ABOUT THE BOOKBangalore Girls
Author Supriya Baily explores one of India’s most dynamic cities through the eyes of a group of women who grew up and went to school together in the late 1980s and early 1990s. As they enjoyed the trappings of a burgeoning middle class, these classmates also watched their country move to the right politically and socially, spurred on by the Ayodhya riots that tore down the Babri Masjid Mosque in 1992 and the sectarian violence that followed—a Hindu nationalist tide that continues to rise today.
The book offers us a window into these women’s lives and shows us how they are responding to the breakdown of progressivism across multiple domains. They discuss not only their own safety and the educational opportunities and challenges confronting their families; they also talk about such society-wide issues as anti-Muslim sentiment, the backlash against science, and the dangers of independent thinking. Baily gives voice to their worries about political cults of personality and government policies that seek to marginalize and ostracize anyone who speaks out against the authorities, but especially women.
As Indian prime minister Narendra Modi now consecrates the new Ram Temple in Ayodhya, it has never been more important to understand the wave of nationalism that began in 1992. The stories of these women told by Supriya Baily are a must-read tale of extremism’s threat to women’s rights and human rights.
Read an excerpt
Thirty years have passed since the kar sevaks arrived in Ayodhya, attacking one place of worship in the name of another. Thirty years have passed since the BJP took a stand, unwilling to disallow the narrative of Hindu fundamentalism that represents their party. Thirty years have passed, eroding relations between Hindus and Muslims. And over these past thirty years, a series of fractures emanating from the demolition of the mosque changed the fabric of India…
So today, when mobs descend on a bookstore to destroy a Valentine’s display, or a young activist is arrested, when classmates are harassed because one is a Muslim man and the other a Hindu women, or an independent-minded journalist is murdered, a generation of people start to wonder, “Is this the Bangalore I grew up in?” In asking myself this question, I was eaten up by curiosity. Is this what my classmates would say is part of the “greater good” in terms of the development of the country? Could the need to develop economically mean that we would have to alienate and decimate those who pushed back against the conformity and compliance that was growing? Could they sleep peacefully knowing that their classmates who were from different backgrounds and religions might be aligned with these changes? And more than anything, how did the lessons of our secular adolescence begin to march to the drumbeat of Hindu nationalism? And for me finally, the critical piece of this was: How were women talking about these issues? How are they grappling with these concerns in the privacy of their families and their friends and in their own minds?
Getting them to talk to me was easy. Returning to review those conversations dozens of times was clarifying. The next set of chapters share their thoughts and experiences in an effort to understand the questions I posed earlier. What they have offered is compelling for a number of reasons. For these women, with the independence and education that they were privy to, the changes to Bangalore have shifted their thinking rather completely. Coming from the types of families they do, these women are not afraid to share their opinion. Coming from the school that they did, these women are worldly in terms of their education. And coming from Bangalore with its freedom and cosmopolitan culture, these women are confident in both their sense of self and of the world. The fractures that might be seen as policy and politics have had immediate and direct implications for them. It has left them wondering: How do each of these fractures fit together? What future is there for a city that was treasured by a generation of young people who found freedom and friendship as the hallmark of Bangalore?
RECENT REVIEWAmerican Library Assocation
“Born in the U.S., Baily spent her teen years in Bangalore during the 1980s and 1990s. She attended Baldwin Girls High School, a private school that championed diversity and excellence. Students were free to hang out with friends regardless of religion or background and felt relatively safe on the streets. Riots in 1992 that demolished the mosque in Ayodhya were a significant milestone in the change from state secularism to the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Hindu fundamentalism. Now a professor of education at George Mason University, Baily reconnected with her classmates to examine how their lives—and Bangalore itself—have changed in the intervening 30 years. Background about Bangalore’s growth into a stratified, global megacity and the climate of misogyny and intolerance of religious and intellectual diversity incited by the ruling BJP are interspersed with reflections from Baily’s classmates about how their children, especially their daughters, have less safety and freedom than they had growing up. This deeply researched book is especially timely in light of recent gender-based violence in India.
October 14, 2024 — Laurie Unger Skinner
Editorial Reviews
Baily’s impressive Bangalore Girls illuminates ominous changes brought on by the rise of Hindu nationalism in the lives of women—Baily’s former classmates—in the once-progressive city of Bangalore, India. Sharing stories through the eyes of these women makes the challenges of contemporary India come alive for the reader. Baily also uses their experiences to raise flags about the rise of nationalism and misogyny in many places around the world—indeed, as she notes, ‘we are all Bangalore girls.’
Anne Holton
This is feminist pedagogy in careful and thoughtful practice. It is a weaving together of the intimate histories of young women with the broader political forces that over decades force them to confront the unraveling of their beloved city into deepening intolerance and violence. Moving from the remembrance of a shared cityscape of friendships and freedoms, Baily poignantly and insightfully analyses the growing fissures of gender, class, caste, and religion experienced by her schoolmates, as nationally the country moves towards authoritarianism. The beloved city and country in this account may be Bangalore and India, but Baily writes for so many of us across the world as we try to confront and resist right wing extremism in both political and (even more painfully) personal ways.
Anasuya Sengupta
The Bangalore Girls, who Supriya Baily describes in this readable, informative, timely book, were her classmates at the Baldwin Girls’ High School. Baily’s interviews with the class of ’89 provide fascinating and sobering insights into how Hindu Nationalists have undermined Bangalore’s secular, democratic, cosmopolitan identity and threatened the freedom of women and minorities.
Amrita Basu
An important book – not only for the significance of the case of Bangalore – but for what this case teaches about how the worldwide surge of hypernationalism is so strongly linked to religious intolerance, antiscience, and conspiracist ideation. This is a book exemplifying empirical rigor and moral clarity.
Gilbert A. Valverde
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