Popular Masculine Cultures in India : Critical Essays

In the west, writing on masculinity is becoming as widespread and popular as feminist writing. Yet in India, this is new and unchartered territory waiting to be explored. Similar to the country he inhabits, the Indian male is rapidly changing. India is often described as a land of controls, and nobody embodies so many contradictions as the men found here. Like the demon king Ravana, masculinity wears at least ten heads. Only by revealing the many facets of what it is to be an Indian man can the subject be fully understood. Through Bollywood, literature, the media and theatre, the essays in this book examine how popular culture impacts masculinities in their numerous forms. Based upon experience of lecturing in popular culture and publishing on society, cinema and gender, this analysis of Indian masculinities seeks to answer a question that has grown out of current cultural conversation: What is the Indian male?