Can Men and Women Be Friends in South Asia?

“If she’s being nice to me, she’s into me.” That’s the assumption that many South Asian men hold about women, Devika Mittal, a sociology professor at the University of Delhi, told The Juggernaut. “You do have this idea…that a man and a woman can be friends,” she said. But men, she added, can also judge women for the crime of merely talking to them. 

Pop culture has long explored this dilemma. When Harry Met Sally (1989) famously asked whether straight men and women can ever be just friends. Bollywood has often answered with a sweeping no, from Bobby (1973) to Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998). Now, researchers are asking an even more basic question: do men and women even interact with each other? They sifted through 1.38 trillion Facebook friendship links and found that, in much of South Asia, not really. We spoke to the study authors, sociologists, and young South Asians to understand why.