Narrating Love and Violence : Women Contesting Caste, Tribe, and State in Lahaul, India

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. Cover Page 1 Title Page 4 Copyright Page 5 Dedication 6 Contents 8 Prologue: From Fieldwork to Lifework 12 Chapter 1: Crossing the Top 20 Chapter 2: Shades of Wildness 51 Chapter 3: Storied Lives 74 Chapter 4: Narrating Love 93 Chapter 5: Magic Tricks 114 Chapter 6: Remembering for Love 136 Epilogue 159 Acknowledgments 170 Appendix I: Genealogy of Previous Work 172 Appendix II: First Information Reports 178 Notes 184 Glossary 194 References 198 Index 210 About the Author 218 Offers 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 shows how state and community discourses about gendered violence serve as proxy for caste in India. 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 violence is produced at the intersection of gender, tribe, caste, and the state in India, while demonstrating how love operates as a politic.