Vasanth Kannabiran – författare

Focusing on the many hegemonies that confront women and men today, the authors present fresh insights on the linkages among gender, culture and politics. Their 'concerns in politics have centred on questions of culture and representation, on power and hegemonies that find legitimacy, in globalisation, and the imperatives of anti-communal struggles'. They analyse the coalition between globalisation and fundamentalism and consider the disturbing portents for women, children, minorities and dalits. While reflecting on the increase in state repression, they also critique the way the Left revolutionary parties too restrict women's engagement.

When well-known women’s rights activist Vasanth Kannabiran was growing up in the 1950s, grandmothers and aunts shared many real-life stories about ‘wives, widows and whores’ with her. These seemingly disconnected anecdotes haunted Kannabiran, eventually revealing the pattern of women’s lived realities in the early twentieth century and inspiring her to write Pankaja, her debut novel. In Pankaja, Kannabiran paints a vivid portrait of what it meant to be an upper-caste Hindu woman in India at the time. Pankaja’s life and the lives of her women friends and family members are all shaped by the institution of marriage; limited by the norm of wifely duty. Pankaja’s mother Rajamma faces undue criticism from society after she is widowed. Pankaja’s sister Pattamma, who is widowed at a young age is branded a bad omen and shunned at social occasions. When Kannamma, who belongs to a Brahmin family, ends her unhappy marriage and goes to live with a low-caste mridangam player, her family disowns her and the entire community condemns her.