The book examines the history of the women's rights movement in India and discusses achievements and setbacks.

Eaton ranges over all the important aspects of that community's history, whether political and social, or cultural and religious...This study must rank among the finest contributions to South Asian scholarship to appear for some while.

This volume of essays moves the historiography of ancient India in the service of a history of the present. The cultural onslaught of a brahmanical saffron culture within popular discourse, and the fight against entrenched class and caste interests led by women, dalits, and other marginalized groups, frame this battle for 'ancient' India. Through an in-depth analysis of myths and original sources, the author provides novel grounds for contesting the foundations of such charged concepts as 'nation', 'civilization, ' and 'womanly honour'. Reading against the grain of canonical sources, she presents a distinctive reading of lesser known Buddhist Pali texts, the Jataka stories, and even contemporary texts like the TV serials Chanakya and Ramayana, to demonstrate the stratifications in early Indian society. The book brings to light several crucial concepts and categories that make possible a sensitive delineation of social alienation, class antagonism and gendered violence in ancient Indian society. The everyday histories of dasas, karmakaras, 'a'grihinis, bhaktins, and gahapatis provide an understanding of ancient India away from the clichéd invocations of ideal kings, brahmanas, and pativratas.

The political and social life of India in the last decade has given rise to a variety of questions concerning the nature and resilience of patriarchal systems in a transitional and post-colonial society. The contributors to this interdisciplinary volume recognize that every aspect of reality is gendered, and that such a recognition involves a dismantling of the ideological presuppositions of the so-called gender neutral ideologies, as well as the boundaries of individual disciplines.

Amandeep, Murugesh, Rufus And Sundar Are Bucks Who Talk Dirty For The Same Reason That They Remove The Mufflers From Their Motorcycle Exhausts It Makes Them Feel Like Men. Like Libertines. To Their Hormonal Despair, When Professor Ram Stages His Remake Of A Midsummer Night'S Dream At Their College Fest, He Casts These Four As Fairies. The Farce That Follows Gradually Takes Over The Lives Of The Rest Of The Characters In This Achingly Funny Novel About The Pratfalls That Accompany Caste Pride. On And Off The Campus Of Chennai University, You Will Encounter Onion-And-Garlic-Free Tambrahms Who Rewrite Shakespeare To Uphold The Hindu Order, Smug Nris Who Call The Shots In Matrimonials, Visiting Canadians Who Are Aghast At The Plight Of Dalits (Pronounced Daylights') And, At The Apex Of The Whole Tumbling Structure, A Bibulous Builder Who Invokes The Gods Even As He Defrauds His Clients. Tailing The Characters Around This Plot Is An Unseen But All-Seeing Spectator. You May Never Guess Who That Is, But Will Laugh All The Way To The Answer.

The little-known story of Gandhi’s reluctance to challenge the caste system, and the man who fought fiercely for India’s downtrodden. Democracy hasn’t eradicated caste, argues bestselling author and Booker Prize–winner Arundhati Roy—it has entrenched and modernized it. To understand caste today in India, Roy insists we must examine the influence of Gandhi in shaping what India ultimately became: independent of British rule, globally powerful, and marked to this day by the caste system. Roy states that for more than a half century, Gandhi’s pronouncements on the inherent qualities of black Africans, Dalit “untouchables,” and the laboring classes remained consistently insulting, and he also refused to allow lower castes to create their own political organizations and elect their own representatives. But there was someone else who had a larger vision of justice—a founding father of the republic and the chief architect of its constitution. In The Doctor and the Saint, Roy introduces us to this contemporary of Gandhi, B.R. Ambedkar, who challenged the thinking of the time and fought to promote not merely formal democracy, but liberation from the oppression, shame, and poverty imposed on millions of Indians by an archaic caste system. This is a fascinating and surprising look at two men—one of whom has become a worldwide symbol and the other of whom remains unfamiliar to most outside his native country. Praise for Arundhati Roy “Arundhati Roy is incandescent in her brilliance and her fearlessness.” —Junot Díaz “The fierceness with which Arundhati Roy loves humanity moves my heart.” —Alice Walker