In this paper I discuss over one hundred years of the Indian matrimonial advertisement. My selection spans newspapers in Hindi and in English, as well as those that address a range of spatially distinct reading publics: regional, national, and diasporic. Rather than analyze advertisements that seem unusual, or anomalous, I consider the more repetitive aspects of the Indian matrimonial advertisement. My study reveals intriguing patterns that are, I believe, best described by developing the concept of the “re:colonial”. It is my assertion that the re:colonial unites the historic process of remaking caste with the culmination of US centered globalism; the memory and episteme of British colonialism is essential to this amalgamation.
By drawing on the conventions of contemporary e-communication, I stress that the re:colonial centers the act of replying to the colonial, it reveals how those who believe themselves to have been once colonized nimbly align caste power with the requirements of nation-statist global capital. A mode of supporting caste and US empire in tandem while mobilizing the memory, episteme and cultural power of British colonialism, the Indian re:colonial project is well corroborated in the long history of the matrimonial advertisement.