Narrating Love and Violence

Women Contesting Caste, Tribe, and State in Lahaul, India

By Himika Bhattacharya

Rutgers University Press

Narrating Love and Violence is an ethnographic exploration of women’s stories from the Himalayan valley of Lahaul, in the region of Himachal Pradesh, India, focusing on how both, love and violence emerge (or function) at the intersection of gender, tribe, caste, and the state in India. Himika Bhattacharya privileges the everyday lives of women marginalized by caste and tribe to show how state and community discourses about gendered violence serve as proxy for caste in India, thus not only upholding these social hierarchies, but also enabling violence.

The women in this book tell their stories through love, articulated as rejection, redefinition and reproduction of notions of violence and solidarity. Himika Bhattacharya centers the women’s narratives as a site of knowledge—beyond love and beyond violence. This book shows how women on the margins of tribe and caste know both, love and violence, as agents wishing to re-shape discourses of caste, tribe and community.

In Narrating Love and Violence, Himika Bhattacharya recenters power through writing practices that blur the rigid conceptual divisions between lives, relationships, and narratives. The book exemplifies how theoretically informed storytelling and politically aware methodology can be interwoven to produce possibilities of justice, dignity and recognition.'
Richa Nagar, author of Muddying the Waters: Co-authoring Feminisms Across Scholarship and Activism

A smart, elegantly written book, Narrating Love and Violence explores the complex lives of Lahauli women negotiating the intricacies of caste/tribe/state violence with fierce courage, humor, and deep love. Bhattacharya's timely and original ethnography challenges conventional feminist understandings of gendered violence, enacting an inspiring praxis of solidarity and love. This book belongs on the bookshelves of all transnational feminist scholar-activists.'
Chandra Talpade Mohanty, author of Feminism Beyond Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity

Himika Bhattacharya makes a serious effort in Narrating Love and Violence to construct a genre-breaking experimental feminist ethnography...Bhattacharya succeeds to a great extent....The lucidity of writing attributes the analysis and descriptions a quality of intimacy that eludes much conscientious ethnographic work. The book contains six chapters, ensconced between a Prologue and an Epilogue—both reflecting on the location of the researcher and the politics of representation with an unusual frankness. Contributions to Indian Sociology

In Narrating Love and Violence, Himika Bhattacharya recenters power through writing practices that blur the rigid conceptual divisions between lives, relationships, and narratives. The book exemplifies how theoretically informed storytelling and politically aware methodology can be interwoven to produce possibilities of justice, dignity and recognition.'
Richa Nagar, author of Muddying the Waters: Co-authoring Feminisms Across Scholarship and Activism

A smart, elegantly written book, Narrating Love and Violence explores the complex lives of Lahauli women negotiating the intricacies of caste/tribe/state violence with fierce courage, humor, and deep love. Bhattacharya's timely and original ethnography challenges conventional feminist understandings of gendered violence, enacting an inspiring praxis of solidarity and love. This book belongs on the bookshelves of all transnational feminist scholar-activists.'
Chandra Talpade Mohanty, author of Feminism Beyond Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity

Himika Bhattacharya makes a serious effort in Narrating Love and Violence to construct a genre-breaking experimental feminist ethnography...Bhattacharya succeeds to a great extent....The lucidity of writing attributes the analysis and descriptions a quality of intimacy that eludes much conscientious ethnographic work. The book contains six chapters, ensconced between a Prologue and an Epilogue—both reflecting on the location of the researcher and the politics of representation with an unusual frankness. Contributions to Indian Sociology

HIMIKA BHATTACHARYA is an assistant professor in the department of women’s and gender studies at Syracuse University in New York.

Prologue: From Fieldwork to Lifework
Chapter 1. Crossing the Top
Chapter 2. Shades of Wildness
Chapter 3. Storied Lives
Chapter 4. Narrating Love
Chapter 5. Magic Tricks
Chapter 6. Remembering for Love
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Appendix I: Genealogy of Previous Work
Appendix II: First Information Reports
Notes
Glossary
References
Index
About the Author

Related Titles