Tag Archives: Gender Studies

The themes the authors address represent different ways in which we seek to embody ourselves in the world, whether through negotiation, submission, dissent, protest or critique. We make the world what it is. The world no doubt exists out there with its structures and fixed meanings, through which we are viewed as embodied humans, but we too have the wherewithal to modify that fixity, and transform it to make our lives meaningful in the ways in which we seek to live. This brings agency to the foreground and emphasizes the role of the human subject in not merely living out a human life but in transforming that process in whatever way possible. Embodiment is therefore not fixed or unchangeable.

The chapter dedicated to poetry has seventy-three poems that touch upon the themes of identity of Indian women, questions of society and culture, religion, mythology and folklore. Some philosophical questions expressed in poems like ‘Nature’s Message’ and ‘The Rocketand the Stars’ and questions related to nationalism in ‘The Bharat Mata’s Awakening’ speak about the myriad themes and concerns close to these women writers.

Sarkar lauds Jyotirao Phule as the century’s most remarkable social reformer for his intersectional analysis of caste, class, and gender while noting the occasional compromises of reformers like Ranade. The author dedicates limited space to Dalit social reforms, primarily focusing on the Self-Respect Movement and Dr Ambedkar, indicating a potential area for further exploration in Dalit reformist historiography.

Even though Alyssa Milano’s tweet in 2017 calling for the victims of sexual violence was a rage, Iqra Cheema begins by talking about the invisibility and exclusion of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) at the onset of #MeToo movement. An increased international awareness about intersectional feminism and recognition of the need for feminist justice is what #MeToo leads to.

Nandi and Saria speak of contexts of proximity and blurring between Hindus and Muslims in the Hijra universe that are similar and yet clearly distinct. In Odisha for instance, Saria observes that ‘their beliefs and practices would often adhere to one while being claimed as characteristic of the other’, necessitating the ethnographer’s ‘fidelity to the way the crossovers between Hindu and Muslim theologies were lived—that is, both as an instantiation and a limit of the notion of religious syncretism’ (Saria, p. 14). Nandi suggests that the kinship hijras in her study in Bengal feel with Muslims is based on the Islamic practice of circumcision—with several hijras converting to Islam after their ritual initiation and constructing the hijra identity within a spiritual framework marked by celibacy and asceticism.

Each chapter posits a clue in the form of a tag line to the name. A short introduction to the individual is followed by the reason for choosing her story. The rest of the chapter is divided into sections that mark the twists and turns of that journey. The stories end by focusing on one dominant norm/stereotype of that life and the ‘hacks’ that the individual exercised to overcome or storm that norm.

This richly researched and evocatively articulated narrative, however, might leave a historian hankering for more in terms of a radical re-engagement with some of the existing frameworks. While the author begins with critiquing existing historiography on reducing the life of the Widow Reform Movement to its architect, Vidyasagar, the choice of opening the book with a chapter dedicated to the man does make the reader question the extent to which the book falls into the same trap.

It is here, in the kotha, that Rekha Devi begins to piece together the shreds of her life and secure it from one day to the next, discovering herself in the process—learning music although she ‘sang like Neelkamal’, her goat, and wondered how she could ever sing, when she hardly ever spoke (p. 20). Her body, however, responded instantly to music (p. 22). She wished the ustad who tried to teach her music would use a spittoon and ‘not open his fountain mouth which sprinkled red spittle all over

The nine-chaptered book by Joanna Bourke was first published in Britain in 2022. The South Asia edition has a dedicated preface for the Indian Edition. Joanna Bourke considers the year 2022 a pivotal year in the context of sexual violence in India as it marks the release of eleven prisoners convicted for life for the rape of Bilkis Bano. ‘In the 75th year of India’s Independence,

Intimate City by Manjima Bhattacharjya is a fascinating exploration of the new and discreet forms of sexual labour in the city of Mumbai (formerly Bombay). The book traces the changing ‘sex work geographies’ in the metropolis by exploring the intersection of gender, sexuality, space, and the internet (p. 4).