On Monday 10 Dec 2007 7:52 pm, Kiran Jonnalagadda wrote: > Or counted Indian Christian women as Hindus without bindis... since > it's hard to tell them apart by face alone.
Indian Christians are few and far between but but wearing a bindi is not a problem for Indian Christian women. In fact Indian Muslim girls wear bindis too on occasion. But whether they are Hindu, Christian or Muslim, the degree of choice and freedom available to wear something or the other is variable. A survey of that variability would probably throw up some interesting results. but hey it doesn't pay to be a sociologist in India. Either you're a doctor. Or you're an Engineer. Nothing else exists and a Freudian indicator of how Indians see occupation and status was seen once again with Medical students holding brooms in protest. That was presumably meant to show how high up they are in the Indian pecking order and how low down a "mere broom wielder" is. Caste doesn't leave us that easily, though we like to imagine that it does. shiv
