Gender and sexuality in postcolonial India: Narratives from urban, middle class wome

This dissertation seeks to explore and analyze discourses of gender and sexuality in postcolonial India through the narratives of middle and upper class, urban women. Gender and sexual identities are at the heart of the postcolonial nation-state. Middle and upper class women are central to the contentious debates between national cultural tradition and modernity in contemporary India. At the same time, gender and sexuality in India are constructed within an increasingly global context. The transnationalization of capital and cultures influences the articulation of gender and sexuality within the postcolonial nation-state. This dissertation seeks to explore the ways in which historically situated processes of national identity and transnationalization socially construct gender and sexuality in contemporary India. In-depth interviews with 60 women of the middle and upper classes in urban, contemporary India provide the empirical data for the exploration of these complex, contradictory issues. Five aspects of gender and sexuality are focused on in the interviews--the onset of menstruation, sexual aggression, erotic sexuality, marriage and motherhood.