Page 307 - DSOC202_SOCIAL_STRATIFICATION_ENGLISH

Social Stratification

Notes has troubled social scientists of the age : “Where does the modernity of the middle-class Indian lie ?”
I can now tell you. In his pocket.
The domestication of modernity in India has a trajectory not unlike that of the taming of the
shrew; and, indeed, many educated (male) Indians would attribute to modernity, qualities not
dissimilar to those borne by that hapless Shakespearean wench. Technology is the only arena
where the middle class Indian feels comfortable with modernity. And then he has to domesticate
it annually through worshipful puja every Dussehra. In all other areas, particularly to do with
social interaction, the middle class Indian speaks only the language of caste, kinship and community.
Over 90 per cent of all middle-class marriages are arranged or “other-initiated”, caste specific and
involve kanyadan (the transfer of the virgin bride), if not also dowry. Fairy tale romances are also
subject to parental approval, in the absence of which the parting of ways can be swift and ruthless.
Gone are the days when young Lochinvars in real (and reel) life braved social and familial wrath
for love across caste and community boundaries. The modern man is far more pragmatic and
considers such moves suicidal. If he can find a love who also fits in with those rigidly conceived
“homely, family values”, great. Else the girl must be dumped. Today’s films shore up the idea.
An acquaintance, recently being wooed-with parental consent no doubt-by a co-worker from
another community and region, was foolish enough to tell him of an earlier, dead relationship. He
turned tail and fled back into the consoling arms of caste and family who, no doubt, convinced
him of the woman’s dubious character or origins. Regardless of his own sexual status, the modern
Indian male is convinced that only a virgin is capable of pure love and worthy of being introduced
to his mother.
“Sources” and “contacts” are the ways to negotiate the professional world and kin whispers to kin
about the possibilities of “finding something” for one of their own. The use of connections to gain
employment, favours and benefits is rampant among the middle class and it rarely enters a
secular arena, whether government office or corporate house, without having first found out who
is the best person (in caste/regional/kinship terms) to “approach” there.
The weakest area of modern life is that of non-ascribed associations. Professional relations rarely
metamorphose into deep friendships and, when they do, are strictly status and gender bound. The
average male flees from interaction of even the weakest sort with female colleagues. When family
meets family, sex and status are sharp dividing lines. Woe betide the single professional woman
(and modern India has many of these and few single men) who tries to establish friendship with
a male colleague. She can be tolerated in the corridors of the professional arena, rarely admitted
into the sacred portals of the home.
The secular professional world does not always succumb to the lure of the “contact” or the
“connection”. Secularism and even democratic dissent, by the disprivileged, render the middle
class vulnerable.
Modernity for it, therefore, is not inclusion of more sections of society; it is exclusion. Public
spaces close themselves to those without credit cards, residential localities hem themselves in
against “the lower orders” with watchmen and boundary walls. The state protects the consumption
and lifestyle of the already endowed, chastising workers, slum dwellers or other marginalised
who dare to rebel for holding “citizens” to ransom.
The mentally modern is all too frightening. It is the modernity of matter (read money) that (al)
lures the middle class Indian in Shopper’s Stop and Crossroads (Mumbai), MG Road and Brigade
Road (Bangalore), South Extension and Greater Kailash (New Delhi). Clothes, jewellery, cars,
compact disc players, washing machines and flat televisions-this is the real modernity. Sindur and
mangalsutra intact, female subservience and patriarchy unchallenged, the middle class Indian,
dressed in jeans and T- shirt, can afford to be “liberal” in spending. He epitomises modernity as

302 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY