Becoming Young Men in a New India: Masculinities, Gender Relations and Violence in the Postcolony

This book tells the gendered story of a changing India through the lives of its young middle-class men. Through time spent ethnographically ‘hanging out’ with young men in gyms, bars, clubs, trains and gay cruising grounds in India, the author critically reveals Indian men’s violence towards women in various city spaces and also shows the many classed and masculine entitlements and anxieties that they experience. It lays bare the often secretive and hidden social worlds of young Indian men and critically analyses the impact young men’s actions and identities have not just on themselves but also on the many women they encounter in their everyday lives. In this way the book puts forward a critical queer-feminist perspective of men and masculinities in postcolonial India where the politics of class, gender, sexuality, violence and urban spaces come together in complex and contradictory ways.