In the edited volume Sociology of South Asia Postcolonial Legacies, Global Imaginaries (published by Springer in 2022), Gowri Vijayakumar and Smitha Radhakrishnan introduce classical Sociology’s approach in South Asia as a contrast case to Western modernity, and colonial and postcolonial sociological scholarship within the subcontinent. It describes how global political shifts, such as the US government funding the study of South Asia after the war, led to new intellectual paths that differed from traditional Sociology and subcontinental social study methods. The book is divided into three sections and each section traces a genealogy and charts a path for decolonizing Sociology through the study of South Asia.

Section one: State-led modernisation projects

Beginning with the first chapter of this section, ‘Between Women and the State: Rights Brokers and Capital Accumulation in West Bengal’ Poulami Roychowdhury, highlights how a range of ‘brokers’ (p. 41) or ‘helpers’ intervene on women’s behalf when they experience abuse and domestic violence. This chapter is based on interviews and ethnographic data from West Bengal. It explores the motivations of individuals who work as intermediaries between women and the state. Although these intermediaries were not necessarily driven by ideology, they were able to accumulate significant cultural, social, symbolic, and economic capital by assisting women. The author highlights that gender-based violence has become a ‘site of capital accumulation’ (p. 39) attracting those who might not otherwise be interested in promoting women’s rights into the business of advocating for them.

In the second chapter titled ‘Degrees of Freedom: Strategic (Non)engagement in Land Markets’ Beth Prosnitz highlights that in Nepal, women’s land rights have been a crucial part of the women’s rights movement, as well as empowerment policies, practices, and political discussions (p. 67). Prosnitz narrates that land ownership is a domain where women have to navigate the unstable and often hostile terrain of patriarchy, particularly legal and economic dependence on male family members, along with the financial insecurities brought on by liberalization, marketization, and development. As women navigate land ownership, they think about how to best protect themselves against the negative impacts of markets and various forms of patriarchy. They reject their ancestral entitlement to land and instead claim marketized land. Women strategically decide whether to engage in land markets to maintain relationships and achieve degrees of freedom under neoliberalism and development regimes, contradicting a Polanyian account that suggests a conflict between marketization and social connections.

In the third chapter, ‘(Hindu) Workers of India, Unite: How Class Politics Shape the Consolidation of Right-Wing Hegemony in India’ Smriti Upadhyay investigates how right-wing nationalist movements attract support from workers in class-specific ways, even as they claim to represent collective entities that are defined along cross-class lines. Specifically, the focus is on the attempts made by the right-wing Hindu nationalist movement in India to gain the support of workers and include them in the overall collective of the ‘Hindu nation’ over time (p. 94). The labour union wing of the Hindu nationalist movement, the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS), is examined as a junior partner in the broader Hindu nationalist hegemonic project (p. 96). The argument put forward is that the BMS exposes significant class-based divisions and areas of instability in the foundation of Hindu nationalist dominance. Finally, the chapter considers how a sociological inquiry that is both theoretically and empirically grounded in South Asia provides an excellent framework to comprehend the centrality of labour and class in the establishment and potential dissolution of right-wing power.

In the final chapter of this section ‘Traditional Genders, Modern Sexualities: Struggles over Sexual and Gender Nonconformity in Postcolonial India’ Chaitanya Lakkimsetti states that in recent years, India has made significant legal progress for sexual and gender minorities, including the repeal of colonial anti-sodomy laws and the legal recognition of transgender identity (p. 121). Also, mainstream media and academic discourse often depict recent developments in sexual values as a movement from traditional, regressive views towards modern, progressive ones. However, this simplistic representation overlooks the complex histories of colonialism and nationalism that originally shaped these repressive legal and social regulations. It is important to acknowledge these histories and their lasting impact on current attitudes towards sexuality. Based on the postcolonial scholarship and legal and policy debates on the anti-sodomy law and transgender rights, the various groups within a nation-state can create different interpretations of modernity and tradition. These different interpretations demonstrate the intricate landscape upon which contemporary postcolonial India debates issues related to sexual and gender identity rights.

Section two: Diasporic mediations

In the first chapter ‘Veiled Sociology: The Epistemologies of Purdah and Two-Boat Ethnography’, Fauzia Husain conducted ethnographic research with frontline women security service workers in Karachi, Pakistan. These workers help Pakistani women maintain their privacy in interactions with the state, but this comes at the cost of their privacy and respectability. While studying how these women cope with the dignity dilemmas arising from their purdah violations, the author adopted various purdah (p. 153) modalities herself, such as interdependence, privation, and self-defence. However, incorporating these modalities in ethnographic practice raised questions of power and representation. The chapter also reflects on these tensions and describes them as a two-boat dilemma – a predicament faced by native-born sociologists who use Western tools and methods to study their home societies in the name of foreign social science.

In the second chapter, ‘Interweaving Afro-Asian Solidarity: A Global Textile Factory Floor in Ethiopia’ Manjusha Nair shares the story of how Indian textile and garment firms shifted their operations to Ethiopia, transporting their machines via new expressways and train lines built with Chinese financial and technical support. These companies were attracted by the availability of workers willing to work for wages that were five times lower than in China, and a duty-free export market facilitated by the African Growth and Opportunity Act, which was signed with the USA. Using ethnographic methods, Nair explores the Indian textile and garment industry’s practices in Ethiopia, focusing on the intersectional experiences of work, race, gender, and nationality. While it may not align with older conceptions of postcolonial solidarity, the interactions between Indians and Ethiopians create new possibilities for humanist practices that emerge from their shared subjecthood on the periphery of the world order determined by the Global North.

In the final chapter titled ‘Give In, Cut Your Hair … Or It Makes You a Very Strong Person: Diasporic Sikhs, Transnational Racialization, and Embodied Identity’, Shruti Devgan examines the experiences of Sikh Americans to assert that the process of racialization faced by minority groups extends beyond the boundaries of U.S. society. Devgan highlights two significant occurrences, namely the anti-Sikh violence in India in 1984 and the subsequent racial profiling and hate crimes against Sikhs following the 9/11 attacks in the U.S., as pivotal moments of racialization for this community. These events compelled certain diasporic Sikhs to outwardly reaffirm and reinterpret their identities by embracing religious symbols. Consequently, the embodiment of identity among Sikh Americans is not solely driven by the inherent meanings associated with these symbols’ origin stories. Rather, their embodied expressions reflect the ongoing dynamic between individual subjectivity and the broader Sikh community within both national and transnational contexts. For diasporic Sikhs, the performance of embodied identity carries significance as both a sense of belonging to the faith-based community and as a form of resistance against the oppression by the Indian state in 1984 and the targeted violence by racist individuals and groups following the events of September 11, 2001.

Section three: Placemaking/Identity making

In the first chapter ‘Of Tigers and Temples: The Jaffna Caste System in Transition During the Sri Lankan Civil War’ Prashanth Kuganathan sheds light on the study of caste in northern Sri Lanka. It is unique from existing works in India as the non-Brahmin Vellalars are the socially, economically, and politically privileged and dominant endogamous group, not Brahmins. The Vellalar supremacy in Tamil Sri Lanka, which lasted for centuries, was challenged at the beginning of the Sri Lankan Civil War (1983-2009) when the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) claimed to be the sole representative of the island’s ethnic Tamil minority. The leader of the LTTE, Velupillai Prabhakaran (1954-2009), belonged to the non-dominant Khariyar caste. Kuganathan examines the transition of caste in Jaffna during the war based on ethnographic field research and interviews. The chapter primarily focuses on LTTE militant rule and Hindu religious practices, demonstrating how this system evolved during the war but was not eradicated. Kuganathan argues for the reconceptualization of caste stratification outside the framework of varna, as caste manifestation is influenced contextually.

In the second chapter ‘Experiencing the City as Workers: The Spatial Practices of Women Beauty and Retail Workers in Karachi, Pakistan’ Sidra Kamran focuses on exploring the experiences of women in Karachi who have limited access to spaces outside their homes and workplaces. By observing the activities in a bazaar and a department store, and conducting interviews with beauty workers, retail workers, and managers, Kamran investigates how women workers perceive the city through their workplaces. Even though women’s workplaces are often characterized by managerial control and exploitative labour, they provide opportunities for women to experience a version of what public spaces offer, such as pleasure, freedom, and the chance to shape new identities. The study draws on theories of the multiplicity of space to explain how notions of ‘publicness’ (p. 269) may differ across different subject positions and are influenced by complex inequalities. The research argues for the inclusion of workplaces in the analysis of urban life.

In the third chapter ‘Caste-ing Space: Mapping the Dynamics of Untouchability in Rural Bihar, India’ Indulata Prasad argues that B. R. Ambedkar, a prominent Dalit scholar, activist, and key architect of the Indian constitution, recognized that the social exclusion of ‘untouchables’ was expressed through spatial segregation in his early twentieth-century works. With the help of ethnography, Prasad examines Ambedkar’s assertions by combining oral histories of the past and present with maps created by Bhuiyan Dalit women in Bihar, India, that illustrate the actual physical spaces they presently occupy in their village, the locations of water and electricity sources, and the quality of these resources that they currently have access to. Through these narratives, Prasad shows that the Bodhgaya Land Movement (BGLM) of the late 1970s helped eradicate the most blatant and readily apparent forms of caste-based discrimination. Nevertheless, more discreet forms of resource discrimination and spatial and social segregation persist because the logic of untouchability still underpins social interactions in rural Bihar, preventing Dalits from fully realizing their rights as guaranteed by law.

In the fourth chapter ‘Following the Prophet’s Sunnah: Class, Piety, and Power in a Pakistani Bazaar’ Umair Javed argues that existing analyses of Islamist actors in Pakistan tend to focus on either the State’s perspective or militancy and regional security, which overlooks the cultural dynamics that enable them to function within society. Javed examines the relationship between religious actors and businessmen in Pakistan’s growing retail-wholesale sector. Based on an ethnographic research, lasting fourteen months, in a large wholesale bazaar in Lahore, the study highlights the interconnectedness of the bazaar and mosque, which contribute to shared conceptions of Muslim identity, public piety, and virtue, while reinforcing class-based distinctions (p. 327). By investigating the micro-sociological foundations of religious practice and politics, this chapter challenges static accounts of Islamist politics in Pakistan and offers insights into the unique social and cultural implications of urbanization and neoliberal economic change.

In the final chapter ‘Bodybuilding Does Not Need American Certifications: Cultural Entrepreneurship in Times of Globalization in Contemporary Bengal’ Jaita Talukdar notes that Kolkata, which was once known for its nationalist physical institutions like wrestling, stick-fighting, bodybuilding, and yoga, now has gyms that follow an American-style model aimed at neoliberalizing the gym experience. However, after interviewing twenty personal trainers in the city, it was found that there are significant continuities between the endogenic physical culture of pre-globalized Bengal and the neoliberal fitness culture. Despite working in American-styled gyms and striving to increase the economic value of their skills, the men in the study have not abandoned the physical culture of the city, which places great emphasis on fostering fraternal ties based on relationships of apprenticeship and deference in pursuit of fitness. The linking of these two worlds is made possible by cultural entrepreneurship, which blends the neoliberal ethos of constant self-improvement to succeed economically with the emotional need to preserve familiar institutions and intimate bonds.

Overall, the book brings together scholarships across India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Ethiopia as well. It demonstrates how South Asia can be a valuable site to rethink sociological practice by addressing the impact of colonialism and imperialism, the modernization projects of the postcolonial era, and the various ways in which gender, caste, class, and sexuality shape everyday life under neoliberalism.

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Mamoon Bhuyan is a Doctoral Researcher in Sociology at Brunel University London.