Boundaries and Motherhood

Ritual and Reproduction in Rural Maharashtra

This book links caste and gender to the social production of motherhood. The author argues that in contradiction to the assumption that motherhood is a primarily female-centred and positive domain, subaltern agency produces it as malign, dangerous, malevolent and marginal. Highlighting the manner in which the experience and expression of motherhood is constructed as androgynous and non-threatening to patriarchal hegemony, the author emphasizes the consolidation of ‘lower’ caste positive identity through valorization processes and shows how high caste and class ownership and power produce the birth and survival of a male child as their ideological validaton.

Little has been written about the experiences of motherhood in India. Much research has focussed on maternal mortality/morbidity and child morbidity/mortality as elements that inform public health statistical concerns. Here, the author reinvents and deconstructs existing notions of maternity by interrogating the very systemic and patriarchal nature of its language that depoliticizes oppression.