ABSTRACT
This chapter explores narratives from the lived experiences of first and second generations of migrant Indian-Hindu women residing in the town of Mississauga and Brampton (suburbs of Toronto, Canada) on their practices of enacting the socially constructed roles of ‘Hindu’ and ‘Canadian’ from the standpoint of gender. This narrative provides comparative accounts of how the first-generation Hindu immigrant women interpret, practice, maintain, and negotiate gendered relations within the domain of their religious beliefs and cultural norms both in ‘private’ and ‘public’ space. It argues that the first generation has been more unyielding with themselves and gradual adjustment has come with time and after many concessions due to limited options. By contrast, for the second generation (the daughters of first-generation migrant families), theory and practices of cultural gender norms and roles have turned more complex and ambiguous. The shift in dynamic regarding how they identify with their roles at home as ‘Indian space’ and the outside world as ‘immigrant space’ poses serious challenges. This chapter further explores how religion and gender remain dynamic, often decoded according to context, space, and time, and why this nuanced and dynamic conceptualization of culture often remains rigid in the ‘private space’ and often leads to cultural violence and abuse. It brings forth the dialectics used by varied agencies to build bridges between two polarized worlds to maintain continuity of their autonomy.
