Keeping the Debate Alive

As libraries in most universities in India are in decline, books unavailable and institutes out of reach, there is a fear that many of the most incisive and important articles written by scholars get lost to the new generation of scholarship. Oxford University Press and their editors like Raka Ray thus serve a most important purpose in choosing and re-publishing texts by scholars and analysts from diverse backgrounds that keep alive these debates as well as record the analysis and narratives of important social scientists, in this case of feminist scholars/activists. Ray in her comprehensive introduction combines the telling of the history of the Indian women’s movement and its challenge to the male dominated narrative of Indian political history. Her choice to uncover the relationship of politics to the academic study of gender are studies that have three characteristics: they are marked by the imbrications with specific political exigencies; are deeply inter-sectional and are studies that are at the fore-front of critiques of Eurocentrism and understand the impact of globalization. With this trope, Ray takes up a wide range of themes from law, sexuality, caste, religion, masculinity, labour and many others and chooses from them some of the stellar essays written by feminists, making this a choice selection.