Sixteenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

Mobilities for most people is conditional. The act of being mobile is contingent on many factors and categories of the social hierarchy that one is located at. One’s mobility works in complex ways where gender, class, caste, sexuality, ethnicity intersect and play a critical role in deciding an individual’s movements. The social category of gender inevitably places women at a disadvantage where their mobilities are decided by many actors (mostly men) which makes it restricted. Thus, the paper illuminates on gendered mobilities in the city of Banaras (India). The ethnographic study examines women’s understanding, practices, and articulation of mobility, in their everyday lives, in the city of Banaras. Banaras is considered as the most sacred city for Hindus. The city’s landscape, history, culture and social life is dotted with religious elements. Religiosity a domain authored and controlled by men gives this city its unique character and furthers the patriarchal agenda of defining women’s role in private spaces as well their access to the public. This imposition of public and private divide and the sacrality of Banaras provides a different narrative of women in the city. This narrative enables in shifting the unidimensional lens of Banaras from a sacred city to that of a gendered city. This paper brings forth embodied experiences of women in the city of Banaras across class, caste, religion, age, marital status, and sexuality. It examines ways in which women blur the public and private divide in the attempt of being mobile in their everyday life.