Becoming Agarwal: The Manufacture of a Close-Knit Mercantile Caste

Becoming Agarwal shows how a close-knit elite mercantile caste is reproduced as a privileged urban player in 'new' Hindu India. At this historical juncture, the baniya community is at the helm of not only economic but also political power. Drawing on in-depth interviews with ninety-one interlocutors, analysis of the oldest Hindi newsletter produced in Delhi over two decades, and ethnographic observations made over four years, the book shows the gendered and generational roles undertaken by women and men in self-making in neoliberal India. Elite men through their activities in the caste associations and philanthropy produce a moral and empowering narrative of belonging across class, while older women as mothers and mothers-in-law play regulatory roles within families to co-opt and refashion the desires of a younger generation of women. These desires have the potential to disrupt the reproduction of the caste group, and yet, are craftily absorbed.