From Algorithm to Sanskar: Theorizing Digital Surveillance and Internalised Discipline among Young Urban Indian Women

The rapid proliferation of digital technologies has transformed social media platforms into spaces of constant visibility, algorithmic regulation, and collective social surveillance. While existing scholarship extensively explores digital surveillance, online self-presentation, and cyber-harassment, limited attention has been paid to how Western models of surveillance intersect with culturally embedded, localized patriarchy. This conceptual framework paper addresses this gap by theorizing how algorithmic architectures, peer visibility, and the traditional Indian socio-cultural expectation of sanskar (cultural respectability and modesty) collectively function as an interconnected mechanism of gendered discipline. Drawing upon Michel Foucault’s concept of the Panopticon and Shoshana Zuboff’s theory of surveillance capitalism, this paper examines how young urban Indian women experience a dual gaze: external technological, societal monitoring and an internalized cultural regulation. This intersection produces a distinct form of digital respectability and self-censorship, where these young women voluntarily manage, curate, or restrict their online visibility in anticipation of moral policing and familial judgment. Ultimately, this paper does not present new empirical data, but instead provides a new theoretical vocabulary and conceptual map to help future researchers navigate and analyse how digital landscapes uniquely discipline and structure the subjectivities of contemporary Indian women.