Politics of Belonging in Contemporary India

Kaustav Chakraborty is Assistant Professor at the Department of English, Southfield (formerly Loreto) College, Darjeeling, India. He was formerly a fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, India. Dr Chakraborty has edited Indian Drama in English, Tagore and Nationalism (co-edited with K.L. Tuteja), and is the author of Indigeneity, Tales and Alternatives: Revisiting Select Tribal Folktales. In addition, he has published articles in journals such as Feminist Theology, Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences, and many other reputed journals. His research interests include indigenous literature and culture, queer theory, and cultural studies.

• Introduction: the politics of belonging: anxiety and intimacy Part I: Intimacy, marginality, and anxiety1. Identification, belonging, and the category of Dalit 2. Emotions in the context of caste slavery: exploring the missionary writings on Kerala 3. Nature and belonging: distance, development, and intimacy Part II: Rethinking intimacy, contemporarity vis-à-vis the conventional institutions 4. Intimacy in Tamil kinship 5. Reading queerness: same-sex marriages in India 6. Homes as conversions: literalising the metaphor of Ghar Wapsi Part III: Dissident body and belonging 7. Anti-caste communitas and outcaste experience: space, body, displacement, and writing 8. Disability and intimacy in the making of Madurai Veeran Part IV: Space, vigilance, and getting intimate 9. The modern-day sex worker: the intimate ‘Other’ of intimacy and belonging 10. Public spaces and private intimacies: the ‘Politics of Belonging’ in parks 11. Queer intimacies in the time of new media: when Grindr produces alternative cartographies Part V: Textual belongings 12. Intimacy, belonging, and masculinity in Bhalachandra Nemade’s novel Kosla (Cocoon) 13. Hesitant intimacy: North East Indian English poetry vis-à-vis the Indian nationhood Part VI: Techno intimacies 14. Maternal intimacies online: how Indian mom bloggers reconfigure self, body, family, and community 15. Routing techno intimacy, risk, anxiety, and the ambient political