ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the cultural construction of Indian femininity and the dynamics of religious ideology in the urban middle class. It provides how this new ideal of womanhood was promoted during the Hindu reform movement and the rising independence movement by using the examples of the goddess Bharat Mata and Rabrindanath Tagore's novel The Home and the World. The chapter also focuses on to the values connected with marriage and femininity in young middle class women today, because the necessity of marriage is of great importance to the understanding of middle-class female identity in urban India. Globalization processes, the new media and an open economy strongly influence the life and self-confidence of the younger generation. This leads to the consequence that culturally transmitted values, such as Sita, the prototype of an ideal pativrata and role model for women, is undergoing interesting reinterpretations.
