An audience and textual study of gender and caste politics in Indian literature

This thesis explores the everyday realities of Indian women and the gender politics that currently exist in Indian society from the perspective of an upper caste middle class female audience. The aim of this research is to understand and explore the gender politics at the level of the everyday realities of women, and the attitude of the upper caste audience towards lower caste issues in Indian society using different genres of Indian literature as a framework.

The main research questions that are being addressed are: what has been the representation of female characters in Indian postmodern, popular and Dalit literature since the 1980s; are the characters in the selected novels and their constructions relevant to the lives of the women that form a part of the audience for this research; what has the chosen literature taught us about the gender politics of Indian society; and what has the chosen literature taught us about the attitudes of the upper caste women in relation to lower caste issues. The key research methods that are used are thematic analysis, and in-depth interviews. The findings of the thematic analysis helped guide the interview process and determine the key conversations that were had with the participants. The audience for this thesis comprises 24 Indian women living in the UK between the ages of 20 and 50 who hail from an upper caste, middle class background and spent their formative years growing up in the heartland of India. The key theoretical frameworks that have been used as the basis of this thesis are intersectionality and decoloniality.

The research findings indicate that upper caste women strongly relate to the selected texts, as the novels reflect their own experiences, with characters and events resonating with them on a personal level, often reminding them of their social roles both inside and outside their homes. The use of the encoding/decoding model highlights that while there is significant engagement with postmodern and popular genre novels, there is minimal interaction with the characters and narratives in Dalit literature. The silence of the upper caste audience regarding Dalit issues is notably apparent, suggesting that in interpreting Indian novels, the women are influenced by their habitus and caste, but one can also argue that the issue runs deeper. Indeed this thesis argues that there is a much more deep-rooted conditioning at the ideological level than the audience would like to admit; there are larger forces at play than just political agenda pushing.