Rama Devi, post-doctoral fellow at the CSH, has been invited to deliver a talk titled “Who is Afraid of Love: Gender, Caste, Faith and Marriage” by the Centre for Studies in Gender and Sexuality, Ashoka University.

The talk is scheduled for April 22, 2026.

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 honour, shame, disgrace, choice, purity, contamination, desire, and intimacy are negotiated as the institution is met with inescapable changes.

Rama DEVI