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A humorous chronicle that explores contemporary media in the lives of Indian working women. In 2013 Madhumita Dutta, a doctoral student, went to do research in Kancheepuram district, Tamil Nadu. There she met Kalpana, Abhinaya, Satya, Lakshmi, and Pooja--all women working inside an electronics factory. In the women's rented room, they would gather regularly over the next year, drinking tea, chatting, and producing a radio podcast: Mobile Girls Koottam. Challenging what theorization and research can be, Mobile Girls Koottam offers us a look into the complex lives of young rural migrant women in their own words and invites us to engage in a process of learning and unlearning and to interrogate our own privileges as we imagine the life-worlds of working-class women. Consisting of transcripts from the titular radio podcast, this book brings to the page conversations between the five women, Madhumita, and her interpreter, Sam. The group speaks of their lives as working-class women, the nature of their work, and their dreams, each from her own unique and nuanced perspective. What results are playful, joyous, angry, and thoughtful discussions on diverse topics like tea stalls for women, factory work, menstruation, and much more, made all the more lively through illustrations by Madhushree Basu.

An innovative collection of essays on the turmoil spreading across South Asia, Contesting Nation sheds light on how violence--in wars of direct and indirect conquest--marks the present. Featuring contributions by distinguished South Asian women scholars, the book offers inspired, gendered, and contested histories of the present, exploring nation-making and its intersections with projects of militarization and cultural assertion, modernization, and globalization. The contributors to this volume consider such turbulent events as the Gujarat carnage of 2002, post-9/11 mobilizations, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, shedding light on the force with which brutal events encompass lives and disfigure communities. This powerful book examines the very borders such brutality maintains and its intimate and lasting effects on bodies and memories.

Chandrabati, the first woman poet in Bangla, lived in the sixteenth century in Mymensingh district in present day Bangladesh. She was also the first poet in the Bangla language to present a retelling of the Ram story from the point of view of Sita. Idolized as a model of marital obedience and chastity in Valmiki's Ramayan, Chandrabati's lyrical retelling of Sita's story offers us a fresh perspective. Written in order to be sung before a non-courtly audience, mainly of womenfolk of rural Bengal, Chandrabati's Ramayan adds new characters and situations to the story to provide new interpretations of already known events drawing richly on elements of existing genres. Its location in the tales of everyday life has ensured that Chandrabati's Ramayan lives on in the hearts of village women of modern-day India. Translated into English for the first time by renowned and recently deceased writer Nabaneeta Dev Sen, this edition brings a beloved religious tale to a new audience in the twenty-first century.

The culmination of research undertaken in the rural panchayats of Gujarat and Tamil Nadu, A Foot in the Door brings the voices of Dalit women to the forefront of the ongoing conversation about their political oppression. The authors examine the patriarchal and caste-based barriers to Dalit women's political participation in Panchayati Raj, explaining clearly that without a more holistic approach, the panchayats will only continue to reinforce existing and undeniably violent hierarchies of caste and gender. Dalit women's political participation remains a risky endeavor and involves very little actual transfer of power. Getting 'a foot in the door' is not enough--the affirmative action that secures a Dalit woman's right to enter the panchayats often still silences them in the process of seeking active participation. An essential read for feminist and Dalit scholars working on issues of gender, caste, and political participation, A Foot in the Door argues that there is a need for deep, systemic change at every level of governance--only then can equal and meaningful participation be ensured.

Researcher and activist Sahba Husain has been working in Kashmir for two decades, and in this personal, passionate account of that state and its people, she documents her deeply engaged and empathetic involvement with Kashmir's politicized terrain. We join her as she meets--and, crucially, listens to--people who carry all of the anger, despair, and helplessness of a people caught in conflict and violence. Forming deep friendships through this process, Husain finds herself questioning her own "Indian" identity. It is those relationships that form the backdrop of this book, in which Husain focuses on certain key areas: the health of a people, militancy and its changing meanings for local people and the state, impunity and the search for justice, migration and the longing for homes left behind, and women's activism along the faultlines of nation-state and community. A book of difficult subjects, but one that finds surprising beauty in its engagement with human relationships, of love for a land and a people and of hope for a future free of violence, Love, Loss, and Longing in Kashmir is a compelling and necessary read.

Jeumon has a complicated story stuck in her head: her family‿s. In the newly-drawn boundaries of Assam and Meghalaya in 1972 India, young Jeumon wonders how she should define herself. Is she Assamese, like her father, or Khasi, like her mother?  As a researcher and writer, she speaks with passion of the oral narratives and folk tales shared by the people of the hills and plains, those of different tribes, and those with different languages. To herself, she wonders: if stories can do this, why can‿t people? Why must they be trapped in singular identities?   In this moving narrative of change, Tilottoma Misra tells the story of one family to explore how lives are impacted by sweeping geographical partitions and how human relationships morph under the weight of political turmoil. Â

A grandmother‿s tattoos, the advent of Christianity, stories woven into fabrics, a tradition of orality, the imposition of a “newâ€? language, and a history of war and conflict‿all of this and much more informs the writers and artists in this book. Filmmaker and writer Anungla Zoe Longkumer brings together, for the first time, a remarkable set of stories, poems, first-person narratives, and visuals that showcase the breadth of Naga women‿s creative and literary expression. The essays are written in English, a language the Nagas‿who had no tradition of written literature‿made their own after the arrival of Christianity in the region during the nineteenth century. In The Many That I Am, each writer speaks of the many journeys women undertake to reclaim their pasts and understand their complex present. Â

Set in the forests of northern Odisha, Mahuldiha Days is the moving story of a young civil servant caught between her commitment to the tribal communities she knows are the original inhabitants of the forest and the monolithic state, oblivious to the diverse realities of life on the ground. The moonlit brahmani river snakes through the story with a life of its own while the city of the narrator's childhood comes to her in dreams. Agnihotri creates a poignant, intense narrative layered with an awareness of the pressures of motherhood and personal love.

From the writer of the delightful utopian fantasy Sultana's Dream come these witty tales describing the twists and turns of India's two-hundred-year relationship with the Imperial British. Available to contemporary English readers for the first time, Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain's Freedom Fables is temporally vast but compact in form and size. The first tale, "Gyanphal--The Fruit of Knowledge", begins in the Garden of Eden. This paradise swiftly devolves into an idealized Kanakdesha where a trading company beguiles the prosperous country and proceeds to ruin it. The second story, "Muktiphal--The Fruit of Freedom", zeroes in on the rise and growth of India's Congress Party. Hossain's political satires are published here together in a single translated edition, several translated into English for the first time. Intertwined in Hossain's writings are enduring ideals: education and emancipation for women, dignity and freedom for Indians from colonial rule, and the many themes she employs in her works under these two overarching passions. Throughout these tales, the fantastic floats easily over mere facts. Adam and Eve, the Almighty himself, djinns, demons, and magicians--all of these classic characters play decisive, intriguing roles. Apart from these two bitingly witty satires, Freedom Fables includes an additional seven essays and poems that were written over a period of seventeen years.

The Second World War has just ended. The Japanese have departed. In Nagaland in northeast India--one of the key theaters of the battle--political unrest and tremendous social changes have generated new social problems. For returning soldiers and others dealing with the aftermath of war, alcohol provides some relief and a way of dealing with new realities. The Church, a major presence, joins the battle against alcoholism with its support of the Nagaland Liquor Total Prohibition Act. This mandate, however, only leads to bootlegging and the more insidious problem of domestic violence. In her new novel, Easterine Kire explores one woman's journey through these altered realities. In doing so, she also uncovers the underbelly of a society in transition--one that is reluctant to cast off traditional ways even as it entangles itself in the problems of the modern world.

Set in mid-nineteenth-century Assam, when new concepts of modernity are increasingly challenging tradition, Swarnalata tells the story of three women from very different social backgrounds. Each of them swept up in the whirlpool of change, they heroically and silently struggle to chart their own courses in life. The intertwined lives of Swarnalata, Tora, and Lakhi gradually unfold and take us on a fascinating journey into the social milieu of the time, when issues like women's education and widow remarriage held center stage. The plight of indentured labor, peasant resistance against colonial exploitation, the reformist initiatives of the Brahmo Samaj, and the proselytizing efforts of the Christian missionaries are dominant themes running through the narrative. Historical figures of the day, such as Rabindranath Tagore, exist side by side with fictional characters, providing a wonderful blend of history and fiction. First published in 1991 and now in its fourth edition, Swarnalata is a classic of Assamese literature that will provide English readers with fascinating insight into the history and culture of Assam in the nineteenth century.

A bright young student, a globetrotting star, and a highly respected married couple--each deeply immersed in the tradition of Hindustani classical music. A Monsoon of Music tells the story of these four musicians whose lives intersect in the small mofussil town of Tamulbari on the banks of the Brahmaputra. Against the backdrop of musical heritage and haunting ragas, Mitra Phukan sweeps us into the lives of her characters: the ambitious sitarist, Kaushik Kashyap, who tours the world with his beautiful Italian student; Nomita, the shy small-town vocalist whom Kaushik's parents have chosen for him; the beautifully serene Sandhya Senapati and her husband, the handsome Tridib Barua, who seems to be hiding dark secrets; and the well-known industrialist Deepak Rathod. As the eventful monsoon months give way to autumn, they each come to deeper understandings of themselves even as their lives change dramatically. By turns serious, deeply moving, and utterly irreverent, Phukan's eye for detail, her immense knowledge of Hindustani classical music, and her profound understanding of human nature come together in this remarkable novel.

A revolutionary take on the classic dystopian science fiction novel, Clone inaugurates a new kind of writing in India. Priya Sarukkai Chabria weaves the tale of a fourteenth-generation clone in twenty-fourth-century India who struggles against imposed amnesia and sexual taboos in a species-depleted world. With resonant and allusive prose, Chabria takes us along as the clone hesitantly navigates through a world rendered unfamiliar by her expanding consciousness. This slow transformation is mirrored in the way both she and her world appear to the reader. The necessary questions Chabria raises revolve around a shared humanity, the necessity of plurality of expression, the wonder of love, and the splendor of difference. Clone's adventurous forays into vastly different times, spaces, and consciousness--animal, human, and post-human--build a poetic story about compassion and memory in the midst of all that is grotesque.

Foxy Aesop offers a virtuoso display of how one can use the building blocks of a fable in a variety of ways. Eccentric, darkly comic, and wryly amusing, Suniti Namjoshi's fable will surprise and delight any fans of Angela Carter or Margaret Atwood.

Though the northeastern region of India contains eight ethnically diverse, politically complex, and historically different states, it is often homogenized into a problematic category called "the northeast." Many stereotype it as a region of conflict clouding India's periphery. The diversity of the region, its rich histories, its many literatures, and its women--who run businesses, fight for peace, and battle their men as rights-bearers--all of these admirable elements of the region tend to disappear in the face of such stereotyping. Centrepiece brings together twenty-one women from across the northeastern states of India to reflect on the personal nature and meanings of work through their own words and pictures. Whether they are brewing beer, carrying cow dung on their heads, or selling food in the streets, these women confront, love, reject, and laugh at their men in myriad ways. Visually stunning, with full-color images, Centrepiece illustrates how traditional tribal art and modern sensibilities can intersect to create a new visual language for these women to share untold stories. They tell their tales here with both gravity and joy, bringing alive their cultures and showing us how to see a fresh perspective of this region and its people.

Gender and Governance examines how different governance structures affect gender in five specific locations in South Asia: Swat in Pakistan, the Chittagong Hill Tracts in Bangladesh, the Northern Province in Sri Lanka, and Kashmir and Manipur in India. These comparative studies examine the historical context of each region, look at existing structures of governance, trace how these have changed over time, conclude whether or not parallel systems have come up in their place, and reflect on what this means for gender issues in the region. Although each location is quite different, some common patterns emerge. This book sheds new light on how formal and informal structures affect the lives of women, particularly in conflict zones. When formal governance fails, women often turn to the informal structures in their community--and these can be both conservative and patriarchal. Gender and Governance shows why gendering structures of governance, therefore, is essential in ongoing efforts to improve gender equality in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka.

Over the last several years, regular evaluation of development programs has become essential in measuring and understanding their true impact. Feminist and gender-sensitive evaluations have gradually emerged, drawing attention to existing inequities--gender, caste, class, location, and more--and the cumulative effect of these biases on daily life. Such evaluations are also deeply political; they explicitly acknowledge that gender-based inequalities exist, show how they remain embedded in society, and articulate ways to address them. Based on four years of research, Voices and Values offers critical insight into how gender, class, and nationality inflect and affect sociological research. It examines how feminist evaluations could make an effective contribution to new policy formulations oriented to gender and social equity. The essays here focus centrally on the structural roots of inequity: giving weight to all perspectives; adding value to marginalized groups and people under evaluation; and taking forward the findings of evaluation into advocacy for change. In doing so, each essay advances the understanding of feminist evaluation both conceptually and as practice.

In recent decades, the states in the northeast of India have been home to a number of protracted violent conflicts. And while the role of women's movements in responding to conflict and violence tend to be marginalized both by the media and by scholarship, they have played a crucial role in attempts to strengthen civil society and bring peace to the region. This collection offers a close look at the successes and failures of those efforts, adding important insight into ongoing debates on gender and political change in societies affected by conflict. At the same time, the book takes a fresh, critical look at universalist feminist and interventionist biases that have tended to see peace processes as windows of opportunity for women's empowerment while ignoring the complexity of gender relations during conflict.

Twenty-five long years after the war that was supposed to liberate Bangladesh--and that instead, for far too many people, merely brought fear, violence, and loss--a young researcher arrives on the doorstep of one survivor in Dhaka, Mariam, armed with a set of questions that have no easy answers. How did Mariam and women like her--who lived through violence and rape--survive the war? How did the Pakistani army deal with women they found in homes, offices, or colleges? Why did Mariam send her brother away to keep him safe even as she stayed on? For Mariam, however, these questions are irrelevant--her demons are different. Could she have saved her brother, she wonders? And what happened to the other men in her life? What did the war do to them, and to her? A powerful novel of shattering war and its aftermath, The Search tells of the difficulty of picking up the pieces and moving on after personal--and national--trauma.

The Tamil text Nīlakeci, dated around the 5th century CE (debated), is an unusual literary creation. It retrieves a violent, vengeful pēy (female possessing spirit) of Palayanur, transforming her into a Jaina philosopher. It was a profoundly subversive idea of its time, using the female persona and voice (for a hitherto disembodied being) to debate with preceptors of different schools of thought/religions of the time, all male, barring the Buddhist nun, Kuṇṭalakeci. Nīlakeci's debates focus on questions of non-violence, existence of the soul, authorship and caste, among others. However, in order to truly appreciate this alter-texting, one has to unravel layers of other texts and traditions: the lesser known villuppāttu (bow-song) and nātakam (theatrical) versions of the pēy Nīli stories, as well as the story of Kuṇṭalakeci's own transformative journey. Umamaheshwari situates these in a comparative context, while maintaining the centrality of the debates within Nīlakeci, using translation of selected excerpts.