Dreams of Flight: Young Dalit Women and Middle-Class Culture in Punjab Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Sugandha Nagpal School of International Development University of East Anglia November 2019 © This copy of the thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognise that its copyright rests with the author and that use of any information derived there from must be in accordance with current UK Copyright Law. In addition, any quotation or extract must include full attribution. Abstract Much of the work on lower caste communities asserts continuities in caste moralities and disadvantages, despite other forms of economic and social upliftment. Mobility is commonly conceptualized as the attainment of tangible outcomes and caste emerges as the main axis for lower caste negotiations with mobility. In contrast, the present study attempts to move beyond objective measures of mobility and explores the operation of mobility as an ideal and aspiration for modern spaces outside the village. In particular, this study examines the ways in which young women from a predominantly Ad-dharmi (upwardly mobile Dalit group in Punjab that have historically worked with leather) village in the Doaba region of Punjab create belonging and access to middle class culture and mobility. Based on ethnographic data, collected over eleven months I seek to answer: How do young women from upwardly mobile Dalit families construct and negotiate access to middle classness? The study finds young women’s transition to middle classness is defined by their interaction with migration, education, consumption and marriage. Young women pursue different ideas of middle classness, based on their family’s economic positioning and culture. Their claims to middle class status and spaces outside the village is based on their negotiations with gender norms and cultural expectations tied to the rural and urban space. In producing mobile and respectable identities, young women give rise to new constructions of appropriate femininity and demonstrate the cultural transitions involved in mobility. At a discursive level, young women associate stereotypes attached to their caste identity with lower class and lower caste others. Thus, caste identity becomes subsumed and channelled towards the project of class mobility in discourse but caste continues to be reproduced through marriage practices. ii Table of Contents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS VII GLOSSARY VIII FAMILY STORIES XII 1 INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 Introduction 1 1.2 Context 3 1.3 Methodology 5 1.4 Mobility and Middle-Classness 6 1.5 Gendered Middle-Class Culture 7 1.6 Caste, Class and Gender 9 1.6.1 Caste Mobility 9 1.6.2 Caste Identity in Projects of Class Mobility 11 1.6.3 The New Middle Class 14 1.6.4 Caste and Class in Chaheru 16 1.6.5 Dalit Patriarchy 17 1.7 The Middle Classes in Chaheru 20 1.8 Overview of the Thesis 24 2 DALITS IN PUNJAB 27 2.1 Introduction 27 2.2 Locating Chaheru 28 2.2.1 Punjab 28 2.2.2 Kapurthala District 29 2.2.3 Phagwara 31 2.2.4 Chaheru 32 2.3 Economic Activities in Chaheru 35 2.4 Gender 38 2.5 Religion and Politics 41 2.6 Migration 44 2.6.1 Migration in Punjab 44 2.6.2 Dalit Migration 47 2.7 Education 50 2.7.1 Education and Dalit Mobility 50 2.7.2 Literacy 52 2.7.3 Educational Institutes 55 2.8 Conclusion 62 3 NAVIGATING SUSPICIONS: ETHNOGRAPHY IN A DALIT VILLAGE 64 3.1 Introduction 64 3.2 Locating a Field Site 67 3.3 Methodological Approach 69 3.3.1 Young Women at Home 69 iii 3.3.2 Studying Social Mobility 71 3.4 Data 73 3.4.1 In the Home 73 3.4.2 In the Village 74 3.4.3 The Schools 76 3.4.4 Trips 79 3.4.5 Institutions outside the Village 80 3.4.6 Oral History 81 3.5 Positionality 82 3.5.1 Navigating Suspicions 82 3.6 Limitations 87 3.6.1 Data Collection 87 3.6.2 Renegotiating Access 89 3.6.3 Implications of Methodology 90 3.7 Ethical Considerations 91 3.8 Conclusion 92 4 CONCEPTUALISING MOBILE IDENTITIES IN THE VILLAGE 95 4.1 Introduction 95 4.2 Mobility 96 4.2.1 Mobility Imaginaries 97 4.2.2. Waiting and (Im)mobility 100 4.3 Educational Mobility 102 4.4 Negotiating Middle-Class Femininity 106 4.4.1 Appropriate Femininity 107 4.4.2 Dalit Women’s Autonomy 109 4.4.3 Agency 111 4.5 Consumption 113 4.5.1 Morality of Consumption 114 4.5.2 Consumption and Autonomy 116 4.5.3 Consumption and Culture 118 4.6 Conclusion 122 5 PLANNING FOR MOBILITY 124 5.1 Introduction 124 5.2 Young Women’s Mobility Imaginaries 125 5.2.1 Migration 126 5.2.2 Urban Modernity 132 5.2.3. Looking Down 133 5.3 Plan Making: Autonomy and Mobility 135 5.4 Being Mobile 138 5.4.1 Moving Away from the Rural 138 5.4.2 Performing Education Mobility 141 5.5 Conclusion 143 6 EDUCATION AS MOBILITY 145 6.1 Introduction 145 6.2 Parental Attitudes towards Education 147 6.2.1. Choice of Educational Institute 148 iv 6.2.2. The Risk of ‘Too much Education’ 150 6.3 Educated Middle-Class Identities 152 6.3.1 Education as Distinction 154 6.3.2. Emulating Urban Middle-Class Identities 156 6.3.3 Attitude to Premarital Relationships 158 6.3.4. Passing Caste 160 6.4 Limitations of Educational Mobility 162 6.4.1. Education and Flexibility 164 6.5 Conclusion 168 7 PERFORMING MOBILITY IN THE VILLAGE 171 7.1 Introduction 171 7.2 Conceptualising Young Women’s Consumption 172 7.2.1 Appropriate Consumption 174 7.2.2 Attitudes towards Consumption 176 7.3 Navigating Mobility: Fashion and Food 179 7.3.1 Being Fashionable 180 7.3.2 Balancing 182 7.3.3 The Simple Look 184 7.3.4 Emulating Urban Modernity 188 7.4 Food and Middle-Class Culture 190 7.4.1 Negotiating Status through Food 193 7.4.2 Food as Commodity 197 7.5 Conclusion 199 8 MARRIAGE AND MOBILITY 201 8.1 Introduction 201 8.2 Marriage and Caste 202 8.3 Marriage and Migration 203 8.4 Discourses of Marriage 206 8.4.1 Parental Views 206 8.4.2 Young Women’s Narratives 208 8.5 Left Behind Wives 210 8.6 Conclusion 217 9 MOVING AWAY 219 9.1 Introduction 219 9.2 Reimagining Mobility 220 9.3 Multiplicity of Middle-Classness 221 9.3.1 Appropriate Femininity 222 9.3.2 Middle-Class Femininity 223 9.3.3 Cultural Orientation 224 9.3.4 Caste Identity 225 9.4 Contributions 227 9.5 Conclusion 230 REFERENCES CITED 233 APPENDIX 246 v Dera Ballan 246 Religious Practices 249 vi Acknowledgements This journey, in many ways, is as much about the end product as it is about the people and the processes that have enabled it. I would like to thank my respondents, who, despite their initial misgivings about my presence in the community, accepted me in their lives. Thank you for opening up your hearts and your homes to me. I am grateful for all the chance encounters and friendships that supported and nurtured me during my field work. Kajal, Kavita, Diskha, Professor Raj Kumar and Deep, thank you for making my fieldwork period so memorable. I am eternally grateful to my amazing supervisors, Dr. Nitya Rao and Dr. Ben Jones, without whose kind and empathetic guidance this work would not have been possible. Thank you for your unrelenting support and patience. I would also like to thank Gillian Potter for her considerate assistance over the years. Finally, a big thank you to my family. My husband, Vatsalya Srivastava, for bearing with me and taking such good care of me during the arduous writing up phase. My parents, Suman and Anil Nagpal, for always encouraging me to ‘dream big’ and my brother, Siddharth Nagpal, for being my source of strength. vii Glossary Chamar: translates to someone who works with chamri or animal hide. It is a derogatory term used to refer to a lower-caste group whose hereditary occupation is the snaring of animal skins and hides and doing tanning and leatherwork Jankari: translates to information. It was often used to refer to levels of awareness rather than formal education. Suit: a type of traditional Indian clothing for women. It consists of a tunic (kameez) and a pair of loose pants (salwar) with a dupatta or stole. Tehsil: an administrative unit above the village, town or city and subordinate to the district. Sarpanch: the head of the village. Bahar: translates to outside. This term was often used to refer the Western world, specifically North America and Europe, where people aspired to move to. Sudhar: translates to improvement but was used to refer to development Bade jagah: translates to big places and was used to refer to the higher status countries that people aspired to migrate to in Europe and North America. Pakka: translates to permanent. This term referred to the permanent resident status of migrants. Kacha: this term is used in many different ways depending on the context. In the context of houses, it refers to less stable or temporary housing structures built with mud and organic material. In terms of migration, it refers to migrants with temporary status in their country of migration. In the realm of food, it refers to raw or undercooked food.