Centre for Studies in Gender and Sexuality invites you to a lecture by Rama Devi titled 'Who is Afraid of Love? Gender, Caste, Faith and Marriage'. The lecture is a part of our flagship series ISHQ (Issues in Society, History and Queerness) and will take place on April 22, 1.30 PM at AC-04 LR 302.

“Love is unconditional” is one of the commonly used phrases to describe its transcendental quality. It also implies that love does not have to be bound by a marital bond; yet marriage is often viewed as the meaningful and logical culmination of amorous bonds. Even if not the norm, an increasing shift from arranged marriages towards love-cum-arranged/companionate/choice marriages is notable.  These diversifying matrimonial practices are now not exceptional or rare, symbolizing one of the markers of social change in contemporary India. 

This talk will critically engage with the questions of whether the abstract/transcendental conception of love meets and matches the reality of the world around us. Can we really love and marry the one or those we share an amorous bond with? Or is the “choice” to love and marry shadowed and defined by the social norms (caste rules) and expectations? Is it possible to discount the gender dynamics, sexuality, and baggage of our historical identities in amorous-marital relationships? How does society respond to the transgressions of norms that guide marriage? What forms of social anxieties are revealed through resistance to amorous-marital relationships? By focusing on inter-caste romantic and marital relationships, the talk will trace the changes in the durable institution of marriage and the limits of these changes. It will delineate how the notions of honor, shame, disgrace, choice, purity, contamination, desire, and intimacy are negotiated as the institution is met with inescapable changes.

About the speaker: Rama Devi is a sociologist whose research focuses on contemporary caste, and urban Dalit lives. She is a post-doctoral fellow at the Centre De Sciences and Humaines (CSH), Delhi. Previously, she taught social science courses at KREA University. Her research work and opinion pieces have been published in the International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, Sociological Bulletin, LSE Blogs, and Economic and Political Weekly. Her monograph Caste and Emancipatory Quest: Ethnography of Dalit Lives in an Urban Neighborhood (2025) unravels the entangled relationship between ascriptive identity (caste) and space (urban) and how this interaction (re)moulds urban stratification.