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Mobile Persons: Cell phones, Gender

and the Self in North India
Assa Doron
Published online: 23 Oct 2012.

To cite this article: Assa Doron (2012) Mobile Persons: Cell phones, Gender and the Self in North
India, The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 13:5, 414-433, DOI: 10.1080/14442213.2012.726253
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14442213.2012.726253

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The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology

Vol. 13, No. 5, November 2012, pp. 414433

Mobile Persons: Cell phones, Gender

and the Self in North India

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Assa Doron

In this article I analyse the varied ways mobile phones are integrated into the daily lives of
low-income people and the implications for courtship practices, marriage relations and
kinship ties. Rather than offer a celebratory analysis of the mobile phones empowering
effects, my ethnographic research reveals a more complex story, one that shows how the
presence of the mobile both reinforces and undermines gender roles and institutions of
authority. Conceptually, I argue that mobile communication provides insights into north
Indian personhood as nodal, while also stimulating new practices and ideologies that
render this technology central to the struggle for (and over) power and domination.
Keywords: Mobile Phone; Gender; Material Culture; Technologies of Self; Personhood
Introduction
On a recent visit to Varanasi I was talking with a few boatmen about the respective
roles of wife and husband in the household.1 I have known these men for over a
decade, since their teens. All have recently married, and many have young children.
During our conversation they emphasised the division of labour whereby their wives
take responsibility for household chores, including cleaning, washing and feeding the
children, as well as managing the income the men bring home. They said that men
cant save money (aadmi paisa nahin bacha sakta), they just spend it on drinking and
gambling, whereas women are very thrifty by nature, though there are some hi-fi
women who are loose with their spending, they added. They compared their own
marital relationships with that of their colleague, Dilip, who they said, mockingly, is
controlled by his wife (wo bibi ka gulaam hai). One man suggested that this is what
happens when one forgoes an arranged marriage and tradition (parampara) in favour
of a love marriage*a sign of ominous beginnings. Another man observed that Dilips
wife ventures outside the house alone to the market and even to the riverfront,
Assa Doron is Australian Research Council Future Fellow at the Australian National University. Correspondence
to: Assa Doron, Anthropology, School of Culture, History and Language, The Australian National University,
Canberra ACT 0200 Australia. Email: assa.doron@anu.edu.au
ISSN 1444-2213 (print)/ISSN 1740-9314 (online)/12/050414-20
# 2012 The Australian National University
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14442213.2012.726253

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carrying her own mobile phone. Unlike Dilips wife, I discovered, none of the mens
spouses had their own mobiles. Rather there were mobile phones kept strictly for
family use to contact the men if the need arose.
Of course, the mobile phones ancestor*the landline telephone*was also
controversial when making its debut in the late nineteenth century. Telephonecompany managers, wrote Michele Martin in her study of gender and the telephone in
Canada from the 1880s to the 1920s, thought that womens use of mens technology
would come to no good end (Marvin, 1988, p. 23, quoted in Martin, 1991, p. 140).
The landline, when it arrived in north Atlantic households at the beginning of the
twentieth century, was viewed with distrust by guardians of social order. Some
worried, Claude Fischer wrote, that the telephone permitted inappropriate or
dangerous discussions, such as illicit wooing (Fischer 1992, p. 78). In Pennsylvania,
Amish communities saw the phone as a threat to the home and moral order, bringing
with it the corrupting influences of the outside world (Umble 1992). Yet, the mobile
phone, a technology so close to the skin and carried wherever one goes, is different.
It enables people to communicate with unparalleled privacy and independence.
When the boatmen mocked their colleague for having a wife who wore the mobile
phone in the family, they reflected ideas and practices relating to ownership, gender
and household economy. While these issues are not unique to India (see, for example,
Omar-Hijazi & Ribak 2008; Ureta 2008; Wallis 2010), the Indian context presents
particular challenges, arising from specific ideologies and historical, economic and
social conditions. In this paper I explore the disruptive and affirming features of
mobile phone use through the tensions, anxieties and satisfactions that the phone
brings from the vantage point of individual families, particularly those of low socioeconomic status.
Technologies of Self, Material Culture and the Cell Phone
A number of issues of wider concern frame this study. The first is the relationship
between people and things, a focus on the material world*the world of artefacts and
their social significance*and the way mobile phones are used within the context of
durable but not immutable gender and family relations. In adopting this material
culture perspective I examine how an object such as the mobile phone stimulates
diverse modes of conduct and self-reflection. This was Michel Foucaults (1994)
concern when he conceived the idea of technologies of the self to denote an array of
practices through which people in classical Western society developed new knowledge, skills, attitudes and understanding about themselves and wider society as moral
and ethical subjects. Foucaults analysis of literacy practices and forms of writing
during the early Greco-Roman period as a technology is particularly germane to my
analysis. Letter writing intensified and widened the experience of the self , promoting
the ability to disclose and exchange information about the self (Foucault 1994,
pp. 20718). This technology, in turn, enabled individuals to reflect and transform
their ways of operating in the world. Mobile literacy is an equally powerful form of

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416 A. Doron

literacy*a technology of the self*with a particular purchase on the way the people
in north India are reshaping their understanding of themselves and their desires in
the context of social relations, actions, institutions and ideological systems. Their
social environment, marked by class and status (habitus), along with the inherited
dispositions and orientations, is mediated in contradictory ways by such material
objects as the mobile phone, making the device a focal point for the struggle over
power and domination. Thus, whether and how a woman should be allowed to use a
mobile phone is cause for great concern among some communities in north India.
But Foucault was less concerned with relationships between people and things;
rather he focused on practices, cultivated positions and forms of conduct that people
took upon themselves in an endeavour to achieve self-realisation. Letter writing was
part of that array of practices, but that is not what makes them technologies. What
makes them technologies is that they constitute practices that promote the
development of the thing called the self . In this respect, Daniel Millers (1987)
concept of objectification, which he adapts from Hegel, ties well with that of
Foucaults because of its particular focus on material goods and their effects on the
construction of self. Dissatisfied with Marxs formulation of the material world as a
product of alienated labour, forming an external environment that inhibits selfdevelopment, Miller (1987, p. 40) views the subject-object relationship as mutually
constituted, with self-affirming potential. According to his view, from the outset,
once the process of externalisation was set in motion (not limited to capitalist mode
of production), it was characterised by dialectical sets of relations, underpinned by
the idea that objects make us, as part of the very same process by which we make
them (Miller 2010, p. 60). In other words, by creating stuff we are simultaneously
creating ourselves in varied and contradictory ways, which may have liberating or
oppressive effects depending on the cultural and historical contexts, but which
constitute a dynamic site for the development of human social and material relations.
Drawing on his wide sweep of ethnographic research, ranging from houses and
clothing to new-media, Miller is careful to emphasise the myriad ways that our
everyday life is shaped by our encounter with the world of goods, to the degree that
these objects become an extension of ourselves and enhance our capacity as human
beings (Miller 2010, p. 59).2 For example, Miller shows how the sari*a seemingly
benign lengthy cloth*once donned by a woman does not only signify her station in
life, but also affects the way she conducts and experiences herself and interacts with
the social and physical environment. As Miller observes (2010, p. 29), learning to
wear a sari is somewhat analogous to driving a car, marking a shift in ones own
sense of age . . . with all the new freedoms, capacities, constraints and fears that
growing entails. Both are public events, and ones competence*or lack of it*are
open for others to scrutinize and criticize.
Just like the sari, mobile phone practices offer a valuable prism through which to
examine concepts of personhood across lines of gender, class and caste. This leads me
to my second frame of analysis*concepts of Indian personhood*which generations
of anthropologists have studied and debated. Inspired by Mckim Marriots (1976)

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original formulations, the Indian person was dubbed a dividual as opposed to its
Western counterpart  the individual. The dividual was said to be fluid and open,
constituted through transactions in coded-substance, which were tied to ideas and
practices of pollution, rank, status and reproduction. This view of personhood was
developed beyond South Asia through a series of conceptual oppositions, such as
individualism/relationalism, modernity/tradition, and so on, an issue I come back to
in the conclusion. Significantly, however, central to the Indian personhood model was
the idea that throughout life a person progressively expands relationships through a
complex scheme of transactions and thus increasingly becomes attached to (or
detached from) possessions, places and people. This notion was brilliantly studied by
Sarah Lamb (1997, 2000) in her research of womens life cycles in West Bengal.
Lambs examination of ageing and personhood shows womens changing position in
the domestic cycle over time, from the lowly position that a new daughter-in-law
occupies in her in-lawss house, to a more established one as a mother, and then as a
senior and ageing woman in the household. I draw on Lamb and others to explore
how the mobile phone is implicated in the life-cycle and attachment to the material
and social world. I propose the idea of the nodal person to illuminate the genderedpatterns of social relations, and the way that cell phones enhance the abilities of men
and women to act as nodes in a number of types of relationships.3 This notion of
nodality, I argue, is a particularly productive framework for the discussion of mobile
phones because of the usually dyadic nature of cell phone conversations.
The term node is also useful for bridging Foucaults concept of technologies of
the self and the material culture perspective. A node extends to both persons and
things. This nodal mode involves an articulation*a relation in two senses: it is
articulating a relation to oneself, as well as to others and things. Indeed, such a
perspective resonates with a Latourian analysis in which objects are seen as possessing
agency. In this vein, Millers conception of the house as the objectification of cultural
values and a network of agents and the relationships between them (Miller 2005,
p. 11; 2001) can equally be applied to the mobile phone, since both produce and
constitute social relations and morality which are inherent to the process and
experience of creating our sense of ourselves and others. Once we endow such things
(for example, house or mobile) with agency, then the boundaries between subjects and
objects become blurred: part of a material environment that fashions its subjects, and
through which we come to imagine ourselves and our surroundings*human or
otherwise. Applied to everyday mobile phone use in urban north India, this approach
enables us to reformulate conventional ideas about private/public distinctions, the
nature of conjugal relationships, ownership and the experience of mobility in social
space and time.
Throughout this paper I draw on ethnographic examples of how the mobile phone
is embedded in peoples lives in ways that affect and allow for the reshaping of the self
or person, especially as this is expressed in gender relations. But it is important to
note that there are various ways that this occurs, which I elaborate on elsewhere (see
Jeffrey & Doron 2013, in press), for example, when the mobile phone becomes a

418 A. Doron

popular site for consuming pornography and new forms of popular culture,
including ringtones, screen savers and various other features. My concern in this
paper, however, is to examine the way in which the mobile phone is becoming a
principal setting in the struggle over changing values and practices surrounding
expressions of the self , where satisfaction of individual desires is often overshadowed
by the practical and moral demands of family relations and the wider social
environment.4

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***
This paper is divided into four sections. The first examines previous forms of
technologies of the self , such as literacy and epistolary exchange, in order to
understand the specificities associated with mobile literacy. The second section draws
on ethnographic data to reflect on the role and place of the mobile phone in the
household, especially as it is situated within the relationship between a mother-inlaw and daughter-in-law. I argue that the mobile phone is often seen as a threat to
the integrity of the household because it has the potential to undermine authority
and destabilise entrenched social roles and cultural categories. In particular, I refer to
the mobile phones capacity to unsettle the distinctions between the inside and the
outside world and expose a range of concerns about gendered spaces and practices.
I then go on to examine how the mobile phone has been employed in romantic
relationships*away from the watchful gaze of society. The concluding section offers
reflections on the spectre of the mobile phone as an embodiment of modern
dilemmas animating social change in contemporary Indian society, and what this
may mean for our understanding of the relational self, often associated with gender
roles and family relations in north India.
The Self and the Mobile
Apart from the growing body of literature that either celebrates or decries the impact
mobile phones in South Asia*often labelled in media studies as the cyber-utopian
and cyber-sceptics*there are few anthropological studies that reveal the ways in
which this new technology, closely associated with Indias modernity, is both
adapted to and challenges hegemonic gender relations, particularly among low-class
urban residents.5
Tenhunens (2008) is one of the few ethnographic studies to detail the introduction
of cell phones to rural West Bengal and its impact on village sociality, kinship
networks and economic transactions. She remarks that the mobile phone had
increased womens role in a vital aspect of social life*marriage negotiations*with
women using mobile phones to ring a wide circle of connections in the search for
suitable brides and grooms (Tenhunen 2008, p. 524). In the urban context, Donner
and colleagues (2008) offer a fascinating analysis of the impact of mobile phones on
middle-class families and their finances and courtship practices. Drawing on Dickeys
(2000) work, their study highlights the implications of mobile phone usage for

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unsettling established cultural classifications of inside/outside spaces. They argue

that the mobile can breach the home boundary by facilitating romantic relationships,
yet . . . extends this innermost boundary, allowing family members to carry a piece of
home with them when they leave the house (Donner et al. 2008, p. 332). Both studies
detail the diverse effects that this technology has had on families and gender relations.
It is, nevertheless, worth remembering that other older communication technologies
had similar effects in unsettling the norms and conventions of the time. For instance,
the introduction of the steam train to India was accompanied by grave anxieties, and
aroused deep male fears about the erosion of boundaries, about womens exposure to
men, and to different castes (Sarkar 2001, p. 80). Likewise, as various scholars have
shown, communication technology, such as literacy and education, has reshaped
cultural practices, social values and ideas about inside/outside spaces. According to
Walsh (2004), the acquisition of literacy amongst middle-class Bengali women in the
late nineteenth century stimulated heated debates about the nature of patriarchy,
notions of romantic love, companionate marriage and the contradictory expectations
concerning natal and conjugal relationships (see also Chatterjee 1993). While literacy
might have had empowering, liberating and individualising effects for women, the
outcomes appeared to have been much more fraught.
Ahearns (2001) study of epistolary practices in western Nepal offers another
example of the varied forms and ambivalent effects of literacy. She notes that while
the medium of love-letter writing is closely linked with becoming modern and
educated and developed (Ahearn 2001, p. 185), it also constitutes a novel site of
self-realisation for the youth, with transformative and liberating effects, enhancing a
reflexive mode of presentation of self. Yet the liberating effects have a cost, for eloping
with a man against the familys wishes also entails losing their support should the
marriage run into trouble (p. 258).
Juxtaposing the disruptive capacity of literacy and letter writing with the mobile
phone suggests many similarities. Both technologies are primary means for the
ongoing formation of and expression of self, not only in relation to the acquisition of
literacy skills, but also for developing new attitudes and confronting the choices that
this technology brings. Just as with letter writing, or correspondence, a technique
that involves the interpretation and presentation of oneself to others (Foucault 1994,
p. 218), so too the mobile phone facilitates an intensified form of correspondence
both oral and written. Indeed, partly because of its affordability and diverse
properties, the mobile phone has become the most popular communication
technology in India, with subscription numbers reaching over 900 million in
2012.6 One is able register and communicate everyday banalities, achievements,
failures, good fortune and bad luck. But if the mobile accommodates the additional
functions as a watch, alarm clock and camera, it has also become a paramount
storage space, a repository of everyday life and a memory aid. It is a site for our
personal life, expressed in contact lists, screensavers, music collection, application
and text messages, among other things.

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420 A. Doron

In many respects the mobile phone is the twenty-first century writing desk, the
furniture of the modern self , as Goodman (2009) aptly described the writing desk or
cabinet of mid eighteenth century France. For elite French ladies, letter writing and
the personal desk with its many hidden and locked drawers was a place of security
and introspection, signifying the growing importance of privacy, private property and
private thoughts. The mobile phone is analogous to this personal desk, a highly
valued artefact, containing the owners thoughts, dreams and desires, as well as
evidence of actions and relationships (Goodman 2009, p. 240). Not surprisingly,
the advent of private writing desks belonging to wives and daughters presented
a challenge to authority and potential site of family drama, not unlike the modern
cell phone in north India, where privacy and womens autonomy are matters of
increasing concern (see Figure 1).
Therein lies the potential threat of this new technology. The mobile accommodates
many forms of writing with multiple possibilities for documenting everyday life and
expanding relationships, which were often under the gaze and instruction of family
authority with older forms of communication, like letter writing. However, epistolary
practice was a mark of class and caste, while mobile literacy is more diffuse, making
middle-class communication technology available to the lower classes. The effects of
the mobile phone, particularly in terms of its potential to upset established hierarchies,
are certainly not specific to India, however, the mobile phone in India takes on specific
historical forms and use, based on a shared understanding of family relations, gender
identities, and ideological structures with particular class and regional expression, as
set out in the following section.
The Cell Phone and the Household
During recent fieldwork in Banaras I was invited to reside with a boatman and his
family. Like most family households in the city, this particular house accommodates
two brothers: Vinod, a boatman in his late twenties who is married with an infant
son, and his unmarried younger brother, Arun. The brothers own and operate several
boats on one of the major riverfront landings (ghats) on the Ganges River. A few
days after my arrival, Arun left the city to accompany a long-time family friend to
south India. Soon after their departure Vinod injured his foot (a puncture wound).
I arrived home to see him lying in bed being nursed by his wife. In a matter of days
the foot became heavily infected and Vinod had to be admitted to the local hospital
with a high fever.
Despite his absence, Vinods involvement in the household was maintained
throughout his stay in hospital via his and the households mobile phone. Vinod and
his family communicated regularly, enabling him to monitor activities. As I observed
over the proceeding days, the mobile phone was carefully managed by the mother of
the house, who kept it under her control and supervision at all times, tucking it
under her sari. This old handset was the only mobile phone in the household other
than those belonging to the two brothers. The majority of households in Banaras,

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especially amongst the lower classes, have never owned a landline. Previously, phone
calls were made from phone booths located across the city, known as STD or PCO
(Public Call Office) booths.
During Vinods first few days in hospital, his wife spoke with him regularly on the
mobile phone inquiring about his health. When I suggested that his wife come with us
(his mother, sisters and myself) to visit him, Sujata (Vinods mother) was quick to reply
that there was little reason for her to leave the house as she was able to speak with Vinod
on the household mobile. The mother-in-law/daughter-in-law relationship was thus
strained, with the mother-in-law asserting her authority in the house over the newlyarrived daughter-in-law by restricting her movements outside the home. Restrictions
on women venturing into public spaces are common enough in certain parts of India,
and Banaras is no exception (Derne 1994; Dube 1988). These restrictions can be traced
to a more fundamental ideology based on a cultural classification of inside and outside
worlds in India aligned with a number of parallel contrasts, including family/not
family . . . safe/unsafe, protected/unprotected, clean/dirty, and private/public (Dickey
2000, p. 470). These, in turn, find expression in gender roles and social structures in the
home: the purity of the home includes spiritual, cultural, and physical elements, and
women are not only supposed to be protected from the outside, they are themselves the
protectors of the home and all it represents (Dickey 2000, p. 470).

Figure 1 Unsettling society? a women on a scooter with her mobile phone in the market
(October 2009, Banaras/Varanasi, Photo, Assa Doron).

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422 A. Doron

This may well explain why, despite the daughter-in-laws obvious concern for her
husbands wellbeing, she was denied the hospital visit. Moreover, restrictions on
movement are much more stringent on a daughter-in-law than, for example, on
Vinods sisters, who were allowed visits to the hospital. This is partly because the
daughter-in-law is the izzat (bearer of honour and reputation) of the household. As it
became increasingly clear that Vinod had to remain in hospital for an extended
period of time (over two months) and would need to undergo surgery, his wife was
eventually allowed to visit the hospital, accompanied by family members.
This case study raises several points (on which I elaborate later). First, while the
mother-in-law asserts her power by making her daughter-in-law stay in the home,
the latter is empowered insofar as she is able to keep in touch with her husband,
something that before mobile communication would not have been possible. This
is significant in terms of the household dynamics, and the tensions that often
arise when conjugal bonds develop at the expense of a husbands loyalties to his
own kin.
Importantly, this incident also shows that the household mobile phone, unlike
the ones belonging to the male members of a family (which are personal handsets), is
not considered a private possession for the female members. Conversations are not
conducted privately, but rather under the gaze and authority of family elders, and can
be easily heard in the very small houses. Moreover, unlike the household mobile, the
mens mobiles had personal contact lists, songs, video-clips and screensavers. Their
handsets were secured with passwords, all of which suggested a close identification
with the mobile by its owner, designed to protect privacy. Privacy and the distinction
between different kinds of attachment to things are marked by gender. Literacy, once
achieved, cannot be taken away from a woman, whereas you can bar her from
possessing and using her own mobile. Keeping in touch is thus linked with gendered
notions of appropriate conduct and possessions and the womens life course, whether
adolescent, newly married or more established in the household. Importantly, in
the case above, the household mobile was used to maintain a certain social order and
the mobile conversations themselves formed part of a chain of interactions that
ultimately reinforced social roles and gender ideology.
The Fixed Mobile
When inquiring more broadly among the community about the use of mobiles in the
home it was often the case that the household mobile was an older, basic device
passed on by the men of the house who had purchased new multimedia phones for
themselves. For men, the mobile phone was a tool for work, communication with
friends and relatives, and for entertainment, while for the women the mobile was
viewed as a tool for basic conversations (sirf baatchiit karne ke liye). The womans
phone should be used only to communicate with her natal kin and husband.
Significantly, the assumptions implied in the term basic conversation belie a more
fundamental ideological tenet associated with wider patrilineal norms and structures.

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As Raheja and Gold (1994) have shown in the case of women in rural north India, the
natal home is considered an invaluable source of support for a newly-married
woman, and is often celebrated in songs and proverbs in contrast to the intimidating
and much maligned in-laws home. By facilitating natal ties, the household mobile is
potentially a highly valued possession for newly-married women who are still trying
to find their way in the new conjugal setting. Nonetheless, it is precisely these
possibilities that make the household mobile phone a site of contention over power
and control, requiring continuous careful management. If unsupervised, it is
potentially threatening and can cause frictions in the husbands home. As one
informant related to me:
My sister-in-law who got married a year back, her husband does not appreciate that
she speaks a lot with her sisters, he thinks that whatever problems are created in his
family are due to the cell phone*because his wife can speak with her sisters a lot
and they are giving her tips and tricks how to handle the mother-in-law. So he
banned her from using the cell phone.

At certain junctures the mobile phones presence serves to induce self-reflection and
effect action, triggering the need to render explicit the normative frameworks
(habitus), with the constraints and requirements that limit the possibility of action.
The cell phones capacity to expand (unsupervised) communication, (that is, a
womans autonomy through easier access to networks outside the restrictive
environment of her conjugal home) renders the device a focal point for the
negotiation of overlapping, sometimes contradictory, demands and expectations.
Maintaining control over household mobile use is therefore important. In the case
of Vinods home, it was the men who purchased the recharge cards from the local
shop. Even during their absence the men retained their dominant position as
managers of the household and its breadwinners. This was made amply clear once we
reached the hospital where, despite being weak and bedridden, Vinod was constantly
on the phone managing his boating business and his home.
Eventually, when I expressed surprise about Vinods wife being barred from leaving
the home even to go to the hospital, friends of Vinod explained that a young
daughter-in-law must be particularly chaste: a pakki bahu. Other attributes of the
proper demure daughter-in-law include the wearing a ghuunghat (veil) and acting in
a modest fashion, all of which contrast with her conduct in her own natal home
(maika), where she may walk uncovered and be chatty and friendly with members of
the household.
There were some exceptions. In some instances, lower class women I met did have
their own personal mobile that they carried with them (that is, it was not left with the
household). Most of these women worked outside the home as domestic workers,
school peons or selling goods at small family-owned stalls, using the phone to
communicate with the husband or for arrangements connected with the business. All
of these women were well established in their husbands home, and some were already
mothers-in-law.

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424 A. Doron

I arranged to interview one young woman who had her own mobile. As I entered
her in-laws one-bedroom house, the tension was visible. The mother-in-law was
seated behind us on the bed carefully listening to the conversation. Throughout the
discussion the young woman glanced repeatedly in the direction of her mother-in-law.
She said that her husband bought her the device recently (a basic Nokia model) and in
an almost apologetic fashion explained the importance of the device. She explained
that with her mobile phone, she, her family and her in-laws feel more comfortable
when she travels long distances to her natal home, secure in the knowledge that she
can be contacted at any time and will be met immediately upon arrival. In other
words, the categories of inside/outside were maintained and the mobile phone was
perceived as a tool to manage risk: a risk of woman venturing into the dangerous and
disordered outside world. But part of the danger associated with the outside, mediated
and represented by the cell phone, is that women left unsupervised are not only
vulnerable but also threatening.
Neither family relations nor inside/outside distinctions are static. As the above
example demonstrates, women undergo considerable shifts during their life course.
Unlike a young daughter-in-law, whose subordinate position in the household is also
designed to preserve the integrity and uphold the honour of the patrilineal group, a
woman with school-going children is perceived as less threatening and is considerably
more mobile. Again, the cell phone serves as an index for shifting kinship and gender
relations as the device is integrated into the daily lives of these lower class families.
Experiences obviously vary from community to community. However, in the
relatively conservative setting of Banaras, concerns about a womans reticence,
modesty and deference seem to bridge caste and class. When I interviewed an
educated middle-class (upper caste) woman living in the same neighbourhood in the
city, she explained that prior to her marriage she had owned a mobile phone. During
her college years in Allahabad she had numerous contacts stored in her mobile,
including friends and classmates, as well as teachers numbers (in case she needed to
inquire about an assignment). However, once she arrived at her mother-in-laws
house in Banaras she was required to relinquish her handset. It took her over two
years to convince her in-laws (indirectly, by beseeching her husband) to give her a
new mobile phone so she could talk to her sisters and family members without
needing to use the household mobile. Such practices of newly-married women
relinquishing their mobile phones when arriving at their in-laws are fairly common in
joint family homes in Banaras, as one man explained:
All the women who are getting married will not bring their cell phone along with
them to their husbands house, and while its different in different families, until
now in my family none of the daughters-in-law brought their cell phones with
them. They always leave it at their parents place and then their parents or sisters
use it. Once they arrive at the in-laws place then their husband may buy them a new
mobile. A lot of trust is involved. If she will bring her mobile with her into marriage
she will receive a lot of calls. Like one of my sisters. She got married and despite
previously being a very frequent user, she did not take her cell phone with her.

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She left it. Later her husband got her a new cell phone. I mean if she would have
brought it with her she would continue to receive calls from her friends and then
the husband would be doubtful, anyone would be doubtful. After marriage each
and everything is exposed to your partner, and if you have a cell phone your
husband will certainly go through it . . .

The mobile phone is viewed as an object of distrust, unless it is monitored by the

husband and family. This distrust arises because of the flow of inside information to
the outside world (for example, in the form of gossip)*leaking out of family
information may threaten the reputation and honour of the household (Dickey 2000,
p. 476). As in the above case, with the arrival of a young bride, the family must also
ensure that her previous social network is dismantled; she is disconnected from her
previously accumulated social capital. This is what Lamb (1997) calls the making and
unmaking of persons. A woman effectively needs to discontinue most of the
connections with her previous household when she enters into the patrilocal
household. Restrictions are imposed and her previous connections are divested, for
these contacts and information, although potentially empowering, are also a cause for
concern for the conjugal family. According to Lamb (1997, pp. 28990), womens
personhood is unique, in that their ties are disjoined and then remade, while mens
ties are extended and enduring. Indeed, a woman is literally required to sever her
attachment to her previous networks (symbolised and/or represented by her mobile),
where she may have had more independence, mobility, and freedom, and re-attach
herself to a new kin network and become absorbed into her husbands family. At the
same time, her contact with her natal home comes under the control of the husbands
family. This was related to me by a woman who complained that the mobile phone
has reduced the number of times she is allowed to visit her family home, as her
in-laws argue that there is no reason to visit if she can call and speak to them instead.
The mobile phone thus embodies and illustrates the drama of transition from young
woman to wife, leaving her natal home to move to her new residence.
Here the idea of the nodal person usefully complements Lambs notion of
personhood to highlight how both men and women provide nodes in genderpatterned social relations, with mobile phones enhancing their abilities to act as nodes
across a number of such relationships. Likewise, the notion of the making and
unmaking of persons closely overlaps with the changes in womens position as nodes.
This is even more pronounced with the cell phone functioning as a node, technically
mediating social relations, and recasting ideas of the inside/outside. Indeed, women
may become almost non-nodal when they are disconnected from most social networks
at marriage, though as I argue, nodality also shifts through the domestic cycle.
Mobile Phones, Ownership, and Property
The need for a woman to negotiate her status carefully within the in-lawss household
is highlighted in the quote above. The newly married bahu must adhere to, or appear
to adhere to, the conduct of an ideal wife at least until she finds enough common

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426 A. Doron

ground with her husband to make claims of her own. Even when a mobile phone is
designated for a young womans use, it is effectively for family purposes or for the
wider benefit of the household, as the following example illustrates.
Raju is in his early twenties and belongs to a socially and economically
disadvantaged community (mallah, or boatman caste). His family does not earn
much from boating, which means he regularly works for others, plying their boats as
well as tending his familys fields during the hot season. On my recent visit to Banaras
I was surprised to see that Raju did not have just one but two mobile phones. When I
inquired about this he replied that the mobiles have been very useful to him because
he recently began working in the catering business. Having a mobile allows him to
communicate with potential clients and arrange his business more efficiently.
When I asked who else in his family had a mobile phone he replied that there is
one mobile phone in the house used by members of the household and another that
he recently gave to his older sister as wedding present. She lives with her in-laws in
the nearby town of Ramnagar and the mobile, he noted, is now mostly used by her
husband for work. Raju explained that his brother-in-law produces small flashlight
bulbs, which in the past meant a daily trip to the phone booth to communicate with
and get orders from his clients, an activity which could amount to around 30 rupees a
day, on top of the calls. By using his mobile, Raju noted, he has increased his earnings
while also saving time. I replied, laughingly, that the cell phone he bought for his
sister is now really for his brother-in-law. He nodded in agreement, but added that it
is also useful for the whole family as they dont have a landline. When I pressed
further, asking if his sister ever uses it, he answered that she does once or twice a week
when she calls her natal home to speak with her family.
Rajus example highlights how the mobile phone is increasingly becoming a part of
daily life as a useful device for managing work and communication with relatives. But
it remains mostly the prerogative of the men and in some cases family property as a
housebound mobile, rather than a womans personal communication device. This
resonates with the giving of a dowry to a daughter, which is meant for the daughters
new family (see Basu 1999). By gifting the mobile phone to his sister, Rajus act
reinforces the brother-sister tie, so central to the familial ethic and kinship system in
north India. And while the mobile may be integrated into the conjugal family as part
of the common property, it still retains the value and meanings that might be
associated with such a gift: an expression of the enduring and mutual responsibilities
of brother and sister beyond the sisters marriage (Uberoi 2006, p. 31). Thus, the
mobile phone has become one of the gifts expected from a brother to a marrying sister;
traditionally, gifts comprised saris, jewellery and watches. Unlike saris and jewellery
that might be taken away from the bride for the daughters of the household, the cell
phones utility and visibility means that it cannot be totally re-appropriated, and the
bride is allowed to use it from time to time too.
Although these examples of mobile phone use appear to reaffirm social structures
associated with the domestic sphere, gender and patriarchal relations, this is only
part of the story. In the following section I argue that while the mobile phone is not

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427

an outright revolutionary influence, changing ways of life and social structures, it

does act in an incremental way and may eventually have far-reaching effects on one of
the most formidable social institutions in Indian society*marriage, and by
extension, the household and gender relations.

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Romance, Marriage and Mobile

Arranged marriage, sanctioned by both sets of parents, remains a robust institution in
contemporary India, despite predictions that it will subside with modernisation
(Uberoi 2006). Mobile phone communication technology has ushered in new
possibilities of interaction between men and women, particularly within the nonliterate low classes, whose access to other forms of communication, including letter
writing and more recently the Internet, were and remain limited. In the case of the
mobile phone, the very design and nature of it as an easily concealable device that can
be used away from the gaze of authority figures, offers new possibilities especially for
the youth. This is where Rajus second mobile phone proved highly suggestive.
When I asked about his second mobile, Raju began to reveal a more subversive
mobile practice, one which is associated with a new generation of men and women
who are finding avenues to circumvent restrictions surrounding marriage and
household imperatives. His first phone, explained Raju, is a Nokia primarily used for
calls in the city. His second mobile, a Reliance brand, is used for calls outside the city,
particularly to communicate with relatives in Allahabad, most of whom use the same
Reliance brand (calls within the same network are extremely cheap). Raju added that
he uses his Reliance mobile daily, or more accurately, nightly, to call his soon-to-be
wife. She lives in Allahabad and following established practice, the couple have been
allowed to meet face-to-face only twice (and in the presence of family) while the
marriage arrangements are proceeding. Raju explained that his prospective wifes
brother lends her his own mobile phone every night after 10 pm when calls are
cheaper. He and his bride-to-be are able to talk for many hours into the night.
Neither parents know of these illicit phone calls, which have been taking place for
several months. The only member of the family who is aware, and even facilitates, the
nightly conversations is her brother, exemplifying the new relationships between
mobile ownership, family dynamic and the brother-sister bond. As for Raju, his
mobile is password protected and to assure further discretion he uses a code name for
his fiance es number on his device in case anyone in the household or outside should
get a hold of it. Rajus descriptions of these conversations were marked by coyness
and excitement, as he went on to tell me how informative, entertaining and enjoyable
the conversations were for both of them. In the past few months they have learned
much about each others life, interests, fears and hopes. I suspect that for Rajus brideto-be the conversations are equally important, if not more so, because soon she will
be uprooted from her own home and need to learn to live with people she hardly
knows.

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428 A. Doron

The illicit nightly conversations between Raju and his fiance e constitute a novel
space for the young couple, where they can temporarily escape the restrictions
imposed on couples prior to marriage. While Rajus soon-to-be wife is likely to
experience a degree of discomfort in her new home and newly acquired status as
daughter-in-law, the familiarity afforded by these conversations outside the purview of
authority figures may alleviate some of her apprehension. This unsanctioned intimacy
established via the mobile phone will likely shape their own relationship and influence
the social dynamics of the home in unanticipated ways. Much like the epistolary
practice discussed by Foucault (1994), and Ahearn (2001), the mobile exchanges
operate as a technology of the self , facilitating the fashioning of the modern self.
Phone conversations constitute a cultural practice through which knowledge and
understanding of the self and other is forged. Through the couples daily exchanges,
ideas about intimacy, love and companionship are generated and discussed through
reflection and introspection. The exercise of agency in the courtship introduces a new
dimension into the institution of arranged marriage, with possible implications for the
way a couple will operate within the joint family. That is, much of Rajus conversation
with his fiance e was sharing gossip about friends and family, their foibles and
misdemeanours. The excessive knowledge with which his fiance e will now arrive in
her new home implies an improper level of intimacy with her husband-to-be and
conjugal family, and if not negotiated carefully, may reflect badly on her. However, it
may also arm her with knowledge that will keep her out of trouble and allow her to
carefully and mindfully build her place in her new family. By facilitating information
exchange, the mobile phone allows individuals to cross established boundaries of
inside/outside. This may generate tensions that could reshape and redefine not only
the nature of the conjugal relationship, but also the dynamic of the inner family home,
threatening family solidarity. For example, the intimacy forged by the couple prior to
marriage may privilege their relationship at the expense of the demands of the joint
family. It may also compromise and threaten a familys reputation, or allow a
newcomer strategic insights into the dynamics of a family. Not surprisingly, therefore,
Raju uses his second mobile carefully so as not to reveal anything about his
conversations*the mobile is a repository of his most private thoughts, desires and
activities. It is this potential of the mobile phone to transgress and redefine boundaries
(private/public), alter practices and function as an unregulated gateway for illicit
acts and imagery from the outside world to the inside, semi-private sphere that is
informing both aspirations and concerns in contemporary north India.
The anxieties of heads of families regarding mobiles are common and the prospect
of an unmarried woman having a mobile phone is a matter of grave concern for some
in Banaras. The unmarried woman (especially daughter) is seen as a financial and
social burden; the onset of menstruation and the post-pubescent daughter are
associated with danger, impurity and risk to family reputation (Dube 1988; Uberoi
2006). This is also evident in the everyday lives of the boatmen. Once a daughter
reaches puberty, she is barred from working on the ghats (where previously she may
have sold flowers and ritual paraphernalia to pilgrims and tourists) for fear of

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429

compromising her own and her familys honour. For many of the fathers, their
primary objective was to marry their daughters off as soon as possible; an unmarried
daughter is a worry. Once she leaves her natal home the father is relieved of the onus
of monitoring the young, vulnerable and dangerously fertile person. Not surprisingly,
for these fathers the mobile phone is also an object of distrust, one that facilitates all
sorts of transgressions, as the following example illustrates.
Shiva and Gitika met at a wedding in Banaras, where they exchanged a few words
and where Shiva gave Gitika his mobile number. Gitika soon called Shiva on his
mobile from a public phone and they began speaking and meeting discreetly on a
regular basis. Shiva then bought Gitika a mobile phone so she did not have to venture
to a public phone. Eventually, her father found the mobile and confiscated it.
According to Shiva they did nothing untoward and following custom he asked his
parents to pay a visit to Gitikas parents to inquire about marriage prospects. Because
of his good disposition and thriving boating business Shiva also felt the visit to
Gitikas parents would make an impression. Gitikas parents were much poorer, he
told me, and despite her fathers appreciation of Shiva as a person of standing, he was
unwilling to let his daughter marry outside her caste, which was considered slightly
above that of Shivas (Mallah caste). Both Gitika and Shiva were devastated. On my
last visit, while we were talking on the roof of his house his phone rang*it was Gitika
calling from the post office phone. Shiva lowered his voice and moved to the corner
of the roof. After their conversation, I inquired about their relationship and he
responded sadly that it was over; there was no use pursuing it any further.
This example raises several issues. Firstly, new and often discreet relations can be
forged through the mobile phone, transgressing traditional boundaries of caste and
altering courtship practices. As already mentioned, mobile literacy constitutes a key
arena for an expression of the self and for the production, promotion and circulation
of new practices about courtship, love and intimacy. Low class youth, whose class
habitus is somewhat different from their middle class counterparts, do not draw their
inspiration from love stories in novels and magazines, or through the autonomy
experienced by middle-class woman during college education (see Jeffrey et al. 2008).
Rather, their habitus derives from different life experiences and is informed by film
and other commercially mediated images. While some consumer practices are shared
by many members society, they are experienced differently*localised, class- and
caste-based specificities continue to structure and shape (though not predetermine)
the choices and possibilities, such as with Shiva and Gitika. This couple did not end
up eloping, rather, Shiva sought to gain the approval of the elders, for what Uberoi
(2006) has described as a love-arranged marriage, a common theme in Bollywood
cinema and public culture. This form of courtship appears as an acceptable
adaptation where individual desire and family responsibility can be reconciled
(Uberoi 2006, p. 252). Alas, for Shiva and Gitika the strategy was not effective. But
the point I stress is that, while the introduction of the mobile phone is viewed by
some as a threat, it is the way it is used and implicated in traditional social relations,
institutions and practices that harbours the potential for transformation.

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Conclusion
In this paper I have charted some of the ways the mobile phone is affecting families,
households, gender relations and the public imagination in contemporary Indian
society. Mobile phone usage within the household is an issue fraught with dilemmas
and uncertainties. In some cases, the phone is kept in place, assuming the safe and
stable character associated with a fixed phone. The phone can be incorporated into
the household in ways that reaffirm norms and practices, all of which are bound by
political and social considerations that frame gendered spaces, roles, community
structures and ideologies. One should therefore be cautious in celebrating the
potentially emancipatory qualities of the mobile phone, for these do not necessarily
extend to all spheres of sociality and vary greatly across region, class, age and caste.
The mobile phone also makes visible the drama of transition from a womans
natal home to her in-lawss residence with all the implications that the transition
involves. While it highlights the unique gender dimension of Indian personhood, it
also raises questions regarding an oversimplified view of Indian relationality as
opposed to Western individuality (see Ortner 1995). On the face of it, aligning the
mobile phone with such binaries (for example, Western/Indian, tradition/modernity,
relationalism/individualism) seems plausible: that is, viewing women as the safekeepers of tradition with no personal ownership of mobiles, while mobile usage
constitutes part of a wider set of social obligations routinely imposed upon women
within society and the hierarchical structure of households. Mens possession of
mobile phones, on the other hand, emphasises and symbolises their freedom and
independence, unbridled by such commitments and bonds. But, as I have shown, the
reality is more complex, and the acquisition, possession and use of a mobile phone is
contingent on circumstance and local relationships as much as on class distinctions
and ideological views. This is well illustrated by the increasing number of young
middle-class women gaining access to mobile phones (see Doron & Jeffrey, in press).
For some women mobile phone usage means that they are often able to expand
their interpersonal relationships beyond their immediate social context. This
effectively makes these relations more individualistic insofar as they are made on
the basis of individual choice or agreement rather than obligation and duty. We may
call this a nodal mode, in which a woman is the focal point of her interpersonal
relations. Yet individualising tendencies co-exist alongside ideologies and practices
that foster ties and obligations as life goes on, thus moderating an overlyindependent, uncommitted person. Upon marriage, as women have children and
establish loyalties to kin and place in their new household, the nodal mode is
rejuvenated. More connections are forged and a womans relative power in the
household over other peoples nodes is enhanced. This is expressed in their usage of
the mobile phone, hitherto highly regulated by her husband and in-laws, but one that
she is bound to have increasing access to as she rises in the household hierarchy over
her life course. The woman serves as a nodal point to various relationships; indeed,
she is distributed both in the technical sense*her name, musical taste, photos and

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431

contacts exist on other peoples mobiles. These are her traces*both technical and
social*and these depend on the technology to function as a node: an object we can
only understand in the context of social relations.
The Indian context appears different from the Jamaican phenomenon identified by
Horst and Miller (2006) as link-up: the cell phone-based networking amongst low
income people, aimed at maintaining romantic relations, friendships and kinship ties
over an extended period. The phone-based connections analysed in this paper
highlight the restrictions and possibilities associated with fostering relationships in
the course of ones life cycle, some of which are severed on entering the marital home.
Both cases are embedded in culturally valued relations and social projects, with the
mobile operating as a node through which the values and cultural formations
informing social reproduction and the potential for change are being debated and
resolved. In other words, these countervailing forces articulated in the mobile phone,
obviate technological determinism, and allow for the objectification of cultural
values, through which people formulate and reconcile changing ideas and experiences
of romantic and family relationships.
Examining the mobile phone and its associated practices provides insight into
concepts of personhood in India, by emphasising considerations of age, class, caste,
gender and place. These are neither bounded nor radically relational constructions
of personhood, but rather encapsulate both to differing degrees as these are mediated
through culturally meaningful discourses, ideologies, practices and things. Mobile
phones are influencing everyday practices and destabilising social structures, affecting
key spheres of social life in which relations of power are being rearticulated and
reproduced. Study of this new phenomenon reveals the dilemmas and anxieties
arising from the tensions between the promises and challenges of modernity.
Acknowledgements
Fieldwork in India was made possible by the Australian Research Council (ARC).
I am deeply grateful to Ajay Pinku Pandey for his ongoing assistance. I am also
grateful to the anonymous reviewers, and to the TAPJA editor Philip Taylor and
Helen Parsons for their constructive comments and encouragement. In addition,
I want to thank Dipesh Chakrabarty, Sara Dickey, Anand Pandian, Ira Raja and Meera
Ashar for the valuable advice and suggestions on the article. This article is part of a
wider collaborative project and co-authored book with Robin Jeffrey on the impact of
mobile phones on Indian society, and has benefitted a great deal from his valuable
input, insights, and guidance.
Notes
[1]
[2]

Varanasi, the official name for the city, is also popularly known as Banaras.
For example, on mobile phones in Jamaica, see Horst & Miller (2006); and on the Sari, see
Banerjee & Miller (2003).

432 A. Doron

[3]
[4]

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[5]
[6]

I use mobile and cell phone interchangeably, which is the way they are commonly used in
India.
Ethnographic fieldwork for this project was carried out over a period of three years (October
November 2009; JuneJuly 2010, and JanuaryFebruary 2011). I visited places in the north and
western parts of India, conducting semi-structured interviews and participant observation as part
of a wider investigation into the effects of mobile phones on economies, social practices, and social
and political institutions in India (See Doron & Jeffrey, in press). My informants and friends in the
field are mostly men and as a male anthropologist I had limited access to women (especially young
brides), hence this paper reflects mostly male views. During these interviews I asked men about
joint-family living, courtship practices, arranged marriages and conjugal interactions, and whether
such practices and ideologies have changed as result of the introduction of mobile phones.
For an in-depth review of this literature see Jeffrey & Doron, in press.
Highlights of Telecom Subscription Data, as of 31 May 2012, Telecommunication
Regulatory Authority of India. Available at: http://www.trai.gov.in/WriteReadData/Press
Realease/Document/PR-TSD-May12.pdf, accessed 24 August 2012.

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