by Ira Trivedi
Thank you to all my Gurus, teachers and friends at the Sivananda Ashram who provided me with peace, calm and blessings when I needed it the most.
At the end I want to thank Vinayak. Thank you for being with me, and holding my hand every step of the way. I could never have done this without you.
NOTES
INTRODUCTION
1. ‘The Global Middle Class Revolution’, BBC News,25 June 2012.
2. Tripti Lahiri, ‘Much of Indian “Middle Class” Is Almost Poor’ Wall Street Journal, 19 August 2010.
3. ‘India in the Super Cycle’, Standard Chartered Bank, 25 May 2011.
4. Yogita Limaye, ‘Caste or Class?’ BBC, June 2013.
5. ‘India in the Super Cycle’, Standard Chartered Bank, 25 May 2011.
6. Anand Giridharadas, ‘Rumbling Across India to a New Life in the City’, The New York Times, 25 November 2007.
7. Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner, 2001.
8. Kaushik Basu, ‘India’s Demographic Dividend’, BBC News,25 July 2007.
9. J. P. Singh, ‘Problems of India’s Changing Family and State Intervention’, The Indian Women: Myth and Reality (New Delhi: Gyan Publishing House, 1996).
10. Shaifali Sandhya, Love Will Follow: Why the Indian Marriage is Burning (Noida: Random House India, 2009).
11. Ibid.
THE GATHERING REVOLUTION
12. Wendy Doniger, On Hinduism (New Delhi: Aleph Book Company, 2013).
13. Wendy Doniger, Interview.
14. Wendy Doniger, On Hinduism (New Delhi: Aleph Book Company, 2013).
15. Pavan Varma, The Book of Krishna, (New Delhi: Penguin, 2001).
16. Sources include various spiritualists that I spoke with including Radhanath Swami of ISKON and Sreevats Acharya.
17. Adapted from Ira Trivedi, ‘Chastity Begins at Home, and Ends in the Dorm Room’, Outlook, 24 December 2012.
18. Heidi R. M. Pauwels, The Goddess as Role Model: Sita and Radha in Scripture and on Screen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).
19. Wendy Doniger, On Hinduism (New Delhi: Aleph Book Company, 2013).
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid.
22. James McConnachie, The Book of Love: The Story of the Kamasutra(London: Atlantic, 2007)
23. Mamta Gupta, ‘Sexuality in the Indian subcontinent’, Sexual and Marital Therapy Volume 9, Issue 1 (1994) pp. 57–69
24. Geeta Patel, Interview on 10 August 2013
25. Ketu H Katrak, ‘Indian Nationalism, Gandhian “Satyagraha”, and Representations of Female Sexuality’, Nationalisms & Sexualities, ed. by Andrew Parker et. al. (New York: Routledge, 1992) pp. 385–406.
26. Michael Connellan, ‘Women Suffer from Gandhi’s Legacy’, The Guardian, 27 January 2010.
27. Wendy Doniger, Interview
28. Sreenivas Janyala, ‘To Die For’, Indian Express, Feb 2013.
THE MAKING OF A PORN STAR
29. IMRD survey, 2011.
30. India Today Sex Survey, 2008.
31. Ibid.
32. Ibid.
33. Ibid.
34. Jason Overdorf, ‘India: soft-core porn makes a comeback’, Global Post, 7 September 2011.
35. Tusha Mittal, ‘Bhabhi Anticlimax’, Tehelka, Jul 2009.
36. Anastasia Guha, ‘The Beatitudes of a Bountiful Bhabhi’ Tehelka, May 2008.
37. Ibid.
38. Sharin Bhatti, ’Back with a Bang’Tehelka, May 2013.
39. Jason Overdorf, ‘An interview with secret creator of Savita Bhabhi’, Global Post, 4 May 2009.
40. Ibid.
41. Arindam Mukherjee, ‘A Sniff And A Heave’O’ Outlook, Dec 2012.
42. Outlook Sex Survey, 2007
43. Bipin Kumar Singh, ‘50-yr-old woman caught with sex toys at airport’, Mid-Day, 19 July 2011
44. ‘Sex toys recovered from shop in Rajkot’, The Times of India, 2 February 2011
45. Ashish Sinha, ‘In hard times, pills, condoms sold most’, Indian Express,16 Jun 2010.
46. ‘Global Condoms Market to Reach 27 Billion Units and $6.0 Billion by 2015, New Report by Global Industry Analysts, Inc.’ PRWeb, 12 Aug 2010.
47. India Today Sex Survey, 2011.
48. Sonali Kokra, ‘The Vagina Wears Diamonds’, Open Magazine, 16 June 2012.
49. India Today Sex Survey, 2011.
50. Koncept Analytics, ‘Indian Lingerie Industry; Trends and Opportunities’ Market Research, Sep 2008.
51. Aastha Atray Banan, ‘Sheer Laciness’, Open Magazine,29 June 2013.
52. Ibid.
53. Ibid.
54. India Today Sex Survey, 2012
KINKY IS QUEER
55. This tale is from a Malayalee folk narrative of the Mahabharata and shows that gender variance happened freely in India’s mythological past.
56. Devdutt Pattanaik, ‘Did homosexuality exist in ancient India?’ Devdutt, 30 June 2009.
57. Kimberly N. Chehardy, ‘Wickedness Breaks Forth: The Crime Of Sodomy In Colonial New England’ undated.
58. Ruth Vanita, ed. Queering India; Same-Sex Love and Eroticism in Indian Culture and Society(London: Routledge, 2002).
59. Manil Suri, ‘How to be Gay and Indian’, Granta,25 June 2013.
60. Parmesh Shahani, Gay Bombay(New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2008).
61. UNAIDS, ‘HIV programmes for MSM and transgendered people gradually being scaled up in India’, UNAIDS Press Centre, 17 May 2012.
62. India Today sex survey, 2010.
63. Manil Suri, ‘How to be Gay and Indian, Granta,25 June 2013.
64. Ibid.
PIMPS AND HOES
65. ‘Forced Prostitution.’ Half the Sky, PBS, 2012.
66. Pat Califia, ‘Whoring in Utopia’ from Public Sex: The Culture of Radical Sex (Cleis Press, 1994), pp. 242–48.
67. S.N. Sinha and Nitish K Basu, The History of Marriage and Prostitution (Vedas to Vatsyayana), (India: Sage Publications, 1998).
68. Ibid.
69. Rekha Pande, ‘Ritualized Prostitution: Devadasis to Jogins—A Few Case Studies’, Prostitution and Beyond; An Analysis of Sex Work in India (India: Sage Publications, 1998).
70. Ibid.
71. Veena Oldenburg, ‘Lifestyle as Resistance: The Case of the Courtesans of Lucknow’ (1990)
72. Ibid.
73. Ibid.
74. Ibid.
75. Ibid.
76. Ibid.
77. Upasana Bhat, ‘Prostitution “increases” in India’, BBC NEWS,3 July 2006.
78. Rohini Sahni and V. Kalyan Shankar, ‘The First Pan-India Survey of Sex Workers; A summary of preliminary findings’, Center for Advocacy on Stigma and Marginalisation, April, 2011.
79. Outlook Sex Survey, 2006.
80. Outlook Sex Survey, 2011.
81. Ibid.
82. Nicholas Kristof, ‘Raiding a Brothel in India’, New York Times,25 May 2011
83. A. Koirala, H. K. Banskota, B. R. Khadka, Cross border interception – A strategy of prevention of trafficking women from Nepal, Int Conf AIDS; 15. (11-16 July 2004).
84. K. K. Mukherji and S. Muherjee, Girls and women in prostitution in India Department of Women and Child Development (New Delhi, 2007).
85. ‘Trafficking in Persons Report 2012’, US Department of State.
86. Prateek Chauhan, ‘Nexus sexus interruptus for Sex Baba, it’s anti-climax’, Hard News, April 2010.
87. Chinki Sinha, ‘Lady and a Pimp’, Open Magazine,16 June 2012.
88. Ibid.
89. Ibid.
90. Ibid.
91. Cordelia Jenkins and Appu Esthose Suresh, ‘Catering to middle-class interests’, Live Mint, 1 August 2011.
92. Mehboob Jeelani, ‘Supply & Demand’, The Caravan,1 April 2012.
93. Ibid.
94. Ibid.
95. Ibid.
96. Ibid.
97. Mihir Srivastava, ‘The New White Flesh Trade’, India Today, 21 January 2010.
98. Mehboob Jeelani, ‘Supply & Demand’, The Car
avan,1 April 2012.
99. Mihir Srivastava, ‘The New White Flesh Trade’, India Today, 21 January 2010.
100. India Today Sex Survey, 2006.
THE DARK SIDE
101. ‘Youth in India; Situation and Needs 2006–2007’, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS) and Population Council, 2010.
102. Jonathan Ablett et al., ‘The “bird of gold”: The rise of India’s consumer market’, McKinsey Global Institute Report, 2007.
103. Nishita Jha, ‘The Age of Innocence’, Tehelka, 30 March 2013.
104 Shveta Kalyanwala, Shireen J. Jejeebhoy, A.J. Francis Zavier, and Rajesh Kumar, ’Experiences of unmarried young abortion-seekers in Bihar and Jharkhand, India’ Culture, Health & Sexuality. Vol. 14 (3) (March 2012), pp. 241–255.; ‘Because abortion is relatively uncommon and because pregnancy among the unmarried is highly stigmatised in India, community survey–based abortion data greatly underestimate the incidence of abortion among unmarried young women, and even a subnational study of youth in six states failed to obtain reliable information.’
105. K. G. Santhya, Rajib Acharya, Shireen J. Jejeebhoy and Usha Ram, ‘Timing of first sex before marriage and its correlates; evidence from India’, Culture, Health & Sexuality Vol. 13 (3), 10 December 2010, pp. 327–341.; ‘In their sample, her team found almost a third of the girls had been coerced or persuaded to engage in intercourse. 14.4% of women were persuaded and 17.5% were forced.’
106. Ibid. (The study found that in most cases of unwanted or accidental pregnancies the partners somehow ‘supported’ the women—emotionally or financially.)
107. John Levi Martin and Matt George, ‘Theories of Sexual Stratification; Toward an Analytics of the Sexual Field and a Theory of Sexual Capital’, Sociological Theory. Vol. 24 (2), June 2006, pp. 107–132.
108. Christophe Z. Guilmoto, ‘Characteristics of Sex-Ratio Imbalance in India and Future Scenarios’, United Nations Population Fund, 29-31 October 2007.
109. Defined in the national census data as all children between the ages of zero and 6 years.
110. Mary E. John, Ravinder Kaur, Rajni Palriwala, Saraswati Raju, and Alpana Sagar, ’Planning Families, Planning Gender; The Adverse Child Sex Ratio in Selected Districts of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, and Punjab’, Action Aid and International Development Research Centre,2008.
111. Census of India (2011); Sex Ratio of Total population and child population in the age group 0-6 and 7+ years, 2001 and 2011.
112. Anjani Trivedi and Heather Timmons, ‘India’s Man Problem’, The New York Times,16 Jan 2013.
113. Valerie M. Hudson, e-mail interview, 20 December 2012.
114. Valerie M. Hudson and Andrea M. den Boer, ‘A Surplus of Men, a Deficit of Peace; Security and Sex Ratios in Asia’s Largest States’, International Security Vol 26 (4), Spring 2002, pp. 5–38.
115. Shikha Dalmia, ‘India Needs A Sexual Revolution’, The Wallstreet Journal,24 May, 2013.
116. Christophe Z. Guilmoto, ‘Characteristics of Sex-Ratio Imbalance in India and Future Scenarios’, United Nations Population Fund, 29-31 October 2007.
117. Valerie M. Hudson and Andrea M. den Boer, ‘A Surplus of Men, a Deficit of Peace; Security and Sex Ratios in Asia’s Largest States’, International Security Vol 26 (4), Spring 2002, pp. 5–38.
118. Ross Macmillan and Rosemary Gartner, ‘When She Brings Home the Bacon; Labour-Force Participation and the Risk of Spousal Violence against Women’ Journal of Marriage and Family. Vol. 61 (4) (National Council on Family Relations, November 1999), pp. 947–958.
119. K. G. Santhya, Rajib Acharya and Shireen J. Jejeebhoy, ‘Condom use before marriage and its correlates; evidence from India’, International Perspectives On Sexual and Reproductive Health Vol. 37 (4), December 2011.
120. Ibid. (Only 40% of the 106 women who discussed the risk of pregnancy reported having worried about becoming pregnant. Similarly, only eight of the 51 men who discussed pregnancy reported they had been worried about their partner becoming pregnant.)
121. Deborah Mesce and Donna Clifton, ‘Abortion; Facts and Figures 2011’, Population Reference Bureau(April 2011). (An incomplete abortion, like Aasimah’s, is when tissue is left in the uterus, and the treatment usually involves ‘removing the remaining tissue in the uterus with vacuum aspiration or, if that is not available, with dilation and curettage,’ according to WHO’s definition. Unsafe methods include ‘prolonged and hard massage to manipulate the uterus, or repeated blows to the stomach,’ per the WHO.)
122. The Medical Termination Of Pregnancy Act, 1971
123. E-mail interview with Shireen Jejeebhoy, 18 April, 2013. The Abortion Assessment Project of 2004, one of the largest such studies undertaken in India found 6.7 million unreported abortions outside registered and government recognized institutions took place in India that year. Ravi Duggal and Vimala Ramachandran, ‘The Abortion Assessment Project – India; Key Findings and Recommendations’, Reproductive Health Matters 2004;12 (24 Supplement), pp. 122–129
124. Deborah Mesce and Donna Clifton. ‘Abortion; Facts and Figures 2011’, Population Reference Bureau, April 2011.
125. Susheela Singh, Deirdre Wulf, Rubina Hussain, Akinrinola Bankole and Gilda Sedgh, ‘Abortion Worldwide; A Decade of Uneven Progress.’ Guttmacher Institute (New York; Guttmacher Institute 2009).
126. David A. Grimes, Janie Benson, Susheela Singh, Mariana Romero, Bela Ganatra, Friday E. Okonofua and Iqbal H. Shah, ‘Unsafe abortion: The Preventable Pandemic’, The Lancet, Volume 368, Issue 9550, 25 November 2006.
127. Meena Menon, ‘Unsafe Abortions Killing a Woman Every Two Hours’, The Hindu, 6 May 2013.
128. Heather D. Boonstra, ‘Advancing Sexuality Education in Developing Countries; Evidence and Implications’ Guttmacher Policy Review Vol. 14, (3), Summer 2011.
129. ‘Sex education leads to more crimes against women, says police chief’, The Indian Express, 15 Jan 2013
130. Heather D. Boonstra, ‘Advancing Sexuality Education in Developing Countries; Evidence and Implications’ Guttmacher Policy Review Vol. 14, (3), Summer 2011. (There is evidence, however, that such programming, which either precludes information about condoms and contraception entirely or permits only negative information, may be making it harder for young people to effectively engage in protective behaviours down the road.)
131. Floyd Whaley, ‘Philippine Court Delays Law on Free Contraceptives for Poor’ The New York Times, 19 March 2013.
132. Laurie Goodstein, ‘Catholics File Suits on Contraceptive Coverage’, The New York Times,21 May 2012.
133. Connor Simpson, ‘India’s Rape Problem Is Bad Enough to Jump Out a Window’, The Atlantic Wire,19 March 2013.
134. Heather D. Boonstra, ‘Advancing Sexuality Education in Developing Countries; Evidence and Implications’ Guttmacher Policy Review Vol. 14, (3), Summer 2011.
135. Ross Douthat, ‘The Great Abstinence Debate’, The New York Times, 2 February 2010.
136. International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS) and Population Council, ‘Youth in India; Situation and Needs 2006–2007’, Mumbai: IIPS 2010.
137. Heather D. Boonstra, ‘Advancing Sexuality Education in Developing Countries; Evidence and Implications’ Guttmacher Policy Review Vol. 14, (3), Summer 2011.
138. William Crowne, ‘India’s Anti Rape Agenda—Déjà Vu’, Fair Observer, 15 April 2013.
139. Tom Wright, ‘A Short History of Indian Rape-Law Reforms’, The Wall Street Journal, 9 January 2013.
THE LOVE REVOLUTION
140. Shaifali Sandhya, Love Will Follow; Why the Indian Marriage is Burning (Noida: Random House India, 2009), p. 26.
141. Duleep C. Deosthale and Charles B. Hennon, ‘Family and Tradition in Modern India’ Families in a Global Context, ed. Charles B. Hennon and Stephan M. Wilson (New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 2008) p. 297.
142. Ibid.
143. Ibid.
144. Catherine Glynn and Ellen Smart, ‘A Mughal Icon Re-Ex
amined’, Artibus Asiae Volume 57 No. ½,1997, pp. 5–15.
145. Rachel Sturman, The Government of Social Life in Colonial India; Liberalism, Religious Law, and Women’s Rights (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012) p. 197.
146. Karen Leonard and Susan Weller, ‘Declining Subcaste Endogamy in India; The Hyderabad Kayasths, 1900–75’ American Ethnologist Volume 7, No. 3, August 1980.
147. Rachel Sturman, The Government of Social Life in Colonial India; Liberalism, Religious Law, and Women’s Rights (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012) pp. 112–125.
148. Stephanie Coontz, Marriage, A History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage. (New York: Viking Press, 2005).
149. International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS) and Population Council, 2010. ‘Youth in India; Situation and Needs 2006–2007’. (Mumbai: IIPS).
150. Pia Heikkila, ‘Indian women scale heights of the workforce’ The National,5 April 2012.
151. Ibid.
152. Jason Burke, ‘Indian superchef Sanjeev Kapoor plans 24-hour TV cooking channel, The Guardian, 5 March 2010.
153. Joseph Mathew,Marriage and Modernity (New Delhi: Neha Publishers, 2010).
154. Lise Fortier, ‘Women, Sex and Patriarchy’, Family Planning Perspectives Vol. 7, No. 6, November-December 1975, pp. 278–281.
155 Nandan Nilekani, Imagining India: Ideas for the New Century (New Delhi: Penguin, 2009)
156. In India, Birth Control Focus Shifts to Women, The New York Times, 7 March 1982.
157. Meena Dhanda, ‘Runaway Marriages; A Silent Revolution?’ Economic & Political Weekly Volume XLVII (43), 27 October 2012, pp. 100–108.
158. Ibid.
159. Ibid.
160. Sameer Arshad, ‘Only whores choose their partners’ The Times of India, 8 September 2009.
161. Press Trust of India, ‘Haryana Khap panchayats says marry them young to avoid rape cases’ NDTV,7 October 2012.
162. Suruchi Sharma, ‘Rapes, chowmein and hormonal imbalance’ The Times of India, 18 June 2013.
163. Meena Dhanda, ‘Runaway Marriages: A Silent Revolution?’ Economic & Political Weekly Volume XLVII (43), 27 October 2012, pp. 100–108.
