Sharmila Purkayastha’s seminal work, Of Captivity and Resistance, emerges from her doctoral dissertation spanning eight chapters that delve into the elaborated interplay between political activism and incarceration. Purkayastha examines the necessity of incorporating women’s experiences of political captivity into the broader discourse of postcolonial historiography.
The author concurrently probes into two additional and parallel realms underscoring the pivotal role of women’s political incarceration in shaping postcolonial politics and histories. Firstly, the implicit forms of captivity inherent in interrogation processes. Secondly, the negotiation and resistance strategies employed by women prisoners to navigate their captivity conditions, encompassing the resistant self, the captive self, and the collective self as defined territories.