E-raamat: Men at Home: Imagining Liberation in Colonial and Postcolonial India

"Family and home are commonly equated with women and children. Men at Home changes this visual by situating men firmly in the domestic world. It underlines men's dependence on the family and home, although men (and societies more broadly) tend to treat the domestic as incidental to men's lives. Gyanendra Pandey looks at historical narrative examples of men in the home across class and caste, showing how men-specifically husbands-navigate their home lives through and beyond their relationships with women and family. As much as this is a book about Indian masculinity and conjugality, it is also a book about Indian modernity, nationalism, and society, seen from the location of men in the home. Pandey utilizes an abundant and growing archive of autobiographies and memoirs, ethnographic accounts, and fiction, which details life in the intimate space of family and home. Men at Home raises important questions about the meaning of honor and shame, rights and responsibilities, citizenship and belonging in the domestic-and wider public-worlds of colonial and postcolonial South Asia"--

Gyanendra Pandey explores the complex and varied ways in which men in colonial and postcolonial India navigate their domestic lives across stratified castes and classes.

In Men at Home, Gyanendra Pandey offers a detailed exploration of men’s comportment and conduct in the home and the implications of their ambiguous commitment to this critical part of their lives. The author draws on a wealth of archival materials—autobiographies, memoirs, fiction, and ethnographies—to situate Indian men firmly in the domestic world, underlining their dependence on the family and home. He investigates how men negotiate marriage, intimacy, and conjugality, and focuses the effects of the humiliating and constant assertion of gender, caste, and class power in familial interactions. To uncover the nuances of these relationships, Pandey attends to the domestic commitments of upper-, middle-, and lower- class men across religion and caste. He considers issues of honor and shame, rights and responsibilities, citizenship and belonging through this exploration of how men across the subcontinent understand themselves in and beyond their domestic relationships. As much as a book about masculinity and conjugality, this is a book about Indian modernity, nationalism, and society as seen from the location of men in the home.