With Muslim Women’s Quest for Justice, Mengia Hong Tschalaer enters the complex world of rights of Muslim women guided by very pertinent research questions. She examines this world through the lens of three leaders of women’s organizations in Lucknow. For Muslim women, it is a world fraught with hostility in family and community on questions of rights within marriage, and its breakdown.
The volume Gender, Caste and the Imagination of Equality edited by Anupama Rao reverberates with conversations on several tracks that speak of the complexity of cultural politics in a deeply patriarchal society structured by Hindu majoritarianism and caste. In the context of a Hindu majoritarian caste order, Khalid Anis Ansari examines the pasmanda critique of the majority-minority and its pursuit of transformative constitutionalism and democratic symbolism
Ensuring gender equality has been an articulated commitment, and the goals for gender equality have been defined, redefined and refined over time. Affirmative policies and programmes have facilitated important changes with crucial implications for the status of women. However, it has been difficult to arrive at definite conclusions on the impact of these interventions towards the attainment of a gender-equitable social, economic and political order due to contradictory trends and patterns.
One of the first thoughts that occur after going through the stories in the book under review is how similar are the stories of women situated in India and Pakistan. Popular notions in India look at a Pakistani woman’s image as a burqa-clad creature whose life is controlled by the men in her life. Further, Pakistani society is drawn as a cage in this imagery where women’s lives are ruled by the tenets of Islam. She is imagined as a woman without any agency.
What greater pleasure than to discover a wonderful writer and read an old favourite! Mitra Phookan is a delightful author from Assam whose stories in this collection are a sample of life set in a more leisurely pace and space. They touch the now and the here but the narrative technique is like a breath of fresh air blowing off the cobwebs but gentle and whispering in its flow.
The book written in Rakhshanda Jalil’s inimitable style is about the Progressive Urdu poet Shahryar and is generously scattered with his poetry and personal memoirs which makes an interesting read. The book reveals much that is interesting and unknown about Shahryar the poet and the person, whose personality defied any kind of labelling.