Combining historical and ethnographic analysis, this book deals with the making of the heterosexual imagination from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present in the Indian context. This unique book uses methods from anthropology, cultural studies and history to explore the making of modern cultures of sexuality in India. It provides an analysis of the sexual and domestic politics of the period by focusing on the vast corpus of publications and journals on sexology from the 1920s to the 1940s, and links Indian activities with those in other parts of the world. The author analyzes material that has thus far been outside the purview of scholarly studies, namely, 'footpath pornography', magazines such as Sexology Mirror (in Hindi), women's magazines dealing explicitly with sex and sexuality.

'Going far beyond the "sociology of education" framework, the study marks a noteworthy intervention in the academic debate on India's tryst with modernity ... an important contribution.' - The Australian Journal of Anthropology

The Doon School, a famous boarding school for boys in India, inculcates in its students the notion that to be post-colonial is to be rational, secular and metropolitan. The school numbers many of India's political, social and intellectual elite among its former students; its code of conduct for the modern Indian citizen has been extremely influential. In this detailed study, Sanjay Srivastava digs deep to find the roots of the ideological construction of post-coloniality in India. The Doon School is the site of his analysis but his work ranges far beyond the School itself. He uses historical sources, ethnographic fieldwork and perspectives from cultural theory to question the prevailing theoretical positions of post-colonial studies, arguing that post-coloniality is meaningless unless it is located in historical, social and cultural space.

Imagining the city as a series of interconnected spaces, the book explores how several such connections - between the home and the street, family and public spaces, religious and non-religious contexts, for example - relate to the topic of masculinity. How do men - elite, subaltern, consumers, 'heads' of the family, members of 'Hindu fundamentalist' organisations, readers of pulp fiction and 'footpath pornography', those who admire the 'strong' political leader - move between these spaces, define them and are defined by them? Urbanisation in India is a vibrant site of an extraordinary cultural, social and economic churn, a context of both the consolidation of masculine identities as well as anxieties regarding their place in the city. The book suggests that sustained and in-depth engagements with specific historical and social contexts avoids tendencies to imagine cities as nodes of comparison that frequently generates universal models of urbanism.

Combining historical and ethnographic analysis, this book deals with the making of the heterosexual imagination from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present in the Indian context.

This unique book uses methods from anthropology, cultural studies and history to explore the making of modern cultures of sexuality in India. It provides an analysis of the sexual and domestic politics of the period by focusing on the vast corpus of publications and journals on sexology from the 1920s to the 1940s, and links Indian activities with those in other parts of the world. The author analyzes material that has thus far been outside the purview of scholarly studies, namely, a ~footpath pornographya (TM), magazines such as Sexology Mirror (in Hindi), womena (TM)s magazines dealing explicitly with sex and sexuality.