Vigilantes, virgins, and long‐suffering wives: The limitations of contemporary Indian television's reconstructions of femininity

In recent years, the expanding accessibility of India's electronic media to an engrossed and addictive audience has allowed it to play a crucial role in the reconstruction of gender identities in response to a variety of ideological, political, social and economic imperatives. Ostensibly providing a high degree of visibility to women's issues and concerns, the new narratives and strategies of representation employed in the liberalized and privatized television media pose instead an irreconcilable conflict between the full emancipation of women and indigenous social and cultural norms and practices. This article argues that the impact of new television programming on the women's cause has been highly subversive. Small screen portrayals of the transition of Indian women from ‘tradition to modernity’ and the construct of the ‘new Indian woman’ attempt to recreate a hegemonic discourse which would impose new patriarchal constraints of conduct on women in the name of a selectively affirmed ‘authentic’ tradition. Even in the short term, the power of the visual image and broad reach of television threatens to undermine the progress that the print media and Indian women's organizations have made in raising consciousness about women's concerns and lobbying for change.