Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the implications of young people's gender justice work in Delhi for understandings of India's middle classes as 'anti-politics'. Their work represents a shift in the relationship between feminist politics and the state that has both depoliticizing and revolutionary potentials.

Paper long abstract:

A number of scholars have argued that as previously subordinated groups have entered democratic politics in India, the middle classes have become increasingly critical of politics and politically apathetic, and have sought to achieve their goals through other means, such as through civil society. It could be argued that the 2012 anti-rape protests considered alongside the anti-corruption protests led by Anna Hazare a few years earlier represent a return of the middle-class to the political. It could equally be argued, however, that this is a continuation - a social movement against politics. This paper explores the politics of young middle-class gender justice workers in Delhi. In many ways, their work represents a shift in the relationship between feminist politics and the state by moving away from a focus on legislative change, and demanding women's right to public space and the rights of all to freedom from gendered norms. I show that while in some cases this involves a radical politicization of the state's role in producing gendered violence and inequalities, in others it involves a rejection of the political and a focus on individual bodies as the locus of change. What, I ask, are the implications of the simultaneously revolutionary and depoliticizing potentials of this gender justice work for our understandings of middle-class politics in India?