1. Introduction

Several works have discussed the advent of a ‘new’ middle class in post-liberalisation India. Some of these include Jaffrelot and Van der Veer (2008), Jodhka and Prakash (2016), Varma (2007), Sridharan (2011), Fernandes (2011), and Upadhyay (2009).

Some of the works explaining the complex relationship between being middle class and type of marriage include Donner (2002), Kapur (2009), and de Neve (2016).

For further discussion on the different variables as of income, household items, and vehicles to define middle class, see Sridharan (2011) and Krishna and Bajpai (2015).

Whilst Ortner explains the dialectic relationships between subjective and objective experiences, Lamont clarifies that she is ‘exclusively concerned with the subjective boundaries that we draw between ourselves and the others. I pay no attention to…objective social boundaries…’ (p. 9).

However, they did not want to dislodge the feudal elites. So, they incorporated them as they excluded the lower castes and classes from participating in the public sphere. In fact, in this way, the middle class became a class of the upper castes leaving out a substantial population. Also noted by Deshpande (2003).

Several recent works have explained the middle class’s relation to consumption in contemporary era, including works by Brosius (2010), Jaffrelot and Van der Veer (2008), Mazzarella (2002, 2003), Nisbett (2007), Varma (2007), and van Wessel (2004).

Furthering this explanation, Deshpande (2003) considers a framework as provided by Gramsci as more useful to understand than the Weberian, Marxian, or Bourdeian approaches which give primacy to material positions and dispositions, whereas in discussing the middle class it is crucial to analyse the discourses of power and hegemony.

One of the key modernisation theorists is Talcott Parsons. The aim of the modernisation theory he proposed was to categorise societies in binaries of ‘modern’ and ‘traditional’. In order to determine the category to which a society would belong, Parsons proposed that progress should be measured along five pattern variables: affectivity versus affective neutrality; self-orientation versus collective orientation; particularism versus universalism; ascription versus achievement; and diffuseness versus specificity. For him the West, in particular the American society, had successfully laid a claim on the modern as it had experienced industrialisation, specialisation of occupational roles, urbanisation (Parsons and Shils 1951). Subsequently, there emerged other scholarship that argued against a unilinear vision of the modern; for example, Eisenstadt proposed the use of ‘multiple modernities’ (2000); post-colonial scholarship insisted on critically appraising a western hegemonic concept of the modern, and instead focus on the ‘local’ or subjective (instead of ‘global’ or imposing) interpretations and understandings of the modern. A few recent works that bring attention to such a critical and nuanced understanding of the modern include Chakrabarty (2000), Dube and Banerjee-Dube (2006), Dube (2009, 2012), Deshpande (2006), and Choukroune and Bhandari (2018).

Some of the important works that propose such a nuanced understanding of women’s agency include Kalpagam (2000, 2008), Thapan (1997, 2009), Jeffery and Jeffery (1996).

The middle class, old and new alike, have been seen to always push out certain groups from reaping benefits of the project of modernity. Jodhka and Prakash (2016), for example note this about the colonial middle class. Recent works on the characteristics of the contemporary middle class too note their different exclusionary practices such as Baviskar (2011); Srivastava (2014); Waldrop (2000) on gated colonies; and Sankaran (2006) and Voyce (2007) on shopping malls.

Deshpande writes, ‘having consolidated its social, economic, and political standing on the basis of the development state, this group is now ready to kick it away as the ladder it no longer needs’ (2003:150). This means that the middle class now claims to be the nation, rather than restricting its role from simply identifying with the nation. In other words, as Deshpande explains, the middle class has shifted its representation from ‘portrait’ to ‘proxy’ for the nation.

Surprisingly, little attention has been given to romantic categories of the young adults. A recent exception is Mihirini Sirisena’s (2018) ethnography on university students in Colombo, in which she traces the meaning, essence, and making of a ‘serious relationship’, which is very similar to the findings of this research (more in Chap. 2).

One of the first references to the term ‘love cum arranged’ in scholarship was a chapter by Uberoi and Singh (2006) ‘Learning to ‘Adjust’: The Dynamics of Post-Marital Romance’.