BEING SINGLE IN INDIA 49 Being Single in India: Gendered Identities, Class Mobilities, and Personhoods in Flux Sarah Lamb Abstract This article explores the stories of single women living in the urban metropolis of Kolkata, and in smaller towns and villages of West Bengal, as a means to illuminate emerging possibilities and constraints of selfhood for women in contemporary India. In so doing, the piece examines the ways gendered identities intersect with other forces and ideals at stake, including the institution of heterosexual marriage, class mobilities, and values surrounding individualist versus relational personhood. Because they are positioned outside the norm, those who live singly offer an unusually insightful perspective on their wider society’s values and institutions. In these ways, the narratives of three single women and others each illuminate their tellers’ intricate subjectivities as well as offer broader social-cultural critique. Their stories reveal the ambiguity, painful consequences, and sometimes hopefulness surrounding the “choice” to be single for women and suggest that social recognition and belonging are even more important than independence and true singlehood in the lives of those who live outside marriage in India. [belonging, class, gender, self, sexuality, marriage] It is hard to convey in a few words how powerful is the sense in India that marriage is a compulsory norm, particularly for women. At the same time, the Indian news media has featured stories on singlehood as a trait of a fast-changing society—discussing rising divorce rates, increasing opportunities for unmarried professional women to work and live singly, and portraits of the new single women as “happy with their status and not wanting the burden of marriage on them” (Kuriakose 2014). Such news stories tend to be strikingly upbeat, while presenting singlehood for women as a matter of simple individual choice and sign of cosmopolitan middle-class aspirations. For example, a piece called “Why You Should Try Staying Single” underscores being “accountable to only one person—yourself,” “discovering yourself,” “building a career” and “taking decisions solely based on what you want from life” (Lawrence 2014, emphasis original). One gets no sense of the complex social-cultural and political-economic contexts behind women’s lives and decisions, nor of how a celebratory notion of autonomous individuals making free choices to live singly does not well capture the sense of ambivalence and constraint, and aspirations for belonging, that single women highlight in their own representations of their life paths. One also gets little sense that single women are not limited to the new breed of younger cosmopolitan professionals. This article explores the stories of single women of a range of social classes, living both in the urban metropolis of Kolkata and in smaller towns and villages of West Bengal, India, as a means to illuminate emerging possibilities and constraints of selfhood for women in ETHOS, Vol. 46, Issue 1, pp. 49–69, ISSN 0091-2131 online ISSN 1548-1352. C  2018 by the American Anthropological Association All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/etho.12193