This book is a comparative and developmental study of the expression of feminist concerns in the novels of Kamala Markandaya, Nayantara Sahgal, Anita Desai, and Shashi Deshpande, among the best known and most prolific Indian novelists writing in English, who have been self-consciously engaged with women's issues during the postcolonial era.
In Changing the Subject Srila Roy maps the rapidly transforming terrain of gender and sexual politics in India under the conditions of global neoliberalism. The consequences of India’s liberalization were paradoxical: the influx of global funds for social development and NGOs signaled the co-optation and depoliticization of struggles for women’s rights, even as they amplified the visibility and vitalization of queer activism. Roy reveals the specificity of activist and NGO work around issues of gender and sexuality through a decade-long ethnography of two West Bengal organizations, one working on lesbian, bisexual, and transgender issues and the other on rural women’s empowerment. Tracing changes in feminist governmentality that were entangled in transnational neoliberalism, Roy shows how historical and highly local feminist currents shaped contemporary queer and nonqueer neoliberal feminisms. The interplay between historic techniques of activist governance and queer feminist governmentality’s focus on changing the self offers a new way of knowing feminism—both as always already co-opted and as a transformative force in the world.
The relationship between men and feminism is frequently assumed to be antagonistic. This volume confronts this assumption by bringing critical attention to men’s engagement in feminist research, pedagogy, and activism in India. The chapters in this collection respond to two broad thematic concerns: theoretical implications of men producing feminist knowledge and the history of men’s participation in feminist endeavours. The volume also explores the undocumented contributions of men to three domains of feminist activity: institutionalization of feminism in the academy, social movements aimed at gender justice, and male writings on gender and sexuality. Delving into an important yet overlooked aspect of the social sciences, this volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of gender studies, masculinity studies, modern Indian history, sociology, and social anthropology.
Contributing to debates on feminism, this book considers the impact made by feminists in India from the 1970s. Geetanjali Gangoli analyses feminist campaigns on issues of violence and women’s rights, and debates on ways in which feminist legal debates may be limiting for women and based on exclusionary concepts such as citizenship. She addresses campaigns ranging from domestic violence, rape, pornography and son preference and sets them within a wider analysis of the position of women within the Indian state. The strengths and limitations of law reform for women are addressed as well as whether legal feminisms relating to law and women's legal rights are effective in the Indian context. The question of whether legal campaigns can make positive changes in women’s lives or whether they further legitimize oppressive state patriarchies is considered. The recasting of caste and community identities is also assessed, as well as the rise of Hindu fundamentalism and the ways in which feminists in India have combated and confronted these challenges. Indian Feminisms will interest researchers and students in the areas of feminism, law, women’s movements and social movements in India, and South Asia more generally.
This collection is an invaluable overview of the rich history of Indian feminism. It brings together the writing of prominent Indian academics and activists as they debate feminism in the context of Indian culture, society and politics, and explore its theoretical foundations in India. The inevitable association with western feminism, the status of women in colonial and independent India, and the challenges to Indian feminism posed by globalization and the Hindu Right are discussed at length. It deepens our understanding of why, despite the existence of legal and constitutional rights, women are subject to oppressive practices like dowry.
Exploring the unintentional production of seemingly feminist outcomes In India, elite law firms offer a surprising oasis for women within a hostile, predominantly male industry. Less than 10 percent of the country’s lawyers are female, but women in the most prestigious firms are significantly represented both at entry and partnership. Elite workspaces are notorious for being unfriendly to new actors, so what allows for aberration in certain workspaces? Drawing from observations and interviews with more than 130 elite professionals, Accidental Feminism examines how a range of underlying mechanisms—gendered socialization and essentialism, family structures and dynamics, and firm and regulatory histories—afford certain professionals egalitarian outcomes that are not available to their local and global peers. Juxtaposing findings on the legal profession with those on elite consulting firms, Swethaa Ballakrishnen reveals that parity arises not from a commitment to create feminist organizations, but from structural factors that incidentally come together to do gender differently. Simultaneously, their research offers notes of caution: while conditional convergence may create equality in ways that more targeted endeavors fail to achieve, “accidental” developments are hard to replicate, and are, in this case, buttressed by embedded inequalities. Ballakrishnen examines whether gender parity produced without institutional sanction should still be considered feminist. In offering new ways to think about equality movements and outcomes, Accidental Feminism forces readers to critically consider the work of intention in progress narratives.
Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay (1903-1988) was a remarkable woman of many passions and gifts. She played an important role in the struggle for Indian independence and was similarly a key figure in the international socialist feminist movement. She was India’s ambassador to Asia and Africa, an articulate and unflinching exponent of the idea of decolonization, and one of the earliest advocates of the idea of the global South. A staunch champion of women’s rights, she held views on women’s equality that continue to resonate in our times. Greatly disheartened by the partition of India in 1947, Kamaladevi became involved in the resettlement of refugees and appeared to withdraw from political life. Indeed, the Kamaladevi that most Indians are familiar with is a figure who, above all, revived Indian handicrafts, became the country’s most well-known expert on carpets, puppets and its thousands of craft traditions, and nurtured the greater majority of the country’s national institutions charged with the promotion of dance, drama, art, theatre, music and puppetry. Throughout her life, however, she upheld with all the intellectual vigour and emotional force at her command the idea of the dignity of every human life. Kamaladevi wrote voluminously and her sojourns took her all over the world. She travelled in China during World War II, lectured in Japan, visited Native American pueblos in New Mexico, and forged links with working women and anti-colonial activists in countries across Asia, Africa and Europe. Sadly, most of her writings have long been out of print. The editors of this comprehensive anthology, which is the first serious scholarly attempt to grapple with Kamaladevi’s life and body of work, have sought to represent the wide range of her interests. The extensive selections, comprised largely of journal articles and excerpts from Kamaladevi’s books, are accompanied by a set of original essays by contemporary Indian and American scholars which analyse and contextualize her life and work. This volume should provide the resources for further examination and appreciation of Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay’s unusual gifts and her place in modern Indian and world history. Published by Zubaan.
This book deals with miseries and problems of Indian women with respect to their social class structure. India is known for its caste system and its economic and political history is based upon these classes. Feminist history is also interwoven with the social classes. Women were treated as private property in medieval India. In this book, women of elite classes in the middle ages such as Razyia and Noor Jahan are discussed. Razyia was scandalized with Yaqut solely due to her gender. Noor Jahan belonged to the vast harem of Emperor Jahangir. She had to survive in a harem, as well as strengthen her political position in the court of the great Mughals. The issues of the spinster princess like Jahanara and Zeb-un-nisa are also highlighted. The purdah had also set a standard for social morals for women in the middle ages. The political and cultural activities of Mughal women were the channels of their catharsis. They were able to accomplish things because they had money and the resources. The women of the middle and lower classes bore the burden of the class, family and society. This book also describes other aspects of that age such as clothing and jewelry.
Gloria Steinem, one of the most iconic feminist thinkers of the world, spent her early years in India. Her time in the country revealed to Gloria the Gandhian insight that change, like a tree, must grow from the bottom up. Subsequently, her decades of work with the feminist movement in the US and across the world taught her that violence and domination are normalized by the false division of human beings into subject and object, the dominator and the dominated, 'masculine' and 'feminine'. In As if Women Matter, Gloria Steinem and activist Ruchira Gupta bring together a selection of ground-breaking essays by Gloria which, since the time that they were first written, have transcended borders and have laid the groundwork for much of modern feminist thought. In these pages, Gloria demonstrates how racism and discrimination based on caste and class differences cannot survive without controlling women's bodies-she also describes the many ways in which women and men are fighting that control. She brilliantly analyzes Adolf Hitler's obsession with masculinity, and finds a gendered understanding of violence in the making. She distinguishes between erotica and pornography, locating the difference between the two in the inequality that governs relations between the sexes. And, in addition to a trenchant account of a few days she spent as a Playboy Bunny, this volume also carries a never-before-published essay on sex trafficking by Gloria, 'The Third Way'. As if Women Matter is scholarly, profound, and leavened by a lightness of touch which makes the most complex arguments accessible to all readers.
Grounded in a variety of rich and diverse source materials such as periodicals meant for women and edited by women, song and cookbooks, book reviews and court records, the author of this pioneering study mobilises claims for the existence of an Indian feminism in the nineteenth century. Anagol traces the ways in which Indian women engaged with the power structures-both colonialist and patriarchical-which sought to define them. Through her analysis of Indian male reactions to movements of assertion by women, Anagol shows that the development of feminist consciousness in India from the late nineteenth century to the coming of Gandhi was not one of uninterrupted unilinear progression. The book illustrates the ways in which such movements were based upon a consciousness of the inequalities in gender relations and highlights the determination of an emerging female intelligentsia to remedy it. The author's innovative study of women and crime challenges the notion of passivity by uncovering instances of individual resistance in the domestic sphere. Her study of women's perspectives and participation in the Age of Consent Bill debates clearly demonstrates how the rebellion of wives and their assertion in the colonial courts had resulted in male reaction to reform rather than the current historiographical claims that it was a response purely to threats posed by 'colonial masculinity'. Anagol's investigation of the growth of the women's press, their writings and participation in the wider vernacular press highlights the relationship between symbolic or 'hidden' resistance and open assertion by women.
