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“You are Next”
Unmarried Urban Women in India and the “Marriage Talk”
Abstract In this chapter, I focus on women’s relationships with their families in relation to what I am calling the “marriage talk,” that is, the conversation that revolves around when, whom, and even how a woman should marry. My concern in this chapter is not to contemplate the state of singleness, but rather to reflect on the ways in which women are interpellated by the institution of marriage so as to render any other choice, such as remaining unmarried, unthinkable. The paper also illuminates the gendered and casteist ideologies that underpin the institution of marriage and concomitantly, most “marriage talk” in India. This chapter centers its discussion on what it means to be a family, and engages with the changing role that daughters occupy as gendered human beings, and the shifts that occur when daughters are single. It asks how differently families might be constructed if we dislodge marriage from the central position it now occupies. In doing so, it asks what might change if women were to be recognized simply as individuals rather than as daughters, wives, and mothers.
Keywords marriage; family; caste; gender; education
