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Sarmistha Dutta Gupta explores the interface between women's writing and politics and studies gender identities in their shifting interrelations with other categories of identity like class and religion. Focusing on what Bengali middle-class women wrote in leading literary and political journals of the 1920s to the 1950s, Probasi, Saogat, Jayashree, Mandira, Gharey-Bairey and in the daily newspaper of the Communist Party of India, Swadhinata, the author interrogates the fashioning of different kinds of selfhood of women through papers subscribing to different ideologies. Literary journals like the prestigious Probasi, founded and edited by Ramananda Chatterji from 1901, saw women as equal bu...
This important and comprehensive volume vividly depicts the current status of women and girls in West Bengal. The analysis has been conducted in the framework of the socio-economic and politico-cultural ambience that has characterized the state in recent decades. The contributors highlight both areas of strength and vulnerability and clearly demonstrate that the status of women cannot be conceived as monolithic or static--it has many facets and is in a state of constant flux. The analysis of macro data is supported by revealing micro studies based on field surveys and an examination of cultural trends.
Four women Dhouli, Shanichari, Josmina, Chinta all from the most oppressed, marginalized segments of the society. Whether it is Dhouli, The young Dusad woman who finds herself an outcast in her own village; Shanichari, the Oraon girl who is forced into working in the brick kilns outside Calcutta; Josima, the Ho tribal who, with her husband, gets sucked into the racket of trade in cheap coolie labour; or Chinta, a brahman widow whose caste is no protection against the harsh social strictures that force her into working as a part-time maid in Calcutta the life stories of each of these women have one thing in common: the unending class, caste and gender exploitation which makes their lives a re...
In the study, Literature as a Site of Activism: A Select Study of Women Writing in India, an attempt is made to bring the well known contemporary women writers who are very much part of the mainstream society. These women writers use their fictional as well as their non-fictional writings to exhibit their activist concern. They use their writings to criticize certain social happenings. Though the writers hail from different parts of our country, the issues raised by them in their writings unify them. Their concern over various issues is discussed in a particular sense here.
The book begins with the momentous task of demolishing the prejudices attached with the phrase 'founding fathers' that has held an immense sway over constitutional interpretation. It shows that women members of the Indian Constituent Assembly had painstakingly co-authored a Constitution that embodied a moral imagination developed by years of feminist politics. It traces the genealogies of several constitutional provisions to argue that, without the interventions of these women framers, the Constitution would hardly have a much poorer document of rights and statecraft that it is. Situating these interventions in the larger trajectory of Indian feminism in which they are rooted, in the nationalist discourse with which they perpetually negotiated, and in the larger human rights discourse of the 1940s, the book shows that the women members of the Indian Constituent Assembly were much more than the 'founding mothers' of a republic.
This collection on women’s narratives includes articles exploring the works of women authors who were either born in South Asia or identified as being from that region. It discusses themes of gender, identity politics, diaspora, trauma, and the new ‘self’ of women. The volume addresses a great range of creative output by South Asian women authors and examines how their writings critically engage with the social, cultural, and political issues of their times, while also simultaneously exploring the themes of social discrimination, empowerment, and economic exploitation.
Through oral histories, interviews and fictional retellings, 'Bengal Partition Stories' unearths and articulates the collective memories of a people traumatised by the brutal division of their homeland.
A volume of three street plays from the women s movement, written in the 1980s and widely performed as part of the cultural activism of the time. Giving Away the Girl and The Monkey Dance are both anti-dowry plays. Why All This Bloodshed is a play written in the wake of the widely-debated Shah Bano case in India in the mid-80s, centring around a Muslim woman s right to maintenance. All the plays remain remarkably relevant, opening up key issues of the movement in a complex and nuanced manner, facilitating debate rather than offering simplistic solutions. Brought together for the first time with an introductory essay by the playwright and a note by filmmaker and activist Madhusree Dutt, who d...
A delectable collection of writing on food and its place in our lives that brings together some of the most significant Indian voices over the last century. From lavish meals, modern diets and cooking lessons that serve as a rite of passage to fake fasts and real ones, fish, feni, and fiery meals that smack of revenge, this book has something to satisfy every palate. Gandhi's guilt-ridden account of his failed flirtation with eating meat starkly complements Ruchir Joshi's toast to the senses as he describes his characters discovering a truly alternative use for some perfectly innocent shrikhand. In unique gastronomic takes on history, Salman Rushdie, Amitav Ghosh and Saadat Hasan Manto ensure that we will never look at chutney, a Tibetan momo or jelly in quite the same way again.
Drawing Upon Interviews With Women Who Were Uprooted From Old East Bengal, On Diaries, Memoirs, And Creative Literature, The Editors Lift The `Veil Of Silence` That Has Surrounded The Bengal Partition Of 1947.