Metropolitan Feminisms of Middle-Class India: Multiple Sites, Conflicted Voices

Across Indian metropolises, large demonstrations protesting violence against women have become very frequent, marking the present as a significant moment for feminism. I use the term feminism metonymically, to signify the force activated in the name of justice, when women foreground their gender identity. This clarification is prompted by the resistance to these terms seen as Western, culturally different from the milieu here constituted by an active meld of economic and socio-political features. However, in the immense heterogeneity of the cities, markers such as region, caste, religion, etc, get marginalized, though definitely not erased. Impediments to any neat, progressive reading of the public assertions are many. Gender gets displaced when other contexts, which have produced us as women through differentiations, come into play unexpectedly. Breaking the hegemony of cultural imaginaries remains a work in process.