Topics

About this talk

This book discussion examines how a dominant mercantile caste reproduces itself as a cohesive and influential elite in contemporary urban India. Drawing on ninety-one interviews, long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Delhi, and community archives, Becoming Agarwal traces the gendered and generational labour through which caste privilege, kinship unity, and economic power are sustained across class fractions. The book explores how marriage choices, family expectations, and everyday socialisation within households shape younger women's understanding of love, duty, and community. It examines the role of older women in sustaining kinship structures and the ways in which men consolidate caste capital in the public sphere through philanthropy, religious programmes, and the construction of a shared mercantile ancestry. Moving between elite households, shopkeeping families, and caste associations, the book shows how caste, gender, kinship, and economic power work together in the reproduction of a close-knit community. It also considers the points at which these structures are questioned, negotiated, or placed under strain.

→ More information & booking (opens in new tab)