By Pavan Kumar Malreddy

Pavan Kumar Malreddy’s slim volume discusses and synthesizes three concepts with concrete examples: orientalism, terrorism and indigenism (Dalit Bahujan movements), with an involved reading of academic literature as well as the popular media. He draws from the contemporary literary studies in South Asia to discourse on orientalism and contemporary manifestations of terrorism (9/11 for example). What gets highlighted in the process are contradictions inherent in the way South Asia has viewed and comprehended postcolonialism, as analysed in the Subaltern Studies and the way the West has viewed it. The book makes an attempt to position Orientalism in a postcolonial world in transition with terrorism and identity-based cleavages occupying axis-space for discussions. The use of the work of prominent literary figures from South Asia to analyse the three concepts is an innovative analytical tool in the study.


Reviewed by: Ajay K. Mehra

In the times we live in—where, often acknowledging, tolerating and celebrating differences is seen as a sign of weakness nothing opens better the debate on gender, as this quote from Marguerite Yourcenar’s ‘With Open Eyes’ written and published in 1980: ‘… Anyway, women who say “men” and men who say “women”, usually to complain within one group as within the other, instill in me a great sense of ennui, like do those who stumble through all that is formulaic.There are virtues that are specifically ‘feminine’ which feminists seem to scorn, this does not by the way mean that these were ever the prerogative of all women : gentleness, goodness, finesse, delicacy, virtues so important that if a man did not possess them at least in small proportions, he would be considered a brute, not a man.


Editorial

A report on a book discussion held at the India International Centre on May 24, 2016, with Indu Agnihotri, CWDS, in the chair and Vidhu Varma (JNU), Kusha Tiwari (Shyam Lal College) and Baran Faoorqi (JMI) in the panel.Prostitution is about the only job in the world in which you earn the most on your first day. As the days pass, your income declines before you finally burn out within 10–15, or if you are lucky, twenty years. Prostitution consumes your body, destroying it with the abuse, insecurity and poverty that often comes with it. The bouquet of three books under discussion approaches the subject of prostitution from multiple angles. A statement that emerges with tremendous force from these three books could be, ‘Prostitution is a choice where there is no choice.’


Reviewed by: Baran Farooqi
By Rekha

Rekha’s book attempts to chart the complex terrain of women’s writing in post-Independence India, while declaredly wishing to avoid the pitfalls of the ‘generalizations’ that are attendant on both mainstream Women’s Studies methodologies and what she calls ‘Indo-centric’ approaches to the subject. Rekha also wishes to address what she considers a significant gap in the existing oeuvre of critical work on women’s writing in India: the privileging of the ‘temporal axis’ and the insufficient attention paid to the politics of space in the shaping of women’s experience, especially as reflected in the literature produced by them. In view of this, she makes what she calls a ‘representative sampling’ of women’s prose fiction from the country, choosing the work of five major writers: Krishna Sobti (Hindi, b. 1925), Mahasweta Devi (Bengali, b. 1926), Kamal Desai (Marathi, 1928–2011), Ambai (her pseudonym, she writes as C.S. Lakshmi when she writes as a critic in Tamil and English, b. 1944) and Githa Hariharan (English, b. 1954).


Reviewed by: Trina Nileena Banerjee
Edited by Sheema Kirmani , Asif Farrukhi and Kamran Asdar Ali

Tehrik-e-Niswan, a pioneering performance group, working on gender and politics turns thirty in 2009. The group organized its first theatre festival in Karachi in 2009, followed by a Conference in 2010. The book at hand is an outcome of that conference. The volume has been originally published as Gender, Politics and Performance in South Asia by Oxford University Press, Pakistan and Women Unlimited has brought out the Indian version by arrangement with OUP. The volume has 14 papers divided into four sections, with an introduction on (Re)-presenting the Nation by Syed Jamil Ahmed. Gender is a predominant category of analysis in most papers, even though the definition of the same varies from writer to writer. Most of the articles are based on Tehrik-e-Niswan’s history, productions and reception. As such it is an amazing document of the group. The others deal with women who have paved the way for newer perspectives by their lives and works right from the late 19th century to the present. Syed Jamil Ahmed has documented the history of the play Kabar, an iconic play on Bengali Renaissance in Bangladesh in 1953. There is one article on archaeological findings of dancing and singing figures in Sindh region of Pakistan. India is represented by the introductory article and Madhu Kishwar’s article on Bollywood films.


Reviewed by: Mangai
By Aloysius Irudayam , Jayshree P. Mangubhai, & Noe I.G. Lee National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights

Dalit Women Speak Out: Caste and Gender Violence in India is a sobering book. The study, encompassing four states in India (Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu—Pondicherry) and based on interviews with 500 Dalit women, sets out to explore ‘the phenomenon of violence against Dalit women, a subject hitherto little addressed by academics, human rights activists and the Indian state’ (p. 31).The study forces our attention on a grim truth that is widely known yet ignored precisely because of its everydayness—when viewed from the constitutional and human rights perspective (human rights, the authors remind us, are ‘the foundation of human needs’ (p. 5)), the right to equality remains unrealized and inaccessible for Dalit women. Extreme forms of sexual violence and economic exploitation shape the lives of these women. Staking claim to a piece of land or one’s rightful wages or to the common resources of the village are treated as major acts of transgression.


Reviewed by: Deepa Srinivas