The relationship between men and feminism is frequently assumed to be antagonistic. This volume confronts this assumption by bringing critical attention to men’s engagement in feminist research, pedagogy, and activism in India. The chapters in this collection respond to two broad thematic concerns: theoretical implications of men producing feminist knowledge and the history of men’s participation in feminist endeavours. The volume also explores the undocumented contributions of men to three domains of feminist activity: institutionalization of feminism in the academy, social movements aimed at gender justice, and male writings on gender and sexuality. Delving into an important yet overlooked aspect of the social sciences, this volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of gender studies, masculinity studies, modern Indian history, sociology, and social anthropology.

Grounded in a variety of rich and diverse source materials such as periodicals meant for women and edited by women, song and cookbooks, book reviews and court records, the author of this pioneering study mobilises claims for the existence of an Indian feminism in the nineteenth century. Anagol traces the ways in which Indian women engaged with the power structures-both colonialist and patriarchical-which sought to define them. Through her analysis of Indian male reactions to movements of assertion by women, Anagol shows that the development of feminist consciousness in India from the late nineteenth century to the coming of Gandhi was not one of uninterrupted unilinear progression. The book illustrates the ways in which such movements were based upon a consciousness of the inequalities in gender relations and highlights the determination of an emerging female intelligentsia to remedy it. The author's innovative study of women and crime challenges the notion of passivity by uncovering instances of individual resistance in the domestic sphere. Her study of women's perspectives and participation in the Age of Consent Bill debates clearly demonstrates how the rebellion of wives and their assertion in the colonial courts had resulted in male reaction to reform rather than the current historiographical claims that it was a response purely to threats posed by 'colonial masculinity'. Anagol's investigation of the growth of the women's press, their writings and participation in the wider vernacular press highlights the relationship between symbolic or 'hidden' resistance and open assertion by women.

Contributing to debates on feminism, this book considers the impact made by feminists in India from the 1970s. Geetanjali Gangoli analyses feminist campaigns on issues of violence and women’s rights, and debates on ways in which feminist legal debates may be limiting for women and based on exclusionary concepts such as citizenship. She addresses campaigns ranging from domestic violence, rape, pornography and son preference and sets them within a wider analysis of the position of women within the Indian state. The strengths and limitations of law reform for women are addressed as well as whether legal feminisms relating to law and women's legal rights are effective in the Indian context. The question of whether legal campaigns can make positive changes in women’s lives or whether they further legitimize oppressive state patriarchies is considered. The recasting of caste and community identities is also assessed, as well as the rise of Hindu fundamentalism and the ways in which feminists in India have combated and confronted these challenges. Indian Feminisms will interest researchers and students in the areas of feminism, law, women’s movements and social movements in India, and South Asia more generally.

This collection is an invaluable overview of the rich history of Indian feminism. It brings together the writing of prominent Indian academics and activists as they debate feminism in the context of Indian culture, society and politics, and explore its theoretical foundations in India. The inevitable association with western feminism, the status of women in colonial and independent India, and the challenges to Indian feminism posed by globalization and the Hindu Right are discussed at length. It deepens our understanding of why, despite the existence of legal and constitutional rights, women are subject to oppressive practices like dowry.

This book is a comparative and developmental study of the expression of feminist concerns in the novels of Kamala Markandaya, Nayantara Sahgal, Anita Desai, and Shashi Deshpande, among the best known and most prolific Indian novelists writing in English, who have been self-consciously engaged with women's issues during the postcolonial era.

Revolutionary Desires examines the lives and subjectivities of militant-nationalist and communist women in India from the late 1920s, shortly after the communist movement took root, to the 1960s, when it fractured. This close study demonstrates how India's revolutionary women shaped a new female – and in some cases feminist – political subject in the twentieth century, in collaboration and contestation with Indian nationalist, liberal-feminist, and European left-wing models of womenhood. Through a wide range of writings by, and about, revolutionary and communist women, including memoirs, autobiographies, novels, party documents, and interviews, Ania Loomba traces the experiences of these women, showing how they were constrained by, but also how they questioned, the gendered norms of Indian political culture. A collection of carefully restored photographs is dispersed throughout the book, helping to evoke the texture of these women’s political experiences, both public and private. Revolutionary Desires is an original and important intervention into a neglected area of leftist and feminist politics in India by a major voice in feminist studies.