The (im)possibility of decolonising gender in South Asia: a reading of Bollywood’s ‘new women’

ABSTRACT

This paper highlights tensions in the continuity of coloniality and the decoloniality of gender as represented within portrayals of new women in Bollywood, through an analysis of the heroines’ dance, sexuality, anger and consumption. This reading of Bollywood’s new women alludes to the (im)possibility of decolonising gender in South Asia, arguing that the emergent female subjects of these movies find themselves in cross-pulls between the need for self-realisation, neo-liberalism, and national identity. Our analysis reveals within these multiple cross-pulls there are moments that rupture the narratives of coloniality/modernity, by proposing a version of what Partha Chatterjee’s called ‘our modernity’. These narrative ruptures allow us to challenge historically received notions of identity and representations of Third World women, and of gender in South Asia. At the same time, the characters analysed within this paper continue to uncritically subscribe to colonial forms of modernity, through active participation as workers and consumers in the capitalist economy.

KEYWORDS:

• Bollywood
• new woman
• coloniality
• decolonisation
• Third World Woman
• modernity

Notes

* On a clarificatory note, we would like to signpost to readers that while the term ‘decolonial/ decolonisation’ is used to indicate the theorization and the process, the term postcolonial is used in this paper as a geographical and spatial location to describe former British colonies, unless stated clearly as post-colonial theories or scholars.

1. Chatterjee, “Colonialism, Nationalism,” 622.

2. Chatterjee, Our Modernity, 3.

3. Chatterjee, “English Vinglish,” 1181.

4. Chatterjee, “Nationalist Resolution,” 244.

5. Chatterjee, “English Vinglish,” 1190.

6. Osuri, “Ash-coloured Whiteness,” 110.

7. Dwyer, “Bollywood’s India,” 381.

8. Quijano, “Coloniality of Power” and “Modernity”, 215.

9. Lugones, “Coloniality and Material and Inter-subjective Social Domination,” 2.

10. Mignolo, “Coloniality/Moderniy,” 450.

11. Lugones, “Coloniality of Gender,” 9.

12. Ibid.

13. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 201.

14. Bhambra, “Continual Contestation in the Present,” 123.

15. Mignolo, “Delinking,” 451.

16. Schiwy, “Decolonization and Subjectivity”; and Schiwy and Magnelo, “Double Translation.”

17. Schiwy, “Decolonization and Subjectivity,” 271–294.

18. Talukdar and Linders, “Gender, Class Aspirations”; Radhakrishnan, “Professional Women”; and Mankekar, “Women Oriented.”

19. Talukdar and Linders, “Gender, Class Aspirations”; and Parameswaran, “Global Queens.”

20. Thapan, “Embodiment and Identity.”

21. See note 5 above.

22. See note 3 above.

23. Arora, “Nobody puts Rani,” 146.

24. Sharma, “Transnational Publics,” 106.

25. Chatterjee, “English Vinglish,” 1182.

26. Chatterjee, “Colonialism, Nationalism,” 628.

27. Ibid., 627.

28. See note 27 above.

29. Mohanty, Feminism without Borders, 2.

30. Bhambra, Connected Sociologies, 123.

31. See note 3 above.

32. Nijhawan, “Excusing the Female Dancer,” 101.

33. Ibid.

34. Gangoli, ‘Sexuality and Sensuality’, 150.

35. Arora, “Nobody puts Rani,” 148.

36. Hussein, Rethinking Newwomanhood.

37. Vasudevan, “Another History,” 2917–2925.

38. McCLintock, Sexual Purity, 45.

39. Arora, “Nobody puts Rani,” 147.

40. Cooper, ‘Rage’ ‘Women of Color’ ‘Violent Ends’, 7.

41. Phadke et al., “Why Loiter?” 26.

42. Sharma, “‘Safe’ Transnational Public Space,” 109.

43. Ibid.

44. Daya, “Embodying Modernity,” 98.

45. Sharma, “Acting out her Freedom in ‘Free’ Publics, as if she is Unfree,” 110.

46. Trivedi, “All Kinds of Hindi,” 54.

47. Mazumdar, “Figure of the Tapori,” 4873.

48. See note 18 above.

49. Quijano, “America” and “Europe” “European,” “Indian,” “African”, 171.

50. Mignolo, “Delinking,” 497.

51. Maldonado-Torres, “On the Coloniality of Being,” 263.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Saba Hussain

Saba Hussain is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the Department of Sociology, University of Warwick. She is the author of Contemporary Muslim Girlhoods in India: A Study of Social Justice, Identity and Agency in Assam, published by Routledge London. Her research interests are in areas of gender, education and extremism in India and in the UK. She received her PhD from University Warwick and holds Masters degrees from London School of Economics (Development Studies) and Delhi School of Economics (Sociology).

Nazia Hussein

Nazia Hussein is lecturer in Sociology in the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies (SPAIS) in University of Bristol. She is a feminist sociologist and her research is broadly in the areas of gender, race, ethnicity, religion and class with a particular focus on South Asia and South Asian diaspora. She is the author of The New Muslim Women of Bangladesh and the editor of Rethinking New Womanhood: Practices of gender, class culture and religion in South Asia. Her current research investigates ‘New Muslim’ identities in Britain through a study of British Muslim women’s public and political activism.