Innocent' Victims/'Guilty' Migrants

Hindi public sphere, caste and indentured women in colonial North India

Bibliographic Data

ID3626497
AuthorsCharu Gupta (0000-0002-9523-4437, University of Delhi, corresponding author)
Year2015
Volume49
Issue5
Pages1674-1674
Publication date2015-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueModern Asian Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0026-749X • E-ISSN: 1469-8099
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0026749x15000153
OpenAlexW2169703240
LanguageEN
Citations received13
References cited35

This article analyses representations of the indentured woman in the Hindi print-public sphere of colonial north India in the early twentieth century. There have been sophisticated studies on the condition of Indian women in the plantation colonies of the British Empire, this article focuses instead on the vernacular world within India, showing how the transnational movements of these women emigrants led to animated discussions, in which they came to be constructed as both innocent victims and guilty migrants, insiders and outsiders. The ways in which these mobile women came to be represented reveal significant intersections between nation, gender, caste, sexuality, and morality. It also demonstrates how middle-class Indian women attempted to establish bonds of diasporic sisterhood with low-caste indentured women, bonds that were also deeply hierarchical. In addition, the article attempts to grasp the subjective experiences of Dalit migrant, and potentially migrant, women themselves, and illustrates their ambivalences of identity in particularly gendered ways

Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Caste · Colonialism · Emigration · Hindi · Human sexuality · Identity (music · Indian literature · Literature · Poetry · Political science · Politics · Public sphere · Sociology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Diversity and Impact of Dance · Gender Studies · History · Law · Philosophy · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies · Race, History, and American Society · Religious studies · South Asian Cinema and Culture · South Asian Studies and Diaspora

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