the basis that women’s vrats are exclusively concerned with familial/collective interests and men’s vrats with spiritual/self-directed aims is misleading.” (1996, pg.218) In her study the women spoke of spiritual gains they hoped to make through their fasts. While well being of family was a desired goal, it was not the only goal behind these fasts.
126 young women in the labor class and lower middle class had started fasting with the hope
that the economic situation of their families would improve. In this way, they sought solutions to a modern problem – the global market place – in an old practice. The difference from fasting practices of the past was that these women did not think of their fasting as a form of dependence but as part of an active role they were playing in their families.
Keeping good health also emerged as a motive for fasting. The health motive has become popular in contemporary times and more so in the cities than in rural areas. It was women from lower middle class or higher who spoke of the health benefits of fasting. The labor class women in contrast were skeptical of the link between fasting and health. This was not surprising considering the fact that women in labor class did not see any social value in talking about health. The data suggest that women who had at least some kind of formal education claimed the health motive to draw attention from the religious nature of the practice. Moreover, invoking the health motive was an indication of the fact that they were not blindly following the practice. Not surprisingly, women from the upper middle classes thought of fasting as an ancient, traditional way of cleansing the body of toxins. These women were trying to rescue fasting from the grips of tradition or religion and give it a modern flavor. It was also a reflection of the health dictums that were gaining ground during the time of the study.
Finally there was a group of women who believed that fasting was linked to superstition and represented the weak and dependent personalities of women. In these accounts the portrait of the fasting woman was one who lived in fear of questioning tradition and was hence backward. They therefore distanced themselves from fasting
127 either by not fasting at all or by fasting but defying the customs involved in these fasting.
To these women, fasting was counter-productive to their image of themselves as modern
women as it was reminiscent of a patriarchal, regressive arrangement.
To date there is no study that completely captures the various “vrats” that are
done in the Hindu tradition. P.V.Kane, the author of History of Dharmasastras (1974)
holds that any effort to list all the vrats “would entail an enormous amount of labor” and
“would require the cooperative effort of a large team of workers spread over many years”
(cited in Pearson, pg. 4). The difficulty of the task lies in the fact that over the centuries
as fasting spread through the subcontinent it took on regional characteristics leading to innumerable versions of fasting. At the same time, the majority of these “new” fasts had a feminine character, both in the sense that they were done primarily by women and that they extolled the virtues of sacrifice and service for the family and community
(McDaniel, 2003). Therefore fasting represented a traditional practice, where a woman’s
status was defined by the relationship she had with the men of the family.32
In contemporary urban India some of these traditional underpinnings of fasting have been challenged. Some women have started to place fasts in a spiritual framework and others emphasize the health benefits of fasting. Moreover, most women stopped short of calling their practice religious. In many quarters of urban society, religion represents
blind faith and the women evidently wanted to distance themselves from such monikers.
Fasting will continue to be a robust practice as women will cull out motives that suit their
new image as independent and progressive women. Rationales of spirituality and health
32 McDaniel has however argued that familial, folk fasting provided creative outlets for rural women; she points to imagery of nature in folk stories of fast and decoration of the altar as the ways women gave their own savor to a patriarchal practice
128 fit the aspirations of the “new Indian woman”. There is a possibility; however, that the
rights and rituals might go through additional adjustments as fasting becomes an
individualistic practice.
What has remained the same is that fasting continues to be done for the benefit of
the family. If women used to fast to prevent the premature death of their children, they
now fast so that their sons and daughters may perform well in school and not have
accidents on the road. But such sentiments were most evident in the accounts of women
in the labor class or lower middle class positions. However, I argue that the cultural
image of the new Indian woman has affected the fasting practices of most women. Even
when fasting for family benefits, the women activated their role as the primary caretaker
of their families, a consequence of discourse on the new Indian woman that has infiltrated all quarters of life.
In sharp contrast, the women in the labor class maintained that fasting was mandatory, was not subject to choice, and could not be circumvented. They also resisted
the idea that fasting improves physical health or there were spiritual gains to be made.
These women seemed to echo the belief that they fast out of a sense of “collective
morality” or to protect tradition (Khare, 1976). But that did not mean they were blindly
following tradition. Instead their rationale to continue fasting was rooted in a social arrangement that fasting was necessary to adequately fulfill their role as primary caretakers of their family.
In this chapter my goal was to elaborate on the social location and social context in which women negotiate cultural messages about fasting In addition I wanted to see how the presence of a global culture was affecting traditional practices like fasting. I
129 found that most of the women in my study, at every step, qualified their practice of fasting, particularly the religious nature of it – a clear sign of being reflexive about their behavior. While almost all the women fasted, the difference that I found by social location was that women who stayed at home (with no independent income) thought of fasting as an appendage to their family duty and identity. They identified most strongly with their identity as mothers and daughters-in-law and clearly understood that in those arrangements there was “nothing to call their own.”
The labor class women who were recent immigrants or had strong ties with rural hinterland thought of fasting as a way to improve their urban lives. Fasting was a way of helping their families survives in difficult living conditions. Simultaneously, they were most unperturbed about contemporary discourses that linked fasting with enhancing one’s mind or body. Neither did they think of fasting as a way of accomplishing such fetes.
Instead they seemed to be bound to a collective belief that fasting accrues material benefits.
My findings confirm that fasting continues to be a popular practice in urban India.
Almost all the women (except two) had fasted or were fasting during the time of the study. However I found significant differences in the meanings they gave to their fasting by social location. The women in the lower class positions saw a function in their fasting; fasting could solve the problem of the material distresses they were facing. In contrast, the women in the higher classes gave their fasting different meanings like health and spirituality and thereby expanded the different forms of fasting possible. This was possible because the women were relatively detached from familial (kin-based) duties and responsibilities and had minimal involvement in the ritualistic aspects of fasting.
130 Therefore social class, level of education and occupational affiliations influenced the meanings that women gave to fasting.
131
CHAPTER SIX DIETING
Introduction:
In this chapter, I present findings pertaining to dieting. In the first half of this
chapter I document the diverse practices done under the rubric of dieting, both in terms of the actual practice of eating (or conversely not eating) and in the ways the women described their eating. I use dieting as an umbrella term to capture a wide range of food related practices, including some that the women themselves did not describe as dieting.
In the second section of the chapter I document the different meanings that emerged around their practices. In addition in both the sections I document the ways the women were actively making meaning about “dieting”, drawing on a mixture of traditional and modern beliefs about food, body and health.33 In keeping with the purpose of the study I
show how the diversity of meanings congealed along the lines of social location and institutional membership (marital status, occupation). I thus make the argument that meanings given to dieting are a function of women’s social class positions.
“Dieting” is not a native Indian term on two counts; first, it is an English term and, second, there is no equivalent term in any of the popular and regional languages in the country to describe a practice of administered weight loss. However, in urban
33 Michele Lamont (2003) popularized the term “meaning-making” to describe the process by which social actors categorize people and practice to create symbolic boundaries.
132 metropolises “dieting” has become a popular and widely used term.34 Dieting, in general,
is used to describe a style of eating that simply means eating less, but in practice the term
is primarily associated with thinness and physical appearance.35 It is for this reason that
few of the women in my study admitted to dieting. Almost half of the women (20 women out of 48) said that they exercised control over the kind of food they ate, but only eight women used the term dieting to describe their eating restrictions. This brought me to an interesting juncture. There seemed to be a popular understanding of dieting, yet, when describing their own practice the women deliberately strayed from this popular meaning.
In the concluding part of this chapter I discuss how the image of the new Indian woman played a role in the women distancing themselves from the popular meaning of dieting.
Also the very fact that multiple meanings were given to dieting shows that cultural meanings are constantly being negotiated and reinterpreted.
I have divided the chapter into two main sections: In the first section I will document the diverse practices done under the rubric of dieting, both in terms of the actual practice of eating (or conversely not eating) and in the ways the women described their eating. I use dieting as an umbrella term to capture a wide range of food related practices, including some that the women themselves did not describe as dieting. In the second section of the chapter I will document the different meanings that emerged around their practices.
34 Therefore dieting like other (English) terms like “time”, “station” or “shirts” have become part of a local, everyday vocabulary.
35 Even women who were less familiar with the English language knew the term “dieting”. For example, Gini, a high school student and a part time domestic helper whose familiarity with the English language was limited, shared with me ( when asked if she knew about dieting); Yes, my friend’s sister (diet), they are always thinking about their “figure”, they will not eat oily food, or have spicy food. I will eat whatever I can get my hands on. They will always be like, “we will not eat oily food, this will happen, that will happen” [laughs]
133
I. Understanding dieting: Practice and Talk of Diet
In this section I document two things; the range of eating styles of the women who monitored their eating and the way the women described their eating. While the term
“dieting” was well- recognized, what the women actually did under the rubric of dieting varied. Before engaging in a discussion of the meaning themes that emerged around dieting, I want to briefly document the ways women talked about dieting.
A. Eating styles
I began the interviews by asking the women if they were conscious of what they ate or if they abstained from eating particular foods (like potatoes, rice). This question elicited a variety of responses; some women talked about their medical conditions or the need to lose weight and others talked of cutting out particular food items from their diet out of health concerns.
For example, Aarti, a high school student had stopped eating ice cream, which had high sugar content, and lamb, which she categorized as a food with high protein content. She had also replaced her rice with “ruti” (as pronounced in Bengali) or “roti”
(as pronounced in Hindi), which is a kind of flat bread made of wheat. Eating less rice or eliminating rice altogether from their meals showed up in more than one account. In
Bengal and other eastern states like Bihar and Orissa, rice is a widely grown crop and counted as a staple food that is typically eaten more than once in a day. However there were women who shared with me;
At night I strictly do not eat rice, earlier I used to eat [rice] both for my lunch and dinner. Now at night I have “ruti” [flat bread] or I skip my dinner. At night I prefer to eat something light. Before dinner I eat everything but I avoid oily food and have given up
134 butter, cheese, cold drinks and chocolates [Aami, 20, Middle Class, College Student, English]
Rice seemed to be the first item on the list of foods that had to be avoided. Anita,
a part time model and an aspiring actor, had also replaced rice with “ruti” [flat bread] in
her meals. She shared, “During lunch I replace rice with “ruti” [flatbread]. For dinner I
have only “ruti” [flatbread]. At night I avoid rice like anything. [Anita, 21, College
Student, Model, Bengali, words in italics said in English] Anita stressed “anything” to
emphasize that she had completely stopped eating rice and also to signify the urgency of
her decision to stop eating rice. This urgency can be explained by the fact that in most
Indian household dinner starts as early as eight in the evening and can be delayed till ten
at night.
And since rice continues to be the main food item served for dinner, Anita did not
want to eat rice for dinner late at night. Women like Anita avoided rice at night as a result
of two sets of beliefs about rice. First of all there is a traditional belief that rice36 is a cold food that has properties that makes the body heavy. Some women made reference to how
rice makes the body cold. But I found a parallel belief that seemed to have a stronger
influence on the decision made by women to strike off rice from their list of foods. Many women said that rice was high in carbohydrates and therefore should be avoided. Aami
said, “I have lots of friends in the hostel who gave up rice. You should not take carbs
[carbohydrates] especially because carbs have a very bad effect. I cannot live without
36 In the Hindu culture; there is a hierarchy in the food system. It is based on the pollution-purity axis. Onion, meat and fish are believed to be hot food as they incite carnal feelings in the body and therefore are considered polluted food. Conversely, rice is believed to be a cold food that makes the body heavy and anesthetized to feelings. “Hot” foods have a lower status in the hierarchy as it represents being attached to worldly feelings. Therefore Brahmans and men and women professing spiritual goals exclude from their diets hot foods such as meat, fish, onion and garlic (Lamb, 2000).
135 potatoes; I used to eat a lot of potatoes both boiled and fried. I cannot give up potatoes.
Apart from that I usually avoid carbs.”[Aami, 20, College Student, Bengali] Aami’s
conviction that potatoes and rice make people fat is a result of imported health beliefs,
like the Atkins diet, that carbohydrates lead to weight gains. But in spite of giving up
rice, Aarti had not been able to give up potatoes.
Bourdieu (1984) would call Aarti’s love of potato a part of her “infant learning”
or an acquired affinity with cultural practices or dispositions that are reproduced over
time. While Aarti seemed to have held on to her acquired liking for potatoes that was not
the case for rice. Many women said that they had stopped eating rice. But I found a class
difference in whether the women gave traditional or imported reasons for their decisions
to avoid certain kinds of food. The lower middle class women grounded their decisions in
traditional beliefs. For example, Aarti shared with me that she had stopped eating rice
because it was a cold food that added body fat. In contrast, the use of “carbs” to talk
about food items like rice figured mostly in the accounts of middle and upper middle class women.
Other than avoiding foods like rice or potatoes and oily food, I found evidence of
other kinds of imported beliefs about food and eating. For example, there was one woman
in the study who had replaced her lunch with a health drink. Krishna, a stage actress in
her late forties, came across this health drink when she was in a coffee shop waiting for
her colleague and saw a man wearing a badge that said, “Lose weight now”. Out of
curiosity she stopped the man to find out that he was a sales person for a health drink
called “Herbal Life”. For Krishna, the drink was “not really a medicine but a particular
136 food” that she had been told was created by “fifteen scientists of the world.” (The word scientist was said in English).
The product, Herbal Life is an American nutritional shake that is now being sold in India through independent marketing networks. Other than Krishna, there was one more woman who mentioned this health drink, but then as a drink that she had seen her friend using. Therefore only two women in the study knew about this particular nutritional shake. Most women in the study were aware of shakes and pills catered particularly towards weight loss that were available in the market or through online stores but none admitted to using any such product.
I was initially surprised that Krishna had replaced her meal with a health drink as it was not a regular practice for women with her social background. Even adding vitamin supplement or energy drinks to meals is rare amongst women in labor class and lower middle class women. Instead it was the women in the middle and upper middle classes who spoke about adding (or replacing) a vitamin supplement or energy drink to their meals. But Krishna’s case was different. Krishna was one of the few women in the lower middle class category with an independent income; she worked as a theatre actress and recently had found some employment in television industry. In fact she shared with me that she had started drinking the health mix because of her profession. She wanted to lose weight to look thin on stage and in front of the camera. However, in spite of following an unconventional eating regime, Krishna was quite similar to the women that I have mentioned so far in the sense that she too had eliminated particular food items out of the necessity to lose weight or from the fear of becoming fat.
137 In contrast to the women mentioned above was another group of women (whose
accounts I will document below) who had been experimenting with formal eating restrictions for a while. What was different about these women was not only that they gave detailed descriptions of both their eating schedules and of the food items that they had eliminated from their diets but also that they were reticent about their eating being dictated only by a concern for losing weight. For example, Radha, a young sales personnel and one of the avid dieters in the study, talked of a “vitamin C” diet she had been following: “I used to have chronic cold and cough, really bad ones. Every two months I used to have a terrible cold, bronchial attack or something like that and then I decided that I will go on a vitamin C diet. I started having lot of lime water and ‘amla’
[Indian gooseberry]. I do not know what it is called in English and yes [I] also [had] cod liver oil” (Radha, 28, Sales Personnel, English).
I describe Radha as an avid dieter because she talked of at least three or four kinds of diets she had followed over the years. Radha had created these diets by combining her knowledge of food items that were found either locally and those that were imported.
Like Radha, the women in this category provided me with detailed schemas dictated by time considerations and what constituted (for them) nutritious and healthy eating. In addition, they also gave names to their diets. For Radha, “dieting” meant experimenting with food items and keeping her eating under control. The “vitamin C diet” was one of the many diets she had created over the years.
While health considerations dominated the accounts of women (as I will document below in the dieting and health section), weight-related concerns were not
138 completely missing. Like Radha, Meera also dieted. Meera, a market researcher shared
that she had done an American diet in the past.
At one point of time I had put on a lot of weight and I was crazily trying to lose weight, and I heard of this American diet. [In this diet] you eat fruits one day, then vegetables one day and then [both] fruits and vegetables the third day and then some funny soups some other day. I had stopped it the fifth day as it was too much of a hassle. [Meera, 28, Market Researcher, Upper Middle Class, English]
Meera had given up on what she identified as an “American” diet. But she went on to
say,
It is like hearsay, there are lots of schools of thought [of dieting]. One of them says that if you have low carbohydrates and probably a high protein diet then you will tend to put on less amount of weight, because what you eat gets less digested and does not get stored as fat. I don’t know how much truth there is …but I see results. I see myself losing weight…..I guess that’s why I am sticking on to it.
Here Meera is alluding to the Atkins diet which guarantees weight loss by eating
less carbohydrates and more protein in one’s diet. But by not calling it Atkins, Meera
was bypassing information about where she had acquired her knowledge of carbohydrate
free diet. I found this especially interesting as she was aware of the Atkins diet and still
did not mention it. Meera had done the same thing for what she called the “American
diet”; she chose to call it “hearsay” and did not clarify the source of her knowledge. I realized through the accounts of Radha and Meera that these women were experimenting with different kinds of diet instead of committing to a single one.
Another common feature was a continuous engagement with different kinds of diets in order to discover the best possible way to healthy eating. Therefore for these
women “dieting” was less about eliminating particular food items and more about trying
different styles of eating ( and conversely not eating).For example, some talked about a
139 de-toxifying diet that involved drinking only fluids in order to cleanse the body of toxins.
Rohini had learned about this diet from different health clinics;
I had been to a naturopathy center once and they said once in a week you should fast so that your system can get some rest. Fruits and vegetables are easily digestible, if you fast in the right way that is have juices and fruits then it helps your body a lot. The first day they keep you on lime water or coconut water to clear your system and empty your toxins. The point is that it is going to clean your system, your whole body. Suppose you go for ten days, then for seven days they will keep you on fruits and juices. [Rohini, 29, Upper Middle Class, Housewife, English]
Rohini has visited two of these centers in two different states in the country; one in Bangalore in the southern state of Karnataka and the other one in Joka in the state of
West Bengal (where she lived). Although she no longer went to these clinics she had learned that fasting once a week is very important for detoxifying the body and she tried to do it whenever possible.
Sumita, a young professional in her late twenties, also talked about a detoxifying diet. She described her friend’s practice, “On Sunday she will eat rice and other things and will not control [her eating], but Monday is a detoxifying day for her where she will eat only vegetables and fruits the whole day and nothing else.” [Sumita, 27, Market
Researcher, English] Sumita’s friend binged on Sundays and then followed it up with a day of not eating anything which meant that it would detoxify her body of all that she ate previously.
The names the women gave to their diets are worthy of some additional analysis.
First of all, like the “vitamin C” diet and the “American diet”, the “detoxifying diet” was a term the women had created to describe their eating practices. The appeal of such diets seemed to be more in its style than in the specific functions that the diet performed. I
140 came to this conclusion particularly when the women extolled the detoxifying diet
without really specifying the benefits entailed in relieving the body of toxins. This was
one of the first places that I noticed that by talking about different styles of eating the
women were involved in a meaning-making process where they created and customized
their diets. They called this process a “permutation and combination” (Meera) of mixing information. Moreover, the women were aware of the fact that they were in the grips of a market that was inundating them with different kinds of diet. Rohini shared with me,
I am a very avid reader and they [diets] keep coming in the health magazines and journals. Some times my friend will tell me that they have lost four kilos in a week following this one diet. You know, what else do people talk about nowadays. They are fanatics; they stop cold drinks and chocolates. Then they go to dieticians and they give them a protein diet, so they have protein the whole day long. There are different fads, you know, General Motor diets or London diets. [Rohini, 29, Upper Middle Class, Housewife, English]
Rohini was one of the many women in the study who seemed to have extensive knowledge about different kind of “fad” diets, like the General Motors Diet, the London
Diet, the Atkins Diet and the South Beach Diet. Most women, like Rohini, seemed to be aware of the fact that the different diets were “fads” as one diet replaced the other with quick succession. They also had names for women who fall prey to fad diets; Rohini, for example, called them “fanatics”. Although Rohini herself had dieting experiences, it is obvious from her account that she did not include herself among the women who fell for dieting fads.
Women who diet ceaselessly are thought of as victims of a “cult- mentality”
(Hesse-Biber, 1996), where obsessing over and trying different diets are commonplace.
However, the women in my study did not think of themselves as victims of a dieting
industry (unless they were talking about other women). Instead by trying different kinds
141 of diets and changing the imperatives of dieting to suit their own needs, they were using these diets to manage the information overflow that they were experiencing (of dieting).
As mentioned earlier, I realized that the women were distancing themselves from the established definition of dieting as a practice geared towards weight loss. This was especially evident when the women tried to describe their own experiences with dieting.
In the next section I document the meanings the women gave to their dietary controls.
B. Talk of diet
One significant feature of the interviews was that most of the respondents were unwilling to use the term dieting to explain their eating practices. In the whole sample, the number of women who described their eating habits as dieting was very small. Out of twenty women, only eight said that they dieted while the rest mentioned that they did some kind of dietary control. As I mentioned in the very beginning of this chapter, the word dieting was identified as a practice done out of concerns for style. Therefore when talking about their dieting, even when losing weight was a purported goal, very few wanted to use the word dieting to describe their practice.
So how did they describe their diets? First of all I present findings pertaining to the women who said that they did diet.
Yes, dieting of course. The person who suggested the health drink to me asked me to substitute my lunch with the drink. [Krishna, 40, Lower Middle Class, Theatre Actress, Bengali]
Yes, obviously. But I do not think of it entirely as dieting. Some times I eat some thing or the other but I try to avoid some food. [Aarti, 18, Lower Middle Class, High school student, Bengali]
Both these women referred to their practice of dieting affirmatively with expressions like “obviously” [Aarti] and “of course” [Krishna]. But these kinds of
142 sentiments were few in number and on closer look I realized that even when answering in the affirmative the women tended to qualify dieting by saying that they avoided eating only certain kinds of food. Saarika similarly thinks that her eating is “not really dieting” because all she does is not eat rice in her meals and then for breakfast she has fruits. She wanted to imply that the changes that she has made to her diet like having fruits for breakfast should not qualify as dieting.
Yes, I can say so but if you think about it, I am not really dieting because all I am doing is not having rice and then for breakfast I am having fruits [Saarika, 24, Middle Class, Market Executive and part-time management student, Bengali]
The hesitation in accepting the term dieting comes from the fact that these women were distancing themselves from the popular meaning that dieting involves starving.
Meera shared;
Yes, I can say that. I guess it depends on how you see dieting. To me dieting is some kind of a restriction where you are almost starving yourself to lose weight. Here I do not see myself as starving or even feeling hungry just because I am not having carbohydrates. I am not restricting my intake of food; I am just changing the percentages so to speak. I would take it as a diet within quotes but any planned food is a diet, so by that definition I would still call it a diet. [Meera, 28, Upper Middle Class, Market Researcher, English]
Like others, Meera was reluctant to call her eating restrictions dieting; she said that her dieting should be taken “within quotes”. She clarified that dieting conventionally meant to “starve” or to severely “restrict,” food intake, which she obviously did not do. In other accounts as well women equated dieting with starving. Sumita, for example argued that eliminating rice from her meals can be seen as dieting but then it was not the same as starving.
I think taking rice out of my daily food is dieting because I love binging on rice. It would be dieting but (then again it would) not (be) a full dieting. I do not starve
143 myself because I have acidity problems. I am trying not to eat fatty food and sweets [Sumita, 27, Upper Middle Class, Market Researcher, English]
Then there were another set of women who did not want to call their eating practice dieting. The notion that dieting is equivalent to starving got further cemented in the accounts of these women who showed resistance towards the use of the term
“dieting” to explain their eating.
No [I do not diet], because a lot of things I eat have lots of calories. Dieting means being very strict and I do not follow that. If I am eating food with high calories, then I am not dieting. I eat a lot of cheese, butter, pasta and pizzas [Anita, 21, Middle Class, Science student/ part-time model, Bengali]
No, I will not call it “dieting”. This is a kind of food habit. I can call it a “balanced dieting”, but not the way people diet all the time, like they will not eat or will eat less [Chandi, 46, Upper Middle Class, Engineer, Bengali]
For the women mentioned above, dieting meant to starve, eat less and/or avoid high-calorie foods. One woman categorized herself as a “bad dieter” as she was very
“fond of food” [Rohini] thereby implying that dieting was incompatible with the pleasure of eating.
Whether they adopted the term dieting or showed reluctance in using the term, they all felt the need to qualify their practice of dieting. Another common feature, as already mentioned, was that they thought of dieting as starvation and therefore distanced themselves from being labeled a crash dieter or some one who starved. Starving was not an option for these women. Radha said:
So the diet I have gone into is not a crash diet or something like that. It was a well thought out diet where you are eating every two hours or so. At no point of time when you are feeling hungry do you grab a packet of chips or ice cream. You never feel the need or desire to do it. [Radha, 28, Upper Middle Class, Sales Personnel, English]
144 Further these women expressed their disapproval of women who were starving to lose
weight.
How can you survive if you stop eating completely? Like my sister, she diets so much that she has low pressure. She diets a lot, she is very thin and has a nice figure no doubt, but she has very low pressure. I do not want to do that kind of a diet, I want to stay in control. See, if you do that kind of dieting, of course your health will deteoriated, I do whatever is required, minimal. [Aarti, 18, Lower Middle Class, High School Student, Bengali]
The question emerging from these accounts is; why were these women distancing
themselves from dieting even when they altered their eating habits sometimes with an
explicit goal of losing weight? First of all, most of them were reacting to the popular idea
that dieting meant not eating or eating less to the point of starvation. Starving was an
aberrant form of managing eating, so to rescue their own eating habits from being
categorized as abject starving they distanced themselves from the term dieting as well.
Secondly, the very western discourse that was informing them of the need of slim
and petite bodies was also informing them of extreme forms of dieting associated with a
body type that was excessively thin. The women called these bodies “bags of bones”,
“skinny” or “anorexic”. One of my subjects, a part time model/actress, shared with me
that she had seen other models showing anorexic behavior. She recalled that during photo
shoots, some of the models would go into the restroom and throw up their lunch. She also
said that the crew of the photo shoot would make fun of her for eating everything on her
plate. But she went on to say that she did not see herself doing anything like that or
succumbing to pressures to lose weight. 37
37 Cases of anorexia nervosa are still very rare in the Indian population; and when it has been diagnosed, the women did not show disturbances in body image which is a diagnostic criterion for assessing anorexia (Khandelwal et al. 1995). But more recent studies in this area of research have found body disturbances and fear of fatness in adolescent and adult samples living in the metropolis city of Mumbai (Shroff and
145 To my interview subjects, excessive thinness represented a mental condition, a
lack of control over one’s body. As knowledge of anorexia as a mental disease has become part of urban India, it has increased the fear associated with such practices. For
example, when Aarti talked about her sister she said, “She diets a lot, she is very thin and has a nice figure no doubt, but she has very low pressure. I do not want to do that kind of a diet, I want to stay in control.” Starving or depriving the body of food was looked upon as a sign of lack of control over one’s body. At the same time the criticism of excessively thin bodies was further reinforced by traditional beliefs that “beauty does not glow in the skinny figure” (Aami, 20). Therefore being excessively thin in contemporary
Indian society accrues a double disadvantage; a western centric belief that it is a mental ailment and a traditional belief that it compromises one’s attractiveness.
And yet, most women I the study expressed some body-related concerns and exercised some form of eating restrictions. How then did they make sense of their eating practices?
The answer is health, as I describe in detail below.
During the last few decades, personal health has emerged as a new urban preoccupation, fostered in doctor’s offices, health food stores, and gyms. For example, most of the women across social class spoke of diet charts38that had been given to them
either in their gyms, by their nutritionists, yoga instructors or by their general physicians.
Diet charts were even mentioned by women who did not control or monitor their eating
but was advised by their doctors to avoid foods with high fat and cholesterol content.
Thompson, 2003). These studies argue that this is an expected consequence as these contexts are globalizing and becoming exposed to international or western standards of the body. In spite of these trends anorexia nervosa remains a rarity. 38 The women spoke of these diet charts. But some of the women mentioned that they were handed out these charts in their gyms. My understanding is that there were no fixed charts but they were varied depending on the place from where they got them. The charts however gave them a list of the kind of food they should eat.
146 They were shown these diet charts when they went for routine check ups or with a health complication. The common knowledge of these “charts” indicates that diet charts have now become part of a health protocol followed by both physicians and health professionals.
Some women in the study told me about consulting health professionals about their eating and their body, which in turn influenced how they thought about and described their diets. For example, three women in the study had been to a dietician and had learnt formal rules of dieting. At the time of the study only one of them (Laali) was still seeing her dietician while the other two women had stopped their visits. Laali maintained that she “balanced” her diet, not dieted.
No, I will call it a balanced diet. Dieting means there are lot of restrictions, and she knows my history and that restriction will not work for me. She asked me neither to starve nor to eat a full stomach, she asked me to be careful of what I eat [Laali, 45, Upper Middle Class, Housewife, Bengali, words in italics said in English]
Going to the dietician gave credibility to Laali’s practice and also validated the choices that she made. Chandi discussed her dieting in a similar fashion. Chandi, a computer professional and a senior project manager went to a dietician when she first became health conscious, which was more than ten years back. Although she no longer uses a dietician, she has continued with her eating regulations. She referred to her eating habits as part of a “diet management”. However, her information source had shifted from a dietician to the internet.
She shared with me,
I surf [the internet] for at least two to three hours in a week. I keep surfing on all these topics…. I do it on weight measurement and then there is information available on water content. If your water content increases then your weight increases, and then you should have minimum calories in a day. Each food has a
147 value; some food has negative values compared to others. I read all these kind of things [Chandi, 46, Upper Middle Class, Engineer, Bengali]
She used her knowledge of the nutritional value of various foods to determine how and what to eat. Chandi is convinced that her dieting, therefore, is scientific in nature. She bases her argument on the fact that, like food, the human body can now be evaluated numerically, “I will explain it [dieting] to you scientifically. If you can tell a person’s weight and the age, then you can tell if the person is in the ‘normal range’ or if the person is ‘over weight’. Then I can tell the person how much calorie they should have and how much they need to burn.” Therefore for Chandi the need to diet or to lose weight comes from the science of good health which can be calculated by computing one’s body mass index. BMI had become the new criterion to evaluate good health with; if one keeps
track of these values and eat accordingly then one can lead a healthy life. Chandi was
convinced of the scientific nature of her dieting and in spite of the absence of
professional guidance she felt that she was well informed about what she was doing.
Anita a student of science like Chandni had a similar realization about her dieting without ever having been to a dietician. She said,
I analyzed [what she read], not blindly [did it], because I like someone or do not like someone. I analyzed that I had not really thought about these things. I realized that [usually] after eating [dinner] I go to bed but I should dine like a pauper not like a prince. There is a scientific reason for everything. We have all taken the discussion to beauty but these are all fitness ‘fandas’ [rules]. They need analysis. [Anita, 21, Middle Class, College Student, Part-time model, English]
She saw a science in her eating habits. Also, like the other women mentioned, she did not want her dieting to be misunderstood as part of a trend that she “blindly” followed. Instead her decision not to eat rice at night was influenced by the underlying
148 science in phrases like “one should dine like a pauper and not a prince.” What she is referring to here is the assumption that going to bed immediately after eating one’s dinner is not good for one’s health.
In describing their eating habits, the women were careful that their efforts at weight loss did not come across as a blind imitation of a trend. They used words like
“scientific” to describe their eating practices and emphasized the control they exercised over their food choices. They found support for their decisions in the health industry where and its emphasis on the need to control eating for one’s health. This widespread familiarity with health regulations clearly demonstrates that health had become a part of a cultural repertoire that informed women of their body and eating habits.39 The women spoke of the health benefits of “eating less” and “eating right” whether they had learnt from their nutritionists or from flipping magazines. But in spite of having consulted professionals and following eating advice, they still retained control over their diets by being selective about the advice that they were following. This became evident in how they talked about their diets.
Oftentimes the women’s re-articulation of health beliefs got detached from their original source; for example, they talked about the need to avoid carbohydrates without referring to the Atkins diet. The emphasis all along was on the word “scientific” even when they were not aware of the underlying logic (for example how BMI is calculated or the actual benefits of emptying the body of toxins). Moreover to give authenticity to their eating practices, lest they be misconstrued as dieting (in the popular sense), the women often gave their diets names like a “planned”, “balanced” or simply a “well thought out” diet.
149 During the time of the study the women were exposed to two kinds of discourses
about regulating one’s eating; the popular discourse of eating less to lose weight and the more recent discourse of monitoring one’s eating to maintain health. The women in my study were appropriating the health imperative in order to come across as people who were well informed of the implications of their eating habits. Constantly modifying their practices and experimenting with different kinds of food spoke of the control that these women felt they had over their dieting and their eating. It is in this sense they were living up to the image of being modern women.
Being modern means the ability to “perform modernity” (Kelsky, 1999; cited in
Scarse, 2002), that is, to exhibit not only an engagement with modern lifestyles, but also being conscious of and evaluating the process. Talking in an educated and informed manner about experimenting with diets spoke of their own awareness and depth of understanding of foods. Also, the fact that the women were not tied to health professionals or “pundits” and could convincingly lift the information to recreate it in different settings (the interview being one of them) was a sign of their modern self. In their minds, dieting was not done out of vanity or a selfish preoccupation but instead constituted a conscientious move towards healthy eating. Hence dieting was an expression of being in control, of both food and body. Therefore, in the case of the new
Indian woman, dieting represents a need to stay healthy rather than the suppression of the need to eat.
Orbach (2001) in her book, “Hunger Strike: Starving Amidst Plenty” writes that eating disorders like anorexia, “ is most particularly a defense against dependency needs; it is a statement about how unneedy the women has to be from early on in life” (Cited in
150 Hesse-Biber, 2007). For the women in my study, eating regulations served the opposite purpose; they expressed the efforts of the women to acknowledge and satisfy individual needs, health being one of them. The articulation of their demands, in words as well as deeds, marks a shift from traditional sentiments that held that the needs of women as mothers, daughters and wives should be kept subservient to those of the family and not expressed.
II. Meanings given to dieting
I have shown so far the women distanced themselves from the term dieting and its popular meaning that women diet to lose weight. I have also documented that they renamed their dieting practice and emphasized the scientific nature of their practice and in many cases claimed the health motive. In this section I present the narratives of women as they spoke about appearance, fear of fat and health. While most women were being reticent about appearance they spoke extensively on health. This does not mean that the appearance motive was not completely missing from the accounts; rather, it figured prominently in the women’s discussion of fat. I will therefore unpack the meanings associated with health and appearance in the context of dieting. Also, throughout the
analysis I show how the meanings given to dieting were related to the women’s social
locations.
A. Dieting and Appearance
Dieting is typically associated with appearance. The dominant assumption is that
women diet to lose weight in order to look good physically. In western societies
researchers have shown the simultaneous rise of the beauty/glamour industry and the
dieting industry. In the United States, the dieting industry, estimated to be a thirty-three
151 billion dollar industry, is attributed wholly to the country’s obsession with appearance
(Wolf, 1991). Therefore women find themselves in the grips of a ‘cult of thinness’
(Hesse-Biber, 1996), where obsessing and lamenting about one’s body becomes
unavoidable. Given the prevalence of western images of bodies and appearance, I was
interested in finding out how women in urban India interpreted these images.
Since most of the women I interviewed learned about their diets from browsing
the internet and registering with e-diets or from fashion magazines like Cosmopolitan, I
was particularly interested in the extent to which the women were incorporating western
ideas about bodies into their own practices of eating. In sharp contrast to the findings of
research done on American women, I found that the women in my study, unless probed,
rarely volunteered that their dieting was guided by appearance. Direct references to
appearance were conspicuously missing from most accounts. On further probing,
however, I found that the appearance motive of losing weight was not missing but present in covert ways. i. Dieting is not about good looks (appearances)
In the beginning of the interviews, most of the women denied that they dieted
only to ‘look good’. Radha, for example, cautiously shared that her appearance mattered,
but she qualified,
Yes to an extent, but if you ask me if I am beauty conscious then I am not. I am not going to eat things to look good, you know to be slim and trim, and I am not that kind of person. See, looks-wise I am happy the way I am but again you know as I said the mirror does not [seem to] reflect the same person. I cannot wear the sari [traditional attire] for the fat it shows. Maybe it is not as bad as the person next to you. Whatever! But, but at the back of your mind you know it [ her fat] was not there earlier and now it is there. Otherwise it is not like, I do not eat things just to look beautiful, and no I do not. [Radha 28, Sales Personnel, English]
152 Radha is quite emphatic that her wanting to lose weight has nothing to do with looking good as she is not “beauty conscious”. Instead she links her appearance concerns with the realization that her body no longer looks the way it used to. She pointed out that the fat she has gained in the last few years has been bothering her “every waking moment”, thereby clearly implying that her current weight challenged her satisfaction with her looks. In this way, the women simultaneously acknowledged weight concerns and rejected dieting out of vanity. Sumita used the “beauty is skin deep” metaphor to make this point;
I think it (losing weight) is not superficial but goes deeper into your personality. Say if you stay trim, I am not saying thin, skinny and all that but it makes you more confident as a person. I know when I go for a walk or exercise or stay in shape, when you do not binge too much, you feel very sharp and alert and fresh. So it is something deeper than that as well. Something mental than just being physical [Sumita, 27, Upper Middle Class, Market Researcher, English]
Meera similarly elaborated on how weight gain can influence self image;
I would not say [dieting is related to appearance]. By being thin you will look beautiful has no connection. You have a self image and I am working on my self image and not looking at a model [wanting] to be like her. You were a particular weight and you liked what you saw and that is what you want to be. In fact lots of people do not look good when they lose weight [Meera, 28, Upper Middle Class, Market Researcher, English]
Meera, like several other women, wants to go back to her original weight and gain some stability in the way she looks. At the same time she is not aspiring to a model’s look, nor does she think that becoming thin will automatically make her look good. For the women physical beauty was not dependent on weight per se but instead on the presentation of self. And yet, some of the women acknowledged that weight might have something to do with presenting an attractive self. Meera, for example, observed,
153 Socially you are driven to lose weight and fit into smaller sizes of clothes and for me that is not definition of beauty or physical beauty. Physical beauty would also depend on how you carry yourself, how confident you are and how you present yourself which I do not think is related to weight alone. But if you probably had less weight and a better toned body then you would feel good about yourself. So, I think they are connected, maybe not directly but definitely indirectly
Here Meera is talking about the thinness norm that is gaining a foothold in
society. Although she grants that some women can potentially benefit from losing weight,
she thinks of it as an “indirect” effect that bears no necessary relationship with looking
good or presenting a confident self.
However there were other women in the sample who did see a direct relation
between being a smaller size and feeling good. This relationship was most clearly
explicated when the women spoke of their ability to fit into clothes, especially western
clothes like trousers, skirts and dresses that seemed designed for a particular body type.
I feel the pangs of looking bad when I go to a mall and pick something and my size is not there and then when there is a size I have to stuff myself into it. I look like a stuffed thing and that really puts my [self] esteem down. There is a lot of confidence in looking good [Sumita, 27, Upper Middle Class, Market Researcher, English]
Earlier I had an inferiority complex that I am putting on so much weight, like going to a wedding I would not feel nice in the clothes I was wearing. I would get a complex because people would say, ‘you were so thin before marriage and now you have become like this.’ [Laali, 45, Housewife, Upper Middle Class, Bengali]
From the above quotes it is evident that the women thought their weight interfered with their ability to look good. The women felt their weight when they could not fit into their clothes or when someone commented on their weight. Being able to fit into clothes was a matter of grave concern and in some instances were incentives to lose weight. For
Sumita, “The main reason to lose weight is to be able fit into clothes, you know. Not
154 looks, but so that you can wear anything. When you are fat you are limited in what you
wear. You wear something outlandish, you tend to look vulgar and thin people never look
vulgar.” But the purpose of this statement was also to indicate the perils fat people might
encounter if they did want to experiment with their clothes, a predicament which Sumita
herself does not want to encounter. It is important to note that by fitting into clothes she is referring to new styles of dressing, both western and ethnic wears (like salwaar kameez, sari) that has flooded the market.
The shift in the garment industry in India has had an impact on people’s willingness to experiment with new styles of clothing. Experimenting with clothes, like mixing the latest international styles and cuts with indigenous items, is a sign of being fashionable in urban India. But the shift has also brought a move away from one-size-fits- all clothes to standardized and incremental sizes, for both western and traditional garments, which in turn have brought awareness that, to fit properly, clothes require a particular body shape, and that shape is distinctly lean and free of excess fat. This belief that particular clothes require particular body shapes also emerged in accounts of women who did not aspire to wear such clothes. Mina was one of them. She shared,
Well if you have a slim figure, then you will look beautiful in whatever clothes you wear. If you are fatty [local term used to explain fat] you do not look good in any kind of clothes. This is something that I think, but then I can see it as well. I [have] see[n] this so now I understand. If a girl is very healthy and she wears “salwaar” [locally worn dress] or jeans or pants then it looks very bad. But if a slim girl wears it then they look good [Mina, 34, Lower Middle Class, Housewife, Bengali]
By barring fat people from wearing jeans, pants and even “salwaar kameez”, which is a popular two piece attire, Mina leaves very little options for people who are fat.
Thus both Mina and Sumita were policing what they thought of as proper attire for fat
155 people. There was also women, like Sarika, who talked of their struggles with daily, regular clothes. “Yes, because I want to lose weight. Suppose, one year ago the clothes that I had, actually only a few months back the clothes that I had, I cannot wear even one of them. I have gained so much weight.” She continued, “I was coming back from the gym, my mother told me that some one on the street was looking at my belly. He must have been wondering why my belly is so big, even when I am not married. I felt very embarrassed, so I have been wearing lose clothes. I have to lose weight and get a flat stomach.” [Sarika, 24, MBA student, Bengali, used the word “stomach” to describe her belly]
To these women wearing clothes that revealed any amount of fat led to an
“inferiority complex”, low self-esteem, or “embarrassment” and hence acted as a drive to lose weight. In this sense, physical weight had a direct relation with how the women felt about themselves and how they thought they were perceived by others. And yet, the women made sure that their efforts to lose weight were not misconstrued as efforts to beautify or enhance their looks. For example, Sumita said, “The main reason to lose weight is to be able fit into clothes, you know. Not looks but so that you can wear anything” Laali when explaining her weight loss said, “But I did not think that I needed to look beautiful, that was not in my mind.” Similarly for Sarika, “I do not know if it is to look good. Yes, in comparison to some one very fat, I do prefer someone who is slimmer.” Therefore appearance was not about how one looked but how one felt. So far we have seen that women described appearance both as a physical and mental attribute, but oftentimes they transcended this duality to claim that their eating restrictions were about achieving a particular mental state.
156 As I have argued earlier the need felt by the women to qualify the physical
aspects of appearance was a strategy they adopted to maintain their self-image as
independent, strong-willed women. In other words, not attaching importance to
appearance is a strategy to minimize the influence of appearance in determining self
worth. Their reluctance to give credence to appearance as a legitimate motive for
managing their food intake can also be viewed as an effort to break free of a tradition that has told them for centuries that their self worth lies in their physical appearance. In contemporary Indian communities the patriarchal belief that physical appearance is the most important determinant of a women’s fate (in getting married) still holds strong.40
Thus, in rejecting the appearance motive the women I interviewed were simultaneously rejecting a traditional culture that expected them to deny and suppress personal interests. In their study, Pyke and Johnson (2003) similarly found that second generation Vietnamese and Korean young women who were raised in United States often shunned traditional meanings of womanhood like being home-bound, submissive and obedient. The researcher concluded that their subjects’ intense feelings about tradition was because second-generation Americans live in oppositional worlds, where home means suppressing one’s identity and main stream society means freedom to express one’s true nature.41
40 In the marriage market, there is a high demand for beautiful women. Often times beautiful means fair- skinned, thin and young 41 However I would like to argue that in the Pyke and Johnson study, the negative emotions attached to tradition was also a consequence of the submissiveness that they had seen women in the previous generation experience. The researchers also found that younger women felt that they were often treated as juveniles by the elderly in their immediate and extended family. The problem was that the women thought of a traditional identity true for only their family and community setting, while they believed that mainstream society was not as oppressive. The young women therefore lived in oppositional worlds. In a recent study on Arab Americans, Read(2008) found that in Arab communities mainstream American society is thought of as corrupt and full of traps that weaken communal ties and family and community settings safe for the women.
157 In conclusion, although many of the women indicated that there was a link
between weight and appearance, especially in terms of clothes, and although many of
them expressed dissatisfaction with their own weight, almost all women rejected the
suggestion that their efforts to lose weight were guided primarily by an appearance motive. In this way, the women simultaneously took a stance against the western culture
of thinness and distanced themselves from the traditional emphasis on women’s beauty.
In their stead, the women constructed new reasons for wanting to lose weight that did not
automatically link them to either mindless vanity (in the western sense) or blind
submission to beauty standards (in the traditional sense). One such new reason referred to
the mental dimensions of losing weight, which amounted to a celebration of the virtues of
perseverance and control involved in eating less. This I turn to next.
ii. Dieting is about appearance but it is “mental”
For most of the women in the study appearance was more a matter of the mind
than the body as it enabled them to feel confident, alert and energetic. Anita mentioned
that, “Once I lost weight, friends who have seen me really appreciated it and said, ‘you
are looking really good, you know, you have lost weight, keep that up’ -then that gives
you lot of confidence. Although I am kind of person that when I was fat it never bothered
me, it happened so that I lost weight and people appreciated me.” [Anita, 21, College
Student/Part-time Model, English] Anita’s newly discovered confidence lies in the
appreciation that she found in people’s comments about her weight loss. In contrast
Sumita said, “I do not want people to tell me that I am looking good. I know I am looking
good and it gives me a confidence, it is very stimulating.” In Anita’s case it was direct
acknowledgements of weight loss by others that made her feel confident while for Sumita
158 it was more of an implicit understanding that others were appreciating her weight loss or
thinking of her as a confident person. This mental state of feeling confident in how they
looked came across as a matter of personal satisfaction even though it was invested in
what other people had to say.
Being fit, losing weight and staying light also meant staying young for some
women in the study. For Chandi, her eating practices helped her control her weight and
had the additional advantage of making her look young. She said, “Another thing I do not
like at all is to look old very early, which is why I do it [dieting].” Staying young was the
ability to delay the onslaughts of physical aging like fatigue and tiredness. Young in these
accounts meant transcending the physical limits of aging:
It also gives you more mileage probably [when you are ] growing old at forty and pushing fifty and you start showing the signs of age, not just physical age but also the fatigue that comes with age. You can probably push back [your physical age] if you take good care of your body [Radha, 28, Sales Personnel, English]
I found the word ‘mileage’ significant here. Radha believed that eating correctly at this age would give her mileage or gains that she could utilize later in life. The gain in her case would be to push back her biological age and the physical complications that come along with it. Therefore looking good apart from fitting into a particular size entailed feeling confident, energetic and young.
In this way, the women in the study turned the physicality of appearance into a mental attribute. However what was ironic about these accounts was that this feeling of being energetic and alert was contingent on a particular body shape or, as I show below, a body that was free of fat. Also it is evident from the accounts that feelings of confidence
159 and stimulation were often contingent upon the acknowledgment and comments of their family and friend. iii. Appearance is about life chances
In spite of a variety of renditions of what it meant to look good, there was an overarching sense that people were living at a time and in a society where appearance mattered, if not to them, then to others. Some also believed that appearance would make a difference in the life chances of people. The two quotes below speak to that,
There is a saying, “darshon bhaari” [your appearance matters], definitely, you need to look good, you should look good. I am not saying that you should not be educated, you should definitely but then there is a fifty-fifty chance in career. [Aami, 20, Middle Class, Student, English, words in “” said in Hindi]
Yes, see, think of now- a -days it is, “darshaan daari baad mein gun bichari” [first your appearance counts, then your merit], first of all your looks should be fine. Now- a -days it is more; if you think in most places there is a thing about looking good, even in terms of getting a job[Aarti 18, Lower Middle Class, Student, Bengali, words in “” said in Hindi]
Both these young women were conscious of their weight and did minimal dieting to lose weight. Both also made the connection that with the coming of an appearance- based society their looks are going to be important determinants of their career. Therefore for them dieting and staying slim were in a sense preparations aimed at maximizing their chances of a better life. Aarti made reference to a popular sitcom, “Jassi jaisi koi nahin”
[There is no one like Jassi] to make her point. “Jassi” is the central character in a popular
TV series who faces much ridicule because of her unbecoming style of dressing (similar to the American hit series “Ugly Betty”). Aarti strongly sympathized with Jassi’s character and felt that the depiction of Jassi’s struggles in an appearance-based society was not merely an imaginary rendition of life but captured a very real aspect of modern
160 life. Aarti strongly felt that her own appearance will matter in building a career in the
future.
Others specified that appearance would matter most in professions that required handling public relations. Sarika said:
Right now, I am a student so it is personal but if I was working, if I was like in public relations then I would definitely have to be good looking, because in PR [personnel relations] you need this a lot .If I was working then it would be in my professional field and would depend on the phase of life that I am passing through [Sarika, 24, Middle Class, MBA student, Bengali]
Sarika is getting her MBA degree and sees herself getting a professional job in the
near future. She feels that once she starts working her efforts at losing weight will no
longer be only for personal reasons but also to meet the requirement of a professional
field where looks matter. Most young women in the study, like Sarika, made the
connection that in an appearance-based society, looking good, which to them meant
staying slim was, going to be a deciding factor in their careers. Dieting and staying slim
was one of the ways of achieving that.
Thus far I have documented how the women I interviewed thought of the relation
between dieting and appearance. While some women did not think of appearance or
improving one’s look as a purported goal of their weight loss practices, others maintained
that losing weight worked as personality-enhancers that made them feel confident,
energetic and alert. Yet others saw the importance of appearance in their professional
lives. Others have argued that physical appearance often is used as a proxy for
personality traits that are not otherwise readily visible (Chapkis, 1988); for example, a
thin, lean body becomes a sign of capacity and energy whereas a fat body with flab
becomes a sign of laziness and inflexibility. In the case of women, their appearance
161 becomes the first criterion for determining future success. But this is not simply an
internalization of ideas of how women should look, but also a possibility that women
willingly take on the “dress as success” mantra in order to make a statement about their
personal financial authority. 42
The data shows that the importance the women attached to appearance varied by social location. The women who were most skeptical of the appearance motive were those who were already living up to the image of the new woman as successful professionals whereas those who spoke of the benefits of appearance tended to be educated or professionally trained younger women from lower middle class and middle class backgrounds.43 These were the women who were about to embark on individual careers. Hesse-Biber (2007) makes a similar argument in her revised edition of “The Cult of Thinness”, that in the United States the new recruits to the thinness norm are adolescent men, gay professionals and women of color who are climbing the economic ladder.44
In spite of the success and awareness of the feminist movement and philosophy,
feminists are still grappling with the persistence of the notion that thinness somehow
dictates self-worth in women. Davis (1995), for example, has recently implored feminists
to reflect on women’s own roles in perpetuating some of these beliefs and practices that
42 For example; Chapkis in her book “Beauty Secrets” argues that “Traditionally, a woman dressed in money has been assumed to be making a statement not about her, but about a man. Increasingly, though, women are finding the need to indicate personal financial authority through their dress.” [pg.80] 43 Women saying that becoming successful meant fifty percent looking good and fifty percent having merit seemed to be a direct evidence of Chapkis making the argument that, “Looking successful is more than half the battle in actually achieving professional success.” 44 For example, Hesse-Biber reports a plastic surgeon’s comment on why men now are under the pressure to go under the knife. Men need “a physical appearance that is consistent with his power and his place in society.”
162 constantly encourage women to change and improve their appearance.45 Pushing beyond radical feminists who argue that it is women who shy away from challenging patriarchal power that are most likely to participate in the appearance race (Cherin, 1981), Davis, in her study of cosmetic surgery, found that women who want to maintain their privileged status bestowed on them by a patriarchal structure tend to embrace corrective bodily practices. Therefore, unlike most other feminists Davis, is suggesting that it is women who have something to gain from a patriarchal structure will embrace these practices the most.
The new woman in India, as mentioned earlier, tend to be educated, professionally or technically skilled and, as some would argue, are riding on the crest of economic success with the integration of local economy with world markets. In my study
I found that women with professional and managerial skills were the most willing to embrace a thin body type. For these women, a physically attractive body was associated with benefits like better prospects at work or appreciation from family members. Davis
(1995), when defining western societies, argues that women, in spite of their individual economic successes are still grappling with their identities in a society that is permeated with patriarchal norms. Therefore women adopt practices (like breast augmentation) to develop comfortable relationships with their bodies and not merely to please others. In the case of the new woman of India it is the opposite. Amidst larger economic and structural changes, women trying to build new identities were most keen on building new bodies. However, Davis’s emphasis on the body as a site where women try to carve out freedom and gain advantages is applicable to the new Indian woman as well.
45 Many argue that this kind of enquiry emphasizes on women’s motivation for participating in patriarchy
163
iv. Dieting is about keeping the fat off
Unlike the reluctance to talk about the appearance motive in their dieting, the
women openly talked about losing weight out of concerns of being fat. None of the
women in the study was morbidly obese and none was trying to lose large amounts of
weight. However, most women talked about becoming fat as a negative thing. This was
not surprising given the fact that fat people have always been made fun of in. Folk Indian
stories and fables have fat caricatures in them that are considered to be funny or comical.
In a society where commenting on one’s physical appearance is commonplace, fat people
still run the risk of being made fun in public spaces. But women, rather younger women
in their marriageable age are admonished and penalized the most for being fat.
The fear of fat showed up particularly amongst the young women in the study.
Aarti, was one of the few person who candidly said, “I am a bit fatty” [a local term used
to mean fat] and continued, “See mainly I have a “healthy” figure, I have an aunt who is really “healthy”, our whole family is very “healthy”. I diet so that I do not become like them. In my family people tend to eat a lot. From a very young age I have been seeing that a lot of effort and time is spent on preparation of food.” Aarti is concerned that she might have inherited her family tendency to become “fatty” or “healthy”. 46 Her fear of
becoming fat becomes evident when she said, “when you become ‘fatty’ you look
horrible, don’t people look horrible when they become fat?” Similar to the disdain
expressed for starving, the women showed open contempt for people who are fat. Young
women talked of the social ridicule of fat people.
46 Aarti is using the words “fatty” and “healthy” interchangeably to mean someone who is overweight. I also found other English words that were used to talk about fat people like the word “rolly”. Some would also raise their arms slightly to describe a fat person
164 As it is I am fat, and if I gain any more weight then that is it. If I take a rickshaw, he (rickshaw puller) will ask me to get off (laughs) [Moira, 21, Lower Middle Class, High School Student, Bengali]
Moira feels that if she gains more weight she might be asked to get off a rickshaw
(hand pulled cart) “That is it” is a popularly used phrase and when translated means it is going to be the end of things or that it is a situation with very few options available. In other words, Moira is saying that becoming fat will cause her embarrassment. Others spoke of how they were called “elephants” or “baby elephants” because they were fat.
My friend used to call me baby elephant. In the last six months I have reduced 6 kilos. I feel I need to be conscious, about cheese and butter [Anita 21, Middle Class, College Student/Part time Model, English]
My mother keeps telling me that I am gaining weight, that I am not looking good. Some of my friends have been telling me and I can quote them, that, You are looking as fat as an elephant. That is when I think that I need to lose some weight, or else people have been talking about me [Sarika, 24, Middle Class, MBA student, Bengali]
Most women in the study were conscious of being laughed at for being fat. When
I asked Sumita about the problems with becoming fat, she replied, “First, I cannot wear clothes, second when I am wearing the nice clothes, it is not looking good. ‘Looking good’ is not the same as looking ‘beautiful’, but at least if I am wearing my jeans it should look fine.” For many of these women looking fine was not the same thing as looking beautiful but was contingent on not being fat. Sumita elaborated on “looking good”; “Fat has a relation to looking good. I just feel that if you are thin or slim then you can wear the latest clothes and carry it off without looking vulgar. I think cheap, fat, flabby or have people passing a comment that ‘she is so fat’, that makes you wish that you had not worn those clothes.”
165 When I asked Sumita if anyone had commented about her weight, she told me
that she has heard her male friends pass comments about fat girls, “I have seen guys
passing comments. But I have never been that fat and have not faced it myself but I have
seen my friends face it around me. Also I have guy friends who pass comments about
women (laughs) so I know that and I don’t ever want to fall into that stage.” But it was
not only strangers commenting on their weight that had the respondents worried.
Neighbors could also comment on their weight. Moira mentioned that one of the reasons
for her decision to be careful of what she ate was her neighbor. When asked why she
diets, she responded by saying, “[to] Lose weight! (Laughs) my neighbor keeps on asking
me to lose weight.” Aarti similarly relayed how her neighbor, an elderly lady, had been
telling her mother not to give Aarti rice in her meals as it was going to make her fat. Aarti
reminisced, “After my tenth grade I was home for three months, and then I had gained a
lot of weight. Everyone would tell me, ‘do not gain anymore weight’.”[Aarti, 18, High
School student, Lower Middle Class]
Aarti and Moira represent the experiences of young women whose weight gain or
even a possibility of weight gain was met with skepticism from family, friends, and
neighbors and in some cases from strangers. It is important to note that commenting on
each other’s physical appearance is a common practice in Indian communities. In her
own ethnographic study of beauty pageants in Indian metropolises, cultural
anthropologist Susan Runkle (2005) found that her subjects would draw her into
discussions of looks and skin complexion.47 Therefore some of the experiences of the
47 Runkle notes, “I attended one film screening of a recent Aishwarya Rai film with a friend who noted that the 25-year-old actress was "looking really old and haggard." Yet what may appear as a malicious comment is actually a product of a cultural system that is extremely accustomed to the standardized evaluation of beauty. What is considered beautiful is often very clear - beauty is fair, tall, and slim, as the matrimonial
166 young women in my study, like being asked to lose weight by their neighbors, were not
uncommon. However it is important to keep in mind that it was women of marriageable
age who were most susceptible to the scrutiny of others.
In a society where arranged marriage is still prevalent, and where postings in
matrimonial columns specify that the groom, or his family, wants a thin and lean girl who
is also educated.48 Hence young women are under pressure to be thin. As I have shown, it
was usually a relative, neighbor or friend who pointed out to the women that they had
gained weight. Some of them talked of a direct family influence, particularly their
mothers, in their decision to lose weight. These findings are not surprising considering
the fact that these were accounts of mostly young women of marriageable age who are
part of a society where being fat continues to be a negative mark against girls entering the
marriage market. That the mothers were urging them to lose weight is indicative of the
fact that the mothers were operating under a fear typically found in patriarchal societies that fat girls are not eligible for marriage. In addition, generalized others (like neighbors) also chipped in to remind young girls about their weight. They served as messengers of a patriarchal society that physical beauty is still an important determinant of the fate of women.
If losing weight for young women to find an idle groom was remnant of a traditional arrangement, fat had taken on a contemporary meaning as well. The traditional expectation that only young women must be thin is changing, which is evidenced by the several women in my study who were already married and still were trying to lose
ads placed by families in search of a bride for their son consistently mention. The practice of judging women's appearance is deeply ingrained in South Asia, like the practice of "seeing girls," in which young women are brought for the evaluation of a family as part of prospective marriage proposals.” 48 or belonging to a particular caste or region
167 weight. Sumita, who has been married for one year, dreaded becoming fat as it could be
misconstrued as an indication that she was a person without ambitions in life. She says, “I
do not want to get into the rut of being a fat housewife who has nothing in life and whose
[life’s] end is just raising kids. That whole notion just freaks me out, so I feel I should
stay away from falling into that mould.” Sumita does not want to be identified as a fat
housewife now that she is married. She was also mildly surprised that her mother of all
people chided her to lose weight,
Even my mother, for example earlier used to say ‘eat and eat’ and now she says ‘lose weight.’ It is coming not only from my peers; it is coming from my mother, even my mother’s sister. After marriage I was putting on some weight, and they told me, ‘What is wrong with you? Why do you not exercise? You are becoming “rolly.’ Even the notion that weight is for prosperity or looks good is changing in the older generation. My mother has become very conscious and she walks eight kilometers every day. So when I see my mom doing that, I think what the hell am I doing? Usually mothers are always feeding their children, but when my mother is telling me what to eat and not to eat, I wonder what is happening? [Sumita, 27, Upper Middle Class, Market Researcher, English]
Sumita is surprised that her mother and aunts, women of an earlier generation,
have started questioning her weight gain and asking her why she is becoming “rolly”
(another term used to describe fat). She thinks that there has been a shift in the traditional
thinking that fat is desirable or that it means being endowed with wealth and good
health.49 But she was not the only one trying to lose weight after marriage. She says,
“One of my colleagues Shaara is getting married so she has been like ‘I have to lose
weight before marriage,’ Aandhi [is like she] has to lose weight after marriage; whatever
stage [in life] you are in, you want to lose weight.” Sumita is convinced that losing
49 Hesse-Biber documents Bradley Massara’s 1989 study where she found that in Puerto Rican communities the need to be thin for women subsides after marriage. Instead she documents how women are expected to gain weight as a sign of marital happiness or that she is being well provided for.
168 weight is no longer confined to finding a marriage partner. Aami, similarly, concluded
that being free of fat is a requirement of the times and not associated with age,
Some of my friends have told me I am fat. Recently I feel I have not been able to wear my dresses. I think I am normal but I need to be a bit slimmer. I want to be between slim and normal. Mostly friends, maybe only a handful tell me I am fat, either it is psychological or it is a trend coming in, but I have to lose weight; is it not the moral of the story? [Aami, 20, College Student, English]
I would like to draw attention to Ami’s choice of words, ‘is it not the moral of the story?’ to describe the compulsion she feels towards losing weight. She is referring to the fact that losing weight was something that everyone was doing but by calling it ‘moral’ she is hinting at the lesson underlying such practices that needs to be learnt. The lesson was that everybody was trying – and should be trying – to lose weight.
So far I have documented how some women feared fat and wanted to lose weight to avoid being embarrassed and coming under public glare. While the prospect of being ridiculed for being fat remains unchanged, the women did not think that being of marriageable age was the only incentive to lose weight. Women like Sumita are seeing around them women at different stages of life, including their own mothers, who are trying to lose weight, which indicates that being fat is no longer fashionable. The assumption that all women are trying to lose weight is a result of the new identity that these women are carving that is separate from the traditional one associated with their roles as mother and wives. The traditional expectation was that weight gain after marriage is acceptable and even desirable in some cases.
For others, like Aarti, losing weight is in anticipation of a new public life that she was going to embark upon. Aarti shared with me, “My mother and my sister are always asking me to be careful. They keep telling me, ‘After this you are going to go to college,
169 there are instances of ‘eve-teasing’ in colleges.” Eve-teasing is a term used to describe
obscenities or harassments that girls encounter in the streets or when traveling. When
Aarti’s mother asked her to lose weight, she was trying to prepare Aarti for public spaces
where fat people, especially girls, were frequently made fun of.
Aarti is one of those young women who has recently finished high school and is
on the verge of “making a career” [career said in English] for herself. She maintained
throughout the interview that that her weight loss efforts were in some ways a preparation
for that life. What makes Aarti’s case further interesting is that she simultaneously
maintained that her dieting was not really important to her. She was doing it to lose some
weight and would stop after reaching her desired weight. Aarti represents the new Indian
woman, someone who is expected to venture into a professional career while not
transgressing traditional expectations. Aarti finds dieting useful only in meeting her
professional aspirations only and did not think of it as a personal habit.
Families in lower middle class locations like the middle class sections of society
believe that rapid globalization of urban centers will lead to the opening of new and more
varied job opportunities (Ganguly-Scarse, 2003).50 Simultaneously there is also the belief
that young educated women, along with educated men, were going to reap the benefits of such opportunities. Aarti and her mother therefore think of weight loss as a preparation for a public life. But it was clear that fear of fat had started affecting women other than
those in their marriageable age. The tolerance for what is considered fat especially in
public spaces like in colleges and workplaces has lowered considerably.
50 The author in her study showed a trend that in developing countries like India, the rhetoric of growth in cultural globalization does not match the structural distribution of wealth. In fact in these societies the distribution of income is becoming unequal with liberalization of the economy.
170
B. Dieting is about health
In contrast to the ambivalence that permeated the women’s thoughts around dieting for “looks”, dieting for health reasons was met with general approval. In fact, the first association that the women made regarding their eating was that they were doing it out of considerations for their health. In what follows I show, how the women appropriate a health motive to adopt dietary practices in their lives. For some health meant being careful of health risks and for others it meant being fit and free of fat. As I will demonstrate the women harp on the health motive to exhibit their rational, educated minds. i. Dieting is being conscientious of health risks
Several of the women indicated that their eating habits were dictated by the hazards of living in contemporary times. Meera explained,
I am becoming more conscious towards health, for example, now a day I am having a vitamin capsule for I think you need to take a vitamin supplement. That’s probably leading me to such choices that I make. [Meera, 28, Market researcher, English]
The word “becoming” in Meera’s account indicates that she has only recently become health conscious and her health consciousness has been influenced by the life that she lives,
I definitely think it [health] is very important, not just diet. Especially for our lives, even if you think of exercise you cannot do it because of work or something. Diet is something you can do instantly, probably having one ‘ruti’ [flatbread] instead of two and make that much change [Meera, 28, Market Researcher, English]
171 For Meera, her aspirations for healthy living have been affected by a lack of
exercise so the next healthy option for her has been to change her eating habits. Meera’s
concern is shared by several other women who feel that that the “need” to be health
conscious is an imperative of the times and the kind of life style that they lead. Sumita
further reiterates,
It is because of [all these] diseases. One of them is obesity, one is the desk jobs that you have, [where] you do not move around and are limited to your space. So everyone is therefore putting on weight because you are not exercising at all. Also if you drink, you put on weight a lot. Drinking is also another thing in our age and life style. Fridays and Saturdays especially is drinking time. I think life style changes are making people put on weight. Now you have Pizza hut, you do not have a McDonald’s but you have so many fast food options today. When you want to grab a food they are quicker and faster so you tend to eat that but again they are junk. So life style; I think it is the lifestyle and the life stage we are all in and the jobs that we all have. In our life style there is no time to exercise, so what do you do to keep in shape? Cut down on food [Sumita, 27, Market Researcher, English]
Sumita is referring to the irony of the McDonaldization of life, even when there were no McDonalds in the city. She is talking of a “lifestyle” that is sedentary when it comes to work yet fast paced around other activities which for her meant having no time to prepare healthy meals for herself and instead relying on unhealthy fast food options.
For women who are yearning for a healthy life style, cutting down on food portions easily becomes a substitute for eating “right”. Radha talked about eating right as “investing” in her health. Radha was one of the first to introduce the concept of “investing in health”,
I try my best not to have too much of cheese or butter or bread if possible. I try and have ground bread. I do not have too much of red meat, the whole concept of you know you are investing in your health, so you cut down on red meat as much as possible [Radha, 28, Sales Personnel, English]
172 Radha goes on to say that, “Whatever little I can do I do not want to miss out on the opportunity. I have two helpings of fruit or salad every day and I try and avoid fried food. Investing in your health means I do not want to get blood pressure or thyroid later.” Investing in health therefore meant to be cognizant of the long term consequences of the kind of food that she ate. This need to be health conscious for what lies ahead was expressed by other women as well. Aami who is only a twenty year old college student already feels the need to take care of her health.
I think in my age, I should maintain a proper diet. I am going to suffer at an old age, so lot of red meat at this age is definitely going to give me a heart trouble. I am not a far sighted person but this is always in my mind. It is needed, not only for me but for all age groups; every body needs a proper diet [Aami, 20, College Student, English]
For these women a diet free of proteins and carbohydrates meant a healthy diet that would protect them from health complications in the future. Radha gave a detailed account of what investing in health means to her, “If you do not work on your health in what you eat, by the time you are thirty two you will have a heart attack or you will have thyroid, diabetes or blood pressure.” The central argument underlying this reasoning was that it was the times in which they were living that aggravated the risk of current as well as future health problems, “There is so much of stress that you live with nowadays. Life has become so stressful; there is work, there is home and then there is extracurricular
[activities].” Radha also spoke of problems around future childbearing,
You know I am going to have a child in two, three, and whatever x number of years. But with my weight and lack of exercise it is playing on my mind that it is going to affect my child. I may not be able to conceive. I read in a magazine that stress, weight and bad health may lead to problems in conceiving. There are complications now which were not there earlier so those things are definitely playing on my mind [Radha, 28, Sales Personnel, English]
173 By invoking future health complications in spite of having had none to date, she is referring to the unpredictability of contemporary living. Health problems were not necessarily associated with aging but with the stress of contemporary life, so Radha feels,
“whatever little I can do, I do not want to miss out on the opportunity.” For Radha, taking care of eating was one of the “whatever little” actions she could undertake to assuage the problems of a stress-ridden life. Therefore dieting for health reasons was couched in the rigors of leading stressful lives. The women that I have mentioned had similar professional engagements and aspirations and seemed to be united in their belief that they were leading hectic, unpredictable lives. The sense of stress was coming from their engagement with the modern economy.51 Therefore for these women eating right meant that they were informed of and dedicated to a healthy life style and also that they were responsible and taking actions towards reaching that goal. ii. Dieting is about being “fit” and healthy
For the women mentioned so far, keeping good health meant to be free of diseases, but for many it also meant to be fit. When I asked Laali why she dieted, her reply was,
To keep myself fit [How long have you been doing this?] I have been doing it for the last ten years; I have been doing it like this. [Why did you think of doing this?] I saw that after having two children my body had become very lethargic. Then I would talk to my friends and some of them had done these programs. I saw that they had reduced [their weight] and so I decided to go there [Laali, 45, Housewife, Bengali]
51 For example; Sumita equates obesity and desk jobs as “diseases” of modern living. One explanation could be that she sees people doing sedentary jobs being prone to health problems
174 Laali, a housewife and mother of two, wanted to find a cure for her lethargy and
consulted a dietician. But her decision to go to the dietician to find a cure for her lethargy
was because she saw her friends “drastically” lose weight. In fact when I asked her why
being fit was important to her, she said that she wanted to be a good mother and a good housewife. So Laali believed that losing weight was a prerequisite for not only feeling fit
but being productive. Most of the women linked having a fit body being healthy. For
example,
Losing weight in isolation does not have much importance in my life. [Why?] It is losing weight (pause), how do I put it? But not losing health. I want to lose it is in such a way that I do not become weak. So I guess health would be a long drawn objective but losing weight is the current objective. Losing weight with probably being fitter and more toned would help me become more energized. It would be connected. [Meera, 28, Market Researcher, English]
Here Meera maintains that losing weight will give her immediate benefits like becoming toned and fit that in the long run will accumulate into health benefits. So for her, being fit, toned and healthy are all related to each other. In other accounts as well I found a similar pattern where being fat was associated with lethargy and tiredness. Sarika
shared with me that she prefers a thin body,
Yes, in comparison to someone very fat, I do prefer some one who is slimmer. It looks good, also it keeps you fit and you can work hard. If I am fat then I will lose breathe easily, like if I need to climb stairs then I do not have to climb the stairs panting…. [Sarika, 24, Management Student, Bengali]
I want to feel energetic and to make sure that my weight does not increase. If your weight increases other things in your body suffers [Chandi, 46, Senior Engineer, Bengali]
Both of the women felt that gaining weight would make them inactive and impede
their physical mobility. Sarika also commented that, “I would not say people who are fat
175 are not active. I have a friend in college, she is very active but that again is very rare,”
hinting that being fat and active at the same time is an oddity. Even women who did not
follow any dietary controls also believed that being fat leads to tiredness and lethargy.
For example,
I have seen that I have gained some weight, and sometimes I have a problem getting my work done. Definitely if I can be thinner it would be better, but for being thin I have to diet, but cannot get around doing that. [Dora, 30, School Teacher, Bengali]
Honestly, I would like to know some more about dieting, I want to be health conscious but with work and home I do not have the time. [Alaaya, 46, Accountant, Bengali, words said in English]
These women believed that their tiredness is due to their current weight, and their disinterest in dieting is not out of a lack of concern of their weight but instead due to a lack of time. Laali, whom I had introduced at the beginning of this section, strongly believes that her eating regulations made a lot of difference in her daily activities,
I feel happy. When I get up in the morning, the first thing that clicks in my head is that I have lost certain amount of weight, I am feeling nice. Earlier, when I would get up in the morning I did not feel like getting up. One should feel fresh when they get up. Nobody was there to motivate me. My husband is very nice; it [my being fat] does not bother him at all. He would say what the problem in being fat is but try to remain fit.
Laali had not yet reached her target weight, but the knowledge that she was losing weight made her feel happy and acted as a propellant for carrying on for the rest of the day. Chandi similarly maintained that,
Now I have a lot of energy, people who know me know that I can work from seven in the morning till two in the afternoon. I can work by sleeping four to five days in the night. [It is because of what you eat?] Yes, plus health and fitness [That is why you feel fit?] Yes [Chandi, 46, Senior Engineer, Bengali]
176
Meera has also recently stopped eating carbohydrates and felt the same way.
Another good thing is that I am not feeling energy starved. Many a times it happens that you are trying to lose weight very fast and you end up feeling sapped, weak and get a craving for more food. I am not experiencing that anymore. I am not getting any cravings, junk food or anything extra. I am not getting those hunger pangs which would drive me back into eating what I have been eating. I just tried out this technique and I think it is working cool; lessening the amount of carbohydrates is not having any side effects on me or not seeing any bad effects. [Meera, 28, Market Researcher, English]
In short, all these women were convinced that their eating habits boosted their
energy level.
So far I have shown that, regardless of age, income or occupational differences,
the women linked fitness to a body that was energetic and active. So while fitness was
contingent on a particular body weight, or in other words a body free of fat, the emphasis
was on how they experienced their bodies in terms of feeling alert, agile or full of energy.
In this sense fitness, like their discussions on appearance became a matter of the mind.
At the same time the women maintained that a fit body should not be confused with thinness. In doing so, most women showed a disdain towards thinness. Their concern was that a thin body does not project a fit look and hence it is not appealing. For example,
My opinion is that if people are excessively thin they look undernourished. I feel people look really good when they look fit, when there body is muscular and taut and they have exercised and eaten the right food. Because they are well toned and well shaped and they have energy and it shows on their face. A hungry face does not look attractive, it looks hungry. Thin and no flesh looks like a bag of bones and nothing else [Radha, 28, Sales Personnel, English]
If you stay fit, physically fit, you will look beautiful. It is not about being slim. You should have a good body, should have good muscles and a tight abdomen. Not really slim. [Aami, 20, College Student, English]
177 Therefore a fit body was not fat but neither was it thin; instead it is a body that is lean and displays taut muscles. But in both these accounts there is a reiteration that fitness came with a well-defined, rigid body, one that was completely free of fat but not thin or skeletal.
Irrespective of what the women did or (as I will demonstrate in the next quote) what they said, the focus was on a fit body. But that did not mean that the women were always clear about what a fit body looked like. For example, Dora, a school teacher in her thirties said, “Now- a -days I want to be slim but not at all for (the sake of) looking good because I (personally) prefer the ‘plump’ look. But I am not feeling fit.” Dora claimed to like the ‘plump’ look but at the same time preferred to be slim over fat as it would mean a fit body. Lest her quest for slimness be misconstrued as a practice in vain, Dora resolved any contradiction by calling upon the fit argument to explain her desire to be thin. The goal of having a fit body became the theme that brought together seemingly incoherent and disparate practices surrounding eating and exercising.
As I have demonstrated so far, the women in my study dieted for multiple reasons; appearance, fear of fat, fit into clothes, and health. But health, defined as a scientific pursuit of a healthy body, by eating right or exercising, emerged as the anchor of the women’s accounts and the central theme in their explanations. The following quote demonstrates it the best;
It [her weight] bothers me because you see (pause), it is again a health oriented thing. Of course, I am not as thin as I used to be. You are used to seeing yourself in a particular way so obviously suddenly when you see yourself expanding in all directions, you get scared. Also I have lot of people on the streets passing comments so it has started affecting me, ok? Thirdly I know I am putting on weight and I am becoming unhealthy and that is really playing on my mind. Lot of things, lot of factors because of my weight [Radha, 28, Sales personnel, English]
178
Radha has been trying to lose weight for multiple reasons: to be able to get back
to her earlier weight, to avoid social ridicule and to become healthy. She therefore
provides a concoction of meanings associated with losing weight, but by calling it a
“health oriented thing” she holds on to health as the overarching argument under which
she nestles her multiple concerns.
I found that the women prioritized health over appearance when discussing their
dieting. This suggests that the health motive gave the new Indian women an occasion to
make educated, scientific arguments not only about their food and body, but also about
themselves. Second of all the appeal of the health argument was further linked to the fact
that it is a neutral and a safe argument for these women that did not focus on their gender.
Admitting to the appearance aspect meant they could be looked upon as pawns in the
hands of gendered discourses of physical beauty. More than one woman spoke of how
losing weight for good health was a necessity felt by all, both women and men. Sarika
said, “Now- a -days men and women are all the same, everyone wants to look good. Most
people have some kind of restriction. I will not say it is purely a [case of] restriction but
yes they eat and exercise. They feel I have to look good, when I am wearing clothes I
should look good.” [Sarika, 24, MBA student, Bengali]
A similar sentiment was expressed by Chandi. She shared, “Well, lot of people
say that it [dieting] is for maintaining your beauty, maybe which is why women do it more than men. But now I feel that men have become conscious, although women still do it more.” [Chandi, 46, Senior Project Director, Bengali] Chandi sees why women may feel compelled to diet since “women have to hold on to their beauty”, but men do not.
179 But she knows that now both men and women are becoming conscious of the way they
look.
This was a distinctive element in the accounts of women who were particular
about what they ate, that the concern for good looks and health was felt by both men and
women. For these women the need to look good was not exclusive to a particular group
or to a gender, but one that was becoming more and more routine and normalized
throughout social life. These findings indicate that at least some of the women are
working on their health and weight because of a conviction that it is a requirement of
their lifestyle. Moreover the fact that they do not see a gender bias in these practices
validated their practice.
Many have identified a similar discourse of equality in other consumerist cultures
(Davis, 2000; Bordo, 1993). This argument is used increasingly in the beauty industry,
for example, to explain why men have started doing facials characteristically done by
women and why white women have started experimenting with dreadlocks and cornrows
characteristically done by minority women (Bordo, 1993). As a result, both the patrons
and clients of the beauty industry tout the argument that changing one’s physical
appearance should be a prerogative for all. Davis (2002) in her study of the cosmetic surgery industry has shown that both surgeons and clients invoke the equality discourse to legitimize their practice. Therefore the patrons and the clients legitimize their practice by making appearance an issue of individual right. As societies become differentiated along lines of class and ethnicity, new discourses emerge that emphasize similarity over difference. This in turn leads to an assumption that individual are free to pick and choose
180 cultural items and practices and, hence, that difference is a reflection of individuality
rather than an expression of group belonging.
The new Indian women, in their discussions of dieting, similarly invoked a right
to better health and a fit body. The women kept making references to how good health
was an aspiration that was being felt by everybody. Radha said, “in this day and age, all
and sundry want to lose weight.” [Radha, 28, Sales Personnel, English] Radha uses “all
and sundry” to mean that everybody wants to lose weight. However it turned out that “all
and sundry” were actually her friends and family members, “Everybody, at least amongst
my friends, the circle that I come from; most of them are very health and weight
conscious.” Meera similarly talked about the peer influence, “I guess that is [dieting and
controlling their eating] when you see your friends becoming very aware of health and
everything.” [Meera, 28, Market Researcher, English] If it was not a friend then it was a
colleague. Dora spoke of a colleague she knew dieted, “My colleague is also very
conscious, she is older but you cannot ever make it out for she has such a perfect figure.
She is very, very conscious about what she eats and she judges calories for all kinds of
food. She will not eat food that has a lot of calories; she will not eat her potatoes.” [Dora,
30, School Teacher, Bengali, words in italics said in English]
The women mentioned so far were all aware of other women who also controlled their eating. Moreover, weight and food were popular topics of discussion in their social circles. According to Rohini, “what else do people talk about nowadays?” [Rohini, 29,
Housewife, English] Most of the women said that they had discussed food with friends.
When asked how, they would reply, “Like, ‘you have lost weight’ or ‘you are looking
181 thin’ comes into conversation very frequently than it used to earlier. It always creeps into
conversations.” [Sumita, 27, Market Researcher, English]
The women also gave detailed accounts of how their friends and colleagues had
become cautious of “unhealthy” food. Laali for example had noticed a shift in people’s
eating preferences and had to be careful when serving food to her guests. She had seen
that in the last few years, “If someone is cooking spicy food, people will express
dissatisfaction and say, ‘why did you cook this food, do you want to kill us?’ I also
remember that if someone serves ground nuts with drinks [alcohol], people will say, ‘Oh
this is high calorie, take it away”. [Laali, 45, Housewife, English] Others talked of how
food portions had changed. Sumita had recently taken her friends out for dinner and to
her surprise found that, “……no one wanted to eat desert. We were seven of us and we ordered only two deserts, so we shared it.” Meera made a similar observation, “The
change that has come about I think is in terms of serving that you order now- a -days
earlier I remember we used to order a full dish for ourselves, now it is almost natural that
we end up sharing a dish or probably ordering one main dish and one side dish. It is
mutually done, it is not like an active concern from my end, and I guess that is how it has
become.” [Sumita, 27, Market Researcher, English] This was clearly a shift in how people thought of food; in the past social occasions called for an abundance of food, now
they are characterized by restraint.
Then there was talk of the recent sprouting of gyms and health clubs as a sign of
the demand by people for better health. For example Sumita shared that one of her gym
partners was a married women with a child. Although it amused and surprised her that a
wife and mother would make the effort to go to the gym, it strengthened her belief that
182 everyone was becoming conscious of their weight. Dora, the school teacher, also believed
that going to the gym is no longer a matter of age or marital status, “Earlier there were no gyms and now you have so many. Even married women go to these gyms.” The built-in implication in these comments is that going to the gym earlier was not a necessity for married women or for women with children, but things have started changing.
But what is worth noting is that the women believed everybody was becoming conscious of what they ate and how their bodies looked. In fact, to them, health consciousness was now so widespread that caring for your health and body was becoming involuntary in nature and an unwritten norm endorsed by all. The women that I have mentioned share similar social backgrounds in terms of years of education and their
income. These women were mostly professionals or preparing for careers in private and
public firms. For these women everybody meant people they knew: family, friends and
colleague. It was in this group that there seemed to be a growing “natural familiarity”
(Bourdieu, 1984) with the idea that that losing weight and staying healthy was necessary
and being done by everyone.
These findings support Davis’s argument that the body is a proxy for women’s
identity; hence if women want to change their identity they change their body.52 But the
findings do not support Orbach’s argument that the transformation of women’s bodies is
a monochromatic process where a western body is what women try to create. 53 Instead, as I have demonstrated, the women I interviewed combined traditional and imported
52 Davis(1995) has shown in her study of the cosmetic surgery that women who alter their face and identities are not grappling with a sense of how they look but their identities 53 Hesse-Biber documents Orbach saying “If you want to measure a culture’s engagement with globalism go look at the level of eating problems. It is probably a better indicator than economic ones. In cultures in which a small group of people are allowed to be westernized the immediate thing that they try to create is a western body. “(Orbach, 2002, emphases added).
183 meanings of body to construct an identity that gave them some freedom to move about in
the modern world at the same time as it did not challenge their claims to an authentic
Indian identity. Moreover, they did so by shunning the appearance motive and embracing the health motive. The dieting for health rationale was used by the women to convince themselves and others that they are not cultural dopes. Also the fact that people they knew had taken on health measures like cutting down on food portions and minimizing
protein and carbohydrate intake reinforced their belief that it was a necessary step
towards good health.
However, not all women thought of dieting as a health imperative. I next turn to the accounts of dieting provided by women who did not follow eating restrictions or, at
the most, exercised only minimal control on their eating. These accounts stand in sharp
contrast to those presented above. They categorized dieting as a practice devoted to
personal health and beauty care, which they themselves did not subscribe to.
C. Dieting is about style; having time and doing paid work
In this section I document the narratives of women who had either minimal
control over their eating or none at all. Three themes emerged from the accounts; dieting
as a matter of style and privilege, dieting as having time for personal health and beauty
care and finally dieting as a requirement for leading public lives.
i. Dieting is about style
Dieting was called a matter of “style”. As I have mentioned earlier in the chapter,
dieting in spite of being an English word was recognized by most of the women in the
study. The women in the lower middle class and the labor class used words like “style”
and “models” to talk about dieting other than identifying that it was a practice that
184 involved eating less. Dieting was used as a term to describe a life of privilege which meant having time and resources to spend on one self. In Saara’s words,
The women who diet are the ones who live in style. Women who do not have any headache at home do it. In TV, they show families in which they maintain [maintenance] a lot of things for their bodies. It is about maintenance, you could say it is their family tradition. It is like their age has halted, they have done the same thing since they were young children. [Saara, 28, Lower Middle Class, Housewife, Bengali, words in italics said in English]
In this account she speaks of dieting strictly as an elitist thing that women with privilege and wealth indulge in. By headache, she is referring to household chores and responsibilities. Therefore dieting to her means a lifestyle steeped in wealth. She continues,
You need to have a “family” like that. We do not live in that environment; we did not get such families. What will we look after our bodies or our health for? If you maintain it, then obviously it will be good. I will eat this; put this on my face, what will come out of it? Then again you have to do a “diet control”, the people who do it regularly it is for them. It is not for people like us.
Her lack of interest in dieting seems to be a consequence of her lack of interest in style, but by invoking her status as a housewife she is talking of women who share a similar social background. The use of ‘us’ by Saara is poignant as she expresses a similarity and solidarity with women who are in a similar social class position as she is.
The idea that dieting was done by women who had resources became most pronounced in the accounts of women from the labor class. They were unequivocal about why they did not diet. For Piya,
No one in our house does anything like that [Why?] We do not have any such practices in our house. We are a poor household. Whatever we get we eat, then how will we understand how to keep good health. There is no time that I will spend it on my health. If someone is fat then that is
185 fine, if someone is thin that is fine too. I stay busy with work, my son and daughter, other than that I do not know anything. [Piya, 43, Domestic Help, Labor Class, Bengali]
Piya clearly articulates a connection between dieting and life conditions; she is too poor to fuss over what she eats or what happens to her health. Piya’s life revolves around her house and her children, and about surviving in difficult living and working conditions. Given the hardships in her life, paying attention to her personal health would be considered a vanity on her part, by others as well as by herself. Kaveri too, linked dieting to selfishness and vanity. She said,
I think women who think of themselves as beautiful, to keep themselves well groomed [are the ones who diet]. Then there are lots of women who feel that we have to go outside, have to work, if you have “fat” then you cannot do all that. Again there are some women who do it only to keep themselves beautiful, they want to keep themselves beautiful and “attractive”. Some women do not want to give breast milk. [Kaveri, 25, Lower Middle Class, Housewife]
Kaveri is making a personal judgment that dieting is for women who will go to any lengths to prioritize their own self interests. She believed that the need to diet was felt by women who want to look good, as did Malini, who said, “If they become thin, they think they will look good. They will become models.”(laughs) [Malini, 18, Labor
Class, Bengali] Therefore dieting was done by women overtly concerned with beauty or women whose vocation was to look beautiful.
A common feature in these women’s accounts was that dieting entailed a lifestyle that was different from theirs. Sometimes they made a direct reference to income, and other times they talked about how their family circumstances prevented them from taking care of their personal health. What I find interesting in these accounts is the emphasis on
186 words like “we” and “us” when the women talk about their economic condition and
social status as housewives or domestic helpers.
Others used a lack of time, given their family responsibilities, as an explanation for why they did not engage in any diet practices. Sita, for example, said she did not have
enough time to think about what or when she ate,
We do not spend a lot of time thinking about how to keep our health, like getting up in the morning to have lemon water; I do not like such things. I do not think too much about my health or the way things happen on a daily basis. With my son going to school sometimes we end up eating at ten o’clock at night. I cannot follow a routine all the time [Sita, 43, Housewife, Middle Class, Bengali]
Sita was explicit why she did not diet or think about dieting. It was difficult to fit
in a dieting schedule given her daily chores. Therefore, for Sita, her family chores
worked as a deterrent for engaging in any routines committed to personal health. The lack
of time due to family obligations figured repeatedly. When I asked Baani if she dieted,
she replied, “Not really, I am telling you since I am a housewife I cannot follow all these restrictions, I have a child, if I fall sick there is no one to give me a glass of water, so dieting?” [Baani, 26, Lower Middle Class, Housewife, Bengali]
And yet, despite her rejection of “dieting”, Baani was evidently very conscious of her health and had joined a neighborhood yoga class in the last couple of months. Baani spoke at length about her yoga class. She was given a diet chart and individualized yoga exercises in the class. She talked of how she goes to these classes on the sly, looking for small pretexts to make a trip. She was very proud of her weight loss and shared that she was now committed to a healthy lifestyle.
By the definitions used by other women who talked about dieting, like being conscious of their health and eating less calorie food, Baani’s practice can be called
187 dieting and she herself could be called a “health freak”. But she nevertheless refrained
from calling her practice dieting as she associated dieting with people interested only in
fashion and style. Being a mother with a young child she felt that she could not indulge in
such pursuits. This was a direct evidence of how meaning-making processes are
contained in cultural fields. Baani, although doing what the self-professed dieters did, still did not see her practice as dieting.
The reason she does not want to give her practice any name (unlike the women in
middle class and upper middle class position who called their dieting “balanced eating”
or “diet management”) was because she does not see any symbolic benefits associated with dieting. No one in her family dieted nor did she have any friends who dieted. Hence, giving a name to her practice did not have a social value. In fact she quickly distanced herself from the term as it meant a pre-occupation with her self, which contradicted her status as a devoted mother. ii. Dieting is for women who go out to work
Another connection was that dieting was done by women who had to go out and do paid work. For example,
[Dieting is for] women who have to go out who have to take care of their appearance. They think that we have to go on a journey and will not be able to bear the tiredness. That is the real thing [Moira, 21, Lower Middle Class, Student, Bengali]
For Moira the “real thing” or the exact reason why women diet is that they have to go out to work. Kaveri, who had identified dieting as a practice done out of vanity also made the argument that , “….then there are lot of women who feel that we have to go outside, have to work, if you have ‘fat’ then you cannot do all that.” The implications of
188 these statements were that work done outside the house or work which was of the non-
domestic kind required a thin body. In the last two sections I presented accounts of
women who primarily did not diet or use the health argument to talk about their eating
practices. Some associated dieting with privilege or style that was outside the scope of
their social positions. Others thought of dieting as a requirement of working outside the
house where a heavy body would be an obstacle. What is common to these sets of
meanings is that dieting was linked to being part of a public life, either as a matter of
style, or as a necessity of stepping outside the house into the public domain. And these
were precisely the reasons that women gave for not feeling the need to diet or call their
practice dieting, because their lives were centered on their household chores and duties.
The women in the labor class were skeptical of any practice that was devoted to personal
health or beauty care. They looked upon them as practices done by the wealthy and any
engagement in such behavior as vanity.
Conclusion
In conclusion, three broad themes emerged from the accounts of women, whether
they themselves exercised dietary controls or not; dieting to become healthy and
productive, dieting to look good and dieting to maintain a public life. However, health
was clearly the dominant theme. The fact that the women differed in the meanings given
to dieting corroborates Bourdieu’s argument that few cultural practices are “perfectly
‘univocal’” and that it is difficult “to deduce the social use from the thing itself”
(Bourdieu, 1984, pg.21). In my study I similarly found diversity in both the social use of dieting and the meanings given to dieting.
189 A healthy life style for the women meant various things: like being immune to
diseases, being fit, active and free of fat, and the ability to be productive at work and at
home. Even women who did not diet stressed the importance of taking care of one’s
health. The only exceptions were women with very low incomes struggling to meet the
basic needs of life; these women were the most skeptical of a personal regimes devoted to
health. But on the whole, women attributed a lot of importance to maintaining one’s health. Dieting was one of the means of realizing good health. Those who did not diet
expressed interest in dieting as a way to show their commitment to good health. All
women who admitted to dieting tended to distance themselves from the “appearance”
aspect of dieting, lest it be misconstrued as efforts done out of vanity. As I have argued
earlier if talking about health legitimized their practice, talking about appearance
trivialized their efforts. Therefore the women distanced themselves from the popular
conception of dieting as a frivolous, style-driven activity.
Not surprisingly, therefore, it was the women who did not diet who thought of it
as a matter of style or something that glamorous people do: actresses, models or women
who live in luxury (or wealth). However, the appearance motive in regulating their eating
and trying to lose weight became evident when the women openly expressed their fear of
becoming fat. Even if fat was called “horrible” and the women across social positions
were unaccepting of fat people experimenting with traditional and western clothes, fat
was ultimately associated with being physically unhealthy. The women believed that
becoming fat would lead to lethargy and diseases. So even in discussions of fat, the
health motive eclipsed the appearance motive.
190 Finally, some women believed that dieting was a matter of style. More so, it
meant having the resources and the time to indulge in style. Although the women did not
say it in words, they were making a class argument. These women for the most part did
not exercise dietary controls and also were from the lower middle class and labor class.
Their argument was that the lives they led neither required nor permitted taking care of
their body or their health. Another association that these women made was that dieting or
taking care of one’s health was mostly a demand felt by women who engage in non-
domestic work. Such women had to travel to work, be fit at work and, in some cases, had
to look good (e.g., models). This is one place where the meanings given to dieting
converged. Women who rigorously followed rules of dieting thought of it as an
imperative for leading a hectic, fast-paced life, and women who did not diet also believed
that it was a requirement of a life dominated by professional work. Common to both these
arguments was the assumption that work of the non-domestic kind required a fit and able
body which would be inconvenienced by body ‘fat’. It is here that I found a direct
relationship between dieting and work, especially paid work.
In western, industrialized societies dieting and other body related practices of
women are typically associated with appearance and body dissatisfaction. In the United
States it is believed that eating disorders are a white woman’s problem. Although
Thompson and others have challenged the “normative portrait” of the anorexic as being
white, non-working class and heterosexual, the association persists. 54 Even now a skinny
54 Instead in her own study she contributes to empirical research that women in minority groups are equally susceptible to eating disorders. However the larger argument stayed the same and that is women “simultaneity of oppression” of sexism, racism and heterosexism will experience eating issues
191 body is associated with whiteness and often thought of as an accomplishment of self- obsession.55
However I would like to argue that the reference to white here is not simply about ethnicity, but ethnicity infused with class and privilege. In other words reference to an ethnic category masks the class factor in women dieting and trying to lose weight.
Very few make reference to the fact that class intersects with race and ethnicity in determining bodies (Lovejoy, 2001). The only argument made in this regard is that as ethnic minorities assimilate into mainstream societies, they lose their cultural (or community) beliefs about the body and fall prey to the thinness norm (Hesse-Biber,
2007). The implication of this argument is that as minority women join the dominant culture their bodies, just like those of their white counterparts, come under scrutiny.
Discussions of dieting and weight-management need to be located in the context of social class.
The link between women’s class location and their preoccupation with their bodies was clearly evident in my study. Women who were already working or were getting professional training to start work most readily expressed the need to be fit, healthy and active. The women who were not directly involved in the economy also talked about becoming productive in what they did, even if it meant becoming a productive housewife. So fitness and productivity was crucial to their weight loss.
55 The following is a quote by one the subjects in a study where Black, adolescent girls were asked to comment on their bodies. The young girls were confident about their bodies and in fact distinguished themselves from white girls they saw in their schools. “These white girls are too damn stuck up. They act so damn stuck up. Like they want to be so damn cute they don’t want to be fat. They think fat is a bad thing to be. I don’t give a damn. I never was fat, I never was skinny.” [Hesse-Biber et al. 2004, pg 59]
192 Therefore it is no surprise that in the west the beginning of the dieting industry coincided with the time women had started joining the economy (Ogden, 1992).
Framing dieting as a matter of health gave the women the opportunity to exhibit their prowess in the science of body and food. Simultaneously, having been exposed to the discourse on eating disorders of western women, the women in my study shunned extremely thin bodies. This is not to suggest that the women were not aware of the appearance motive in their practice, and some explicitly mentioned the need to look good. But their unwillingness prioritize appearance was equally part of their image of themselves as independent, strong-willed women and their way of distancing themselves from the decadent, corrupt ways of the western world.
In my study, I have examined empirically how women living in non-western societies negotiate cultural messages about the body and eating instead of making an a priori assumption that modernization necessarily brings a cult (of thinness) mentality.
Minimally stated, my goal was to elaborate on the social location and social context in which the women were negotiating cultural messages. Towards that purpose I found, first, that women were cautious of the excesses of dieting like starving or sculpting an extremely thin body. However, at the same time the term “dieting” served as an axle point along which the meanings about eating revolved. This is so because most of the women described their eating practice in contrast to what they thought other people did when they dieted. Secondly, I found that the meanings varied considerably by social location; there was one group of women who were engaged in eating regulations with a purported goal of improving their health while another group that seemed indifferent to concerns of body and weight. The women who were altering their eating to become fit
193 and healthy believed that “dieting” was an imperative to become productive workers in urban economies. Therefore social class, level of education and occupational affiliations influenced their choices and decisions to alter and regulate their eating.
194
CHAPTER SEVEN CONCLUSION
Introduction
The question I posed in the beginning of the project was how people, particularly
women, negotiate oppositional or multiple meanings systems. Towards that purpose I
chose to study the new Indian woman and the cultural fields of urban India. The new
Indian woman is an urban phenomenon that captures the dual expectations on modern women to fulfill both traditional and modern roles. While some suggest that living in an
“in-between space” can lead to a marginalization of one’s identity (Kishwar, 1995) others contend that inhabiting dual (or more) spaces is becoming a common experience across social worlds (Bhaba, 2004; Fernandes, 2000). The theoretical framework that I had adopted was that even if people have access to multiple repertoires of meanings, it does not necessarily lead to ambiguity and ambivalence about meanings. Neither does it mean that the process becomes completely unpredictable. Instead, people are involved in a process of meaning-making by which they draw upon multiple repertoires to make sense of contradictory and conflicting worlds. However this process is highly determined by their social locations and the social contexts in which they live. In this section, based on my findings chapter I will point out how the Indian woman traverses the cultural maze.
To investigate the new Indian woman phenomenon, I contrasted the traditional institution of fasting and the modern institution of dieting to see what kinds of meanings women give to these practices. Existing frameworks for understanding the new Indian woman are solely focused on her hybrid, post-structuralist features. The new Indian
195 woman is believed to be constantly redefining herself as she tries to accommodate both
traditional values and modern expectations. However there are no studies that take into
account the cultural fields in which the meanings of being a new Indian woman get
negotiated. Lamont (2003), with the term “meaning-making”, identifies cultural
meanings as products of strategies that individuals use to define themselves and the
groups they belong to. Therefore identity construction happens in a structural context where individuals draw upon practices of others in similar social locations. Identities, in
this sense, are group strategies. This framework is quintessentially sociological because it
takes account of meanings being created in social enclaves instead of focusing on the
individual.
Using “meaning-making” as a theoretical framework, I have investigated the new
Indian woman. In this final chapter, I discuss some of the implications of my findings for
an understanding of the phenomenon of the new Indian woman, both in terms of
understanding the cultural practices of women and understanding urban culture in non-
western contexts.
A. Implications for the new Indian woman
Feminists believe that there is a built-in trap in the phenomenon of the new Indian woman. Becoming a new woman does not constitute a break from tradition but instead involves being exposed to a web of contradictory expectations that can have destabilizing
consequences for the self (Thapan, 2004; Fernandes, 2000; Kishwar, 1995). This concern
is not restricted only to the new Indian woman. Women in other parts of the world
negotiating contradictory cultural worlds face a similar threat.
196 Pyke and Johnson (2003) in their study of second generation Asian Americans women analyzed a similar situation of women traversing oppositional worlds, the
American (US) mainstream society and Asian familial communities. The researchers found that second-generation young women were highly critical of their Asian identity as hyper feminine and distanced themselves from settings where they had to perform a
“subordinate femininity”. One of the concerns of the researchers have been that, as women shun traditional identity to assimilate into mainstream societies, they will develop a “blocked identity”. Similar concerns have been expressed for the new Indian woman, except that in this case, women are expected to give up traditional Indian life for western ways. In this section I discuss the implications of my findings for some of the guiding assumptions behind the phenomenon of the new Indian woman. i. The new Indian woman and tradition
The new Indian woman in its most ideal form is both traditional and modern. I found evidence that women sometimes retain elements of tradition even when they were skeptical of it. For example, there were women who were highly critical of the tradition of fasting; especially the women with advanced degrees or professional careers thought of fasting and its ritualistic nature as regressive. Interestingly, the women did not necessarily abandon the practice. Instead they modified the practice to suit their needs and interest. Days of fasting were set aside for multiple purposes, including personal piety, family commitment, and personal perseverance. The one distinct change from traditional fasting rituals was that women did not think of fasting as a way to express the highly auspicious state of being married, which is clearly a break from traditional meanings. Instead fasting was directed towards the well being of children and in some
197 cases parents. The sense of responsibility associated with fasting, I argue, is a more
assertive role. In these cases, the women were the sole benefactor of these practices. In
general, the women across social locations continued to fast without taking on the label of being traditional or religious.
In some cases the women made the connection that fasting enhanced one’s physical health. This was a sign of the health discourse that has gained in popularity during the last few decades and also influenced the fasting practices of the women. It would be erroneous to assume that the health motive that pervaded both fasting and dieting practices of the women is completely western. As I have mentioned earlier, there is a parallel tradition of Ayurvedic medicine that originated in the practices and prescriptions of Hindu ascetics. In urban India there has been a rediscovery of ancient health-related techniques and traditions that intersect in various ways with the imported health discourse.
But expressions like “investing in health” indicate the change in the way health is being perceived; it has become a commodity that is expected to give returns, which is relatively recent trend. This health discourse has affected women’s understanding of tradition. Fasting, or what one of my subjects called “scientific dieting”, can serve as an example of a traditional institution that has been brought into service of the contemporary imperative of keeping good health. Even women with less educational capital stressed the health and bodily aspects of fasting. Fasting for health and spirituality spoke of their educated and rational minds. Therefore, fasting was an indigenous mean to suit a contemporary imperative.
198 As Giddens (1999) has pointed out, tradition is actually a modern concept. He argues that, as our social worlds change, we need terms and concepts to differentiate between the old and the new. Therefore tradition and modernity share a dialectical relation where each gives form to the other. The five thousand year old institution[?] of religious fasting is being (re)interpreted through a modern lens and given a new form. In this project I have described the forms religious fasting has taken on in contemporary urban India.
In addition, I have documented how meaning-making of tradition varies by social class. The need to rediscover tradition (and modify it in the process) is felt most acutely by women in higher social classes with educational and social capital. The variety of purpose given to religious fasting illustrates the meaning-making process involved in fitting religious fasting into a modern lifestyle. In contrast, the reluctance by labor class women to modify tradition (or conversely follow tradition) signals neither ignorance nor superstition. Rather, as I have documented, the labor class women did not see a social value in exhibiting introspective minds to others or subject their practice of fasting to any such discussions. Their rationale for continuing with the practice of fasting was to maintain a community activity that people in similar social locations did. ii. The new Indian woman and modernity
The balancing of traditional and modern worlds was most evident in the discussion of dieting. Feminists have long argued that dieting falls under the gamut of bodily practices typical to patriarchal societies that monitor and regulate women’s bodies
(Cherin, 1981; Bordo, 1993; Hesse-Biber, 2007). As feminists continue to wage battles against the thin body in western societies, there are fears that the ultra-thinness norm will
199 engulf non-western societies with damaging consequences especially for young women
(Simpson, 2002; Becker et al. 2000).56 However, these fears may be premature. This is so because they treat woman as a universal category across cultural settings and hence assume that women are universally prone to eating problems.57
In this study I found that women, especially young women, do express body- related anxieties. But at the same time they were critical of western bodies and called them anorexic. My subjects claimed that they did not want ultra-thin bodies, particularly not thin, waif-like “model” bodies. Instead they wanted fit bodies, which they did not necessarily think of as western bodies. Although some would describe a fit body as muscular and lean, others were satisfied as long as they could attain a body that was free of excess fat.
The public discourse of the “new Indian woman” was instrumental in the women’s negotiations of imported messages about eating and the body. The new Indian woman is overall a positive image; it represents the opportunities that have opened for young women in the economy. As women are taking on newly available positions in the
56 For example, a study shows that when American television was introduced in the island country of Fiji where only three percent of girls had reported bulimic behavior, in three years time seventy four percent of young girls reported “feeling too fat” and sixty two percent mentioned they had dieted Studies done in Fiji are cited to prove the susceptibility of women in non-western societies to develop eating problems like their western counterparts. In psychiatric research as well some have cited western media as a cause behind the increase in eating disorders. The “thinness as beauty” hypothesis (Simpson, 2002) was also used to describe anorexia in non-Western societies which did not have cultural prescriptions of thinness like Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, Malaysia, India and Singapore. It was explained by the “transculturality” of the phenomenon that with globalization the thinness ideal would spread to non-western and so would the eating problems(Nasser, 1994). Therefore the presence of anorexia nervosa in these cultures is presumed to be similar to their western counterparts and the western diagnostic criteria is used to understand the problem of anorexia. Steiger et al. (1993)maintained, “When anorexia nervosa develops in non-western families, it may often be those with strong Western affiliations” 57 These assumptions have been challenged in western contexts as well. For example Stinson (2001) in the western societies has challenged the assumption that women who diet are “non-resisters” to show in her study of a weight management program that the women enrolled in the program were constantly negotiating information about losing weight.
200 modern economy, they are building new identities that are distinct from the ones of
previous generations. The women I interviewed believed that eating right (which often
meant eating less or avoiding fattening food) and having fit bodies would help them
maximize the payoff of these new opportunities both in their personal and professional
lives. So unlike women in the western world (the ones believed to be first exposed to
dieting in the 1960’s) for whom “guilt” and “self-dislike” were central elements in the
quest for new bodies (Ogden, 1992; Brumberg, 1997), the new Indian women are turning
their bodies into sites for exhibiting their newly gained confidence and high self esteem.
Others have also suggested that culturally borne positive images of womanhood
act as deterrents to developing body dissatisfaction and eating disorders. In the context of the United States some make the argument that African American women are most immune to eating disorders because of the high self-esteem that is associated with a being a Black woman (Lovejoy, 2001).58 The new Indian woman is a similar cultural construct
that has come to represent the vitality, independence and intelligence of urban-educated
young professionals. The quest for fit and active bodies complements this new found
identity. The women were rejecting extreme thinness as a wayward consequence of
excessive westernization (or westoxication). Therefore the women were resisting
recolonization of their bodies and created an “alternative beauty aesthetic” (Lovejoy,
58 In their growing years, African Americans girls are given lessons of self-reliance and racial pride particularly of their hair and body. Therefore it is believed that having large or curvy bodies is culturally accepted. Some would argue though that some African American woman might lose this cultural advantage; others would suggest that it might hide emotional problems and harm African women (Tamara Beauboeuf-Lafontant,2003; Thompson, 1992)
201 2001). 59 The creation of the fit but supple body as an ideal to aspire to was a particularly
poignant result of the re-articulation of traditional and imported standards of beauty.
The women in my study did not come across as trapped or conflicted about
traditional and modern messages about their body and eating or as facing a “cultural
conundrum” (Read, 2008). Instead they crafted meaning systems in which they
accommodated both traditional and modern practices. Thapan calls this a “respectable
modernity” or an “evolving modernity enshrined in tradition” (2004, pg. 441). In my
study I have elaborated on how they maintain a respectable modernity through meanings.
I would like to rename this process of meaning-making as a type of “speculative-
modernity” where women maintain equal distance from absolutes attached to both
traditional and modern practices. The women who fasted did not want to be
misunderstood as devoutly religious where as women who dieted were cautious that they
did not engage in extreme starving to look good. They could successfully negotiate these
positions because they were in an “in-between space” (Bhaaba, 2004), which enabled
them to pluck from both traditional and modern repertoires.60 In the process they were
changing both traditional and imported meanings of food and body.
However, the process of meaning-making is not completely a random “product of
locality” (Appadurai, 1996) or a “timeless social space” (Thapan, 2004). In recent years
scholars studying non-western societies have popularized concepts like “third space”
(Bhaba, 2004) and “product of locality” (Appadurai, 1996). These concepts try to capture
59 Research in the United States have repeatedly shown that women in minority groups often portray American mainstream culture as corrupt and wayward and distance themselves from practices which they think are immoral. Mainstream American society with its high value on consumerism is often thought of as corrupt, immoral and anti-familial ( Read and Oselin, 2008; Espiritu, 2001) 60 Bhaba (2004) describes in-between spaces as “the terrain for elaborating strategies of selfhood-singular or communal- that initiates new signs of identity, and innovative sites of collaboration, and contestation, in the acts of defining the idea of society itself(pg.1).”
202 social spaces that display both global and local elements but are not a summation of these
parts. The argument behind the “third space” is that social spaces and identities are being
constantly negotiated and therefore each rendition of the third space is unique. The
women in my study who invented ingenuous styles of eating by matching and mixing
information can be described as inhabiting a “third space”. The uniqueness of the “third
space” lies in the fact that it is constantly evolving, with no end in sight. The new Indian
woman has been conceived in a similar way; Thapan (2004), for example, identifies the
new woman as a “timeless entity” who is forever evolving with new forms of
contestation and negotiation.
But I also found that even if the women were creatively managing the traditional-
modern divide, they were simultaneously driven by group logic; that is, they were
influenced by what others were doing in similar social locations. The women who fasted
identified primarily with their role as home-makers and found themselves in structural
arrangements where doing the fast and following the rituals were viewed as compulsory.
Similarly, women who followed dietary restrictions wanted to be productive workers in
an urban economy and believed that it was a bodily requirement for leading modern lives.
Therefore, like Lamont (1992), I argue against the post-modernist/structuralist assumption that identity formation is necessarily “multiple, problematic, fluid, self- reflexive, plural and decentered (pg. 244).” Instead I found that the formation of identity
is bound to a “structured context” (Lamont, 1992).
Moreover, I argue that these “cultural structures” (structurally bounded practice)
were maintained by a validation that the women sought from the practice of others.
Schudson (1989) lists the following features to determine the efficacy of culture:
203 retreivability or the extent to which cultural object is within reach; resonance or the reasoning that resonates with existing opinions and structures, and institutional retention or whether the cultural object is retained in institutions. In my study I found that “cultural resonance”, or similarity of experiences by social location, was most crucial in influencing the meanings the women gave to their practices. For example, in the case of fasting, all the forty eight women that I spoke to had a family member who fasted.
Therefore they were in close proximity to the actual practice of fasting. Additionally, for many fasting was a family institution that members of the family engaged in. But that did not mean that the women themselves necessarily fasted or, in case they did, that they always followed the same rituals and requirements as they had seen others do.
The women who fasted most regularly and were the least likely to modify the fasting rituals were women in the labor class or housewives in the lower middle class category. These women believed that there was “no way around these things (fasting)”
The belief that there is no way around these practices was rooted in the fact that they saw women all around them – women who lived similar lives as they did – doing the practice.
Similarly the women in the middle and upper middle class believed that “everybody” cared about their health and took action to secure health. For these women as well,
“everybody” was their friends, family and colleagues.
The more their meanings resonated with the meanings of people in similar social positions, the higher the chances of the women engaging in such practices or seeing a social value in the practice. Therefore “cultural structures” was not only a summation of cultural practices of people in similar social class positions but was equally premised on a
204 belief that fasting (or dieting) was a requirement, a necessity of the social location that they occupied.
The above findings make a dent in the argument that culture is available for all to be used as they want in urban societies. This is not to suggest that the women were not aware of the cultural repertoires available about food, body and eating. But having cultural knowledge did not necessarily imply a cultural readiness (Petersen and Kern,
1996; Swidler, 2001); instead cultural choices were dictated by group logic. So even if the women had the repertoire or the knowledge available to them, its use depended on those social spaces where it had value and appreciation. In fact I would like to take it a step further to suggest that the women were actively using meanings to assert their social membership in a collectivity (Erickson, 1996; Warde et al.1999).
In conclusion, I argue that the new Indian woman successfully negotiates the traditional-modern divide. However, in doing so she exhibits a “speculative modernity” in which she shies away from attaching absolutes to her practices. Therefore, the assumption that the cultural practices of fasting and dieting are oppressive or paradoxical is not borne out in the lived realities of the women. The women carved out personal spaces from popular practices which are thought of as patriarchal. Munshi writes,
While traditional discourses of patriarchy have not been subverted or altered in any substantive way, the new Indian woman has, at the very least, strategized and negotiated her position to a more comfortable one within the dominant structure (Munshi, 1998, pg.87).
This is a new theme in studies of the cultural practices of women in western and non-western societies (Munshi, 1998; Davis, 1995). It is a different perspective from the one that argues that women are “cultural dopes” (Davis, 1995) or that they are blind to
205 the patriarchal nature of their practice. Instead the new and different perspective intends
to answer the question: why do women knowingly continue with practices that serve
patriarchal motives? The answer lies in the fact that the adjustments women make enable
them to carve out comfortable spaces in settings structured to favor of men. The new
Indian woman is in a similar position. As a housewife invested in her child’s well being or as a career-oriented young woman, fasting and/or dieting is linked to her chances of a
better life.
My work also has implications for understanding social change. One of the
concerns of feminists has been that in spite of the political and intellectual battles against
practices that undermine the status of women, practices like fasting and dieting prevail. In
my study, however, I have shown that the women are not blind to the regressive nature of
the practices of fasting and dieting. Instead, they used and modified the rituals and
expectations associated with the practices to serve goals that expanded rather than
constricted their roles. They were developing comfortable relationships with these
practices and overriding constraining aspects of cultural practices. In fact in some case
they were even defending the necessity of these practices. This is not to suggest that
cultural practices do not also serve as tools of persuasion or control that, in some cases,
have detrimental consequences. But in my study I found that “fasting” and “dieting” were
attractive options to the women because they were means to a better life. Also, the
women through their interpretive work or meaning making were subverting some of the
well-established meanings associated with fasting and dieting and were part of a change.
206
II. The new Indian woman, urban India and Bourdieu
There has been much scholarship on the nature of social reality in non-western societies. The larger trope guiding these theories is that non-western urban societies,
because of their colonial heritage and liberal economies have a mixed heritage, one that is
traditional and modern at the same time. Gupta (2000) writes, “Thus while we are not
modern, we are not traditional either. It is in this sense India is in between worlds
(pg.217).” This quote highlights the unpredictability of culture in such settings. It is true
that in urban India, it is difficult to neatly rank cultural items of tradition and modernity
in a hierarchy of differential worth. While Bourdieu (1984) was steadfast in his argument
that culture marks and reinforces class inequality in complex societies, the applicability
of this argument seems to be limited in non-western societies where tradition and
modernity is bestowed equal value. Bourdieu’s theory was derived from French society,
where the definition of high culture is very narrow and rigidly maintained. Researchers
studying American society have grappled with what constitutes high culture and therefore
argue that what constitutes high culture ( and conversely low culture) needs to be
empirically determined (Lamont and Laureau, 1988).
The same holds true for contexts like India. Moreover, India is one of the most
stratified societies where caste, class, religion, region and languages intersect in complex
ways to impact the social structure (Gupta, 1991). India has historically been a stratified
society, with the divisions being greatest along caste and religion. For example, lower
caste groups were discernible from upper caste groups by their lifestyle patterns. Upper
207 caste groups like Brahmins followed rituals of purity like vegetarianism and teetotalism
to distinguish themselves from lower caste groups (Srinivas, 1966). While
westernization, or contact with western education had the potential of leveling differences
between groups, this did not happen. Instead westernization was used to mark new distinctions. In urban Bengal during the late eighteenth century, westernization of the middle class served two purposes. Banerjee (1989) has documented the use of colonial education by middle class men to Europeanize their women and relegate the folk culture of lower caste men and women who came into the cities to do menial work into a “low- brow culture”. In contemporary, urban conglomerates, the influx of global capital and new job opportunities have shuffled the arrangement between classes, caste, religion and region. Therefore either newer items are being roped in or old items are being modified to mark the new style of distinctions.
My study of the “new Indian woman” reveals some of these new distinctions; particularly it shows how the women were involved in reconstructing their own social locations. Regarding fasting, I found women in the middle class and upper middle class stressed the spiritual and health benefits of religious fasting, setting aside its ritualistic nature. This modern interpretation of fasting was a way of distancing themselves from the
“folk” and pastoral nature of fasting and from labor class women who engaged in such practice. The women in the middle and upper middle class saw a social value in the health and spirituality motive of fasting, and it fitted well with their new Indian woman identity. Other women, particularly housewives in the lower middle class category and labor class women found a social value in following the rituals even if there were no
208 tangible benefits involved. It was a statement of their commitment to family
responsibilities
When it came to dieting, the women in the middle class and upper middle class spoke of the health benefits of dieting whereas the women in the lower middle class and labor class thought of it as a matter of privilege or a requirement of modern lifestyle.
Therefore it was the women in the middle and upper middle classes who extended the health argument to both the traditional practice of fasting and the imported practice of dieting. In most cases, the labor class and lower middle class women rejected a lifestyle devoted to the fulfillment of personal goals, including health, as irrelevant to their role as home makers.
More specifically, I found health, food and body to be some of the new cultural markers between groups of women. While the active pursuit of good health through healthy eating and developing a fit body was becoming a prerogative for upper middle and middle class women, the women in the labor class and lower middle class were being left behind. I am not suggesting that the labor class women did not want to take care of their health, but instead that they did not feel the need to prioritize health over other matters. In this sense, I found evidence of Bourdieu’s class theory of distinctions; with the
influx of a global culture, newer elements are being used to reiterate distinctions between
groups of people. It was also adding a new dimension to the cultural politics of status
groups: the politics of health-management.
One of the most significant contributions of Bourdieu’s thesis has been that, if a
society is stratified, then cultural practices should be held suspect. Empirical research
inspired by Bourdieu has continuously shown that cultural items are used to mark
209 distinctions between groups. As Warde et al. (1999) has shown, even cultural omnivorousness, which implies a relaxing of cultural distinctions, can be used as a tool of
(status) group politics; it gentrifies elements of popular culture, like openness to multi- ethnic cuisine, only to incorporate them into the dominant status-group culture. Such a study stands in contrast to arguments that people engage in cultural activities at their own discretion.
A lot of scholarship on urban India is directed towards understanding the “third space” where distinctions become amorphous. Instead my studies show how cultural practices are used to mark distinctions, in this case along the lines of social class. My contribution to the field of culture is that I expound on the interpretative nature of meaning-making in a context where there are multiple and juxtaposed set of meanings. I show how distinctions are maintained at the level of meanings; for example the selective balancing of traditional and modern meanings which I have termed “speculative modernity”. Additionally my dissertation shows the role women have in maintaining a stratified society through their cultural practices instead of being pawns in the hands of society. Chatterjee (1995) posited that during the nationalist movement the impulse to modernize was undertaken by men in public spheres, while the work of resistance to assimilation was done by women in private spheres. In contemporary urban India, women now play an active role in modifying tradition and modernity as they stride both the public and private spheres of life.
210
Appendix A: Pictures of Billboards
Picture 1: A sign on the light post advertises, “Lose Weight now, Ask me how”
Picture 2: A gym sign says, “Venus Slimming Center: A Weight Loss Clinic
211 Appendix B: Question Guide
I. Questions on restricting and monitoring food intake (for all):
i. Do you restrict your eating? 1. Is there any specific food or fluid that you restrict yourself from eating? 2. Do you restrict your food intake according to a specific time like particular days in the month or hours in the day? ii. Do you monitor what you are eating? 1. How do you monitor your food? a. Do you keep a “track” of what you eat and when you eat your food? How do you keep track of what you eat? iii. What would you call your restriction of food intake? 1. Do you have a name for the restrictions that you have for not eating? 2. What reasons would you give to your regulation of food intake?
Note: The following set of questions is contingent upon the responses elicited by the last question in section I iii. If respondents self identify their practice as fasting then will move on to section II. If respondents self identify their practice as dieting then will move on to section III. If respondents do not self identify either dieting or fasting then will move on to section IV.
II. Questions on Fasting (for those who self identify fasting):
i. Would you say that the restrictions you impose on your intake of food have particularly religious reasons not to eat? (Note: Here the emphasis is on “particularly” for I have already asked for the reason behind their regulation of food intake, here I would like to re-emphasize on the religious nature of food intake?)
1. Is it something similar to fasting? a. What religious reasons would you give for fasting? i. Do you fast for yourself? How so? ii. Do you fast for others, like your family members: husband and children? How so? b. Have you thought of fasting having consequences on your health? How would you describe the consequences fasting has on your health? c. Do you think fasting controls your body weight? How does it control your body weight? d. Do you fast out of concerns for your appearance?
212
e. Do you think the meaning that you give to fasting now has changed from the time you started? How have they changed? And why do you think they have changed?
2. Where did you learn how to restrict yourself from eating? Can you give a brief history of how it all started like, a. Do you remember when you started fasting? b. Can you cite some sources from where you have learnt about restricting and monitoring your food, as in fasting? c. What or who has had the greatest influence in fasting? d. How do you keep yourself informed about fasting?
3. Do you fast alone or with others? a. Are your family and friends aware of your not eating? b. How often do you talk about not eating with others? (As in family members and friends?) c. What kind of support do you get from your family and friends?
4. Do you think fasting is more important for women and not for men?
5. What do you personally get out of fasting?
III. Questions on other kinds of restriction on food (for those who self identify dieting):
i. Would you say that the restrictions you impose on your intake of food particularly out of concerns for your appearance? (Note: Here the emphasis is on “particularly” for I have already asked for the reason behind their regulation of food intake, here I would like to re-emphasize on the nature of food intake?) 1. Is it something similar to dieting? a. What reasons would you give for dieting? i. Do you diet to control your body weight? How does it control your body weight? ii. Do you diet out of concerns for your appearance? Why? b. Have you thought of dieting having consequences on your health? How would you describe the consequences dieting has on your health?
213 c. Do you think the meaning that you give to dieting has changed from the time you started? How have they changed? And why do you think they have changed?
2. Where did you learn how to restrict yourself from eating, as in dieting? Can you give a brief history of how it all started like, a. Do you remember when you started dieting? b. Can you cite some sources from where you have learnt about restricting and monitoring your food, as in dieting? c. What or who has had the greatest influence in regulating your food intake, as in dieting? d. How do you keep yourself informed about dieting?
3. Do you diet alone or with others? a. Are your family and friends aware of your dieting? b. How often do you talk about dieting with others? (as in family members and friends?) c. What kind of support do you get from your family and friends?
4. Do you think dieting is more important to women than for men?
5. What do you personally get from dieting?
IV. Questions on other kinds of regulation of food intake ( for those who do not self identify their not eating as either dieting or fasting):
1. Where did you learn how to restrict yourself from eating? Can you give a brief history of how it all started like, a. Do you remember when you started restricting your food? b. Can you cite some sources from where you have learnt about restricting and monitoring your food? c. What or who has had the greatest influence in your restricting of food?
2. Do you not eat alone or with others? a. Are your family and friends aware of your not eating? b. How often do you talk about not eating with others? (As in family members and friends?)
214 c. What kind of support do you get from your family and friends?
3. What reasons would you attach to not eating or regulating your food intake?
a. How is you practice similar or different from fasting? b. How is your practice similar or different from dieting?
V. Questions on comparison between people who practice different kinds of not eating (for all):
i. Do you know of women who diet, fast or do other kinds of regulating food intake? a. Are they family members? b. Are they friends?
1. What do you know about their practice? How well do you know about their practice?
2. How would you say your practice of not eating is different from people who do other kinds of regulating food intake like fasting or dieting?
3. How would you say your practice of not eating is similar to people who do other kinds of regulating food intake like fasting or dieting?
4. What do you think these women get out of these practices of not eating?
VI. Questions on Demographics (for all): 1. What is your age? 2. What is your yearly income? 3. How much would you say is your family income? 4. What is the highest degree of education that you have completed? 5. Are you employed? What kind of work do you do? 6. Which social class do you think you belong to? ( upper class, middle and lower class)
215 Appendix C: List of fasts and their purposes
Deity Purpose of the Name of the fast worshipped fast
Great awakening to Lord Shiv raatri Shiva: the Hindu god of Shiva destroyer in the holy trinity
Krishna: believed to be Birth of Lord Janmashtami an Krishna incarnation of Vishnu, one of the gods in the holy trinity
Legend has it that a Itu pujo Sun god daughter brought prosperity back to a struggling family by worshipping Sun God [Source: Underhill. 1991 The Hindu Religious Year]
Hindu Goddess Shosti of For well being of children Neel; Ashok birth
For the well being of Karva chauth Offerings are made husband to the moon; done on a full moon night
Goddess of For protection from Monosha snake snake bite
216
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