Bhatkal & Sen – förlag

This translation provides access to the major works of a leading Marathi writer. Kamal Desai's fiction is focused on the micro levels of inner life where experience is held together by the compelling and never predictable struggle for selfhood. Nearly always, subtle and ongoing antagonisms structure and threaten Kamal Desai's imagined communities. Before she can tear down the walls of the temple of the Dark Sun (Kala Surya) the protagonist must extricate herself from its tenacious and pervasive hold on her inner life. In the much acclaimed 'Woman Wearing a Hat' (Hat Ghalnari Bai), a woman asserts her right to a Promethean venture in the face of crippling opposition.

These English translations from the Gujarati bring Saroj Pathak's work to a wider audience, giving it the greater attention it deserves. Delving deep into the human mind, the stories depict the pitfalls of communication, the infinite possibilities of misunderstanding, of doubt and despair. At the same time they celebrate the human psyche's ability to bridge these chasms and make connections, of love, understanding, and friendship. Pathak considers the predicaments of both women and men as they grapple with the modernity that has been thrust upon them. Indeed, Pathak's interest in men as well as women characters distinguishes her from many other women novelists.

An extraordinary story of Anant Khare who appeared to be an ordinary drawing teacher, living and working near Pune at the turn of the century. He decided that his contribution to the nationalist movement would be to educate his daughters to the highest level. By the 1920s, his daughters were independent, single career women at a time when their peers had been married off at the age of ten. His wife too was running a flourishing dairy. Yet Kharemaster felt inadequate beside his educated daughters and sons, all adept in a world seemingly out of his reach. Writing about her father at the age of 88, his daughter Balutai, using her penname 'Vibhavari Shirurkar', is as unflinchingly honest about herself as she is about her father.

For far too long the 'population problem' in India has been seen from the point of view of the policy and statistics of population growth, focusing on the control of fertility without reference to poor women and their needs. In this book, a hundred women from Calcutta's slums talk directly about their sexual and birth control experiences. As the stories accumulate, we get a picture of these women's lives that are frighteningly bare of choice. The book asks how women's income-earning capacities as well as those of their men, and their status in their families affect their social and sexual autonomy. How does religion influence their birth control choices? Has the women's movement been able to address the concerns of poor illiterate or semi-illiterate women?

Translated for the first time from the Bengali, this astonishingly radical novel is about Chhobi, a gusty, misfit girl from a rural land-owning family, who questions injustice, fights to share the privileges offered to her brother and male cousins, and refuses to see her future as another submissive household drudge. 'Nabankur' means a new seedling, personified by Chhobi, who is growing up in the 1930s and early 1940s in Bengal where anti-colonial struggles against British rule are in full swing. Side by side her political awakening gives rise to thoughts of personal freedom. Moving from the darkness of the interior to light is a recurrent theme in the novel, and Chhobi awakens her selfhood, just as a seedling strains towards the sun.

This path-breaking study of women's experience of litigation under personal laws (those that cover marriage and inheritance) raises vital questions of identity and citizenship. Why is it so difficult to disentangle woman 'as subject/citizen imbued with rights from that of being daughter, sister, wife, widow and the symbol of a community'? Why is it that both Hindu and Muslim women are unsuccessful in their claims for property despite appealing to different personal laws? By shifting the focus from the text of the law to an ethnography of litigation -- the nature of disputes, the attitudes of lawyers, the experiences in court, the logic of judgements, and so on -- the analysis highlights the crucial factors that are obscured in abstract discussions of 'rights'.

While gender has become increasingly important in development policies, there is less awareness that policies and the consequences of structural adjustment are never gender-neutral. The myth of neutrality continues while women often suffer de facto exclusion from the development process because of methods of implementation. Globalisation means that resources for the social sector will come out of an ever-shrinking common pool where women will get even less priority. In this meticulous study, the contributors, all well-known scholars -- Joy Deshmukh-Ranadive, K. Seeta Prabhu, Malavika Karlekar, Sumi Krishna, Kumud Sharma, Preet Rustogi, Vasudha Jain and Indrani Mazumdar -- examine what happens once these macro policies affect women at the micro level, especially the poorer women in urban slums and rural villages.

Both are based on the Mahabharata. The first one narrates the story of Draupadi. She was married to the five royal Pandava brothers and her humiliation at the hands of the Kauravas, the cousins of her husbands and rivals for the throne, is depicted. The second play reveals the tragedy of the royal women, Satyavati, the three abducted princesses, Amba, Ambika and Ambalika, the queens Kunti and Gandhari, and the daughters-in-law, Draupadi, Subhadra and Uttara. Both the plays are one-woman performances in the tradition of kathakatha, dramatised storytelling that uses live music. By subverting traditional theatre and the gendering of the stories, Mitra's plays challenge the audience's views of 'decorum'.

This book offer new insights into the problems and realities of personal law in Bangladesh. Looking at the ways in which religious jurisprudence has changed in the contemporary political climate, Pereira chronicles the tangled history of ideas of divorce, marriage, inheritance, and property as they affect women. She identifies features of Islam in Bangladesh that make Islamic lawmaking in that country unique, and she compares it with the situation among Christians, Hindus and other minorities there. Glancing at similar problems in India, she theorises on law and the intersections of patriarchy with religion in a Third World society.

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.

Ipshita Chanda suggests provocatively that it is popular culture that the discourses of modernity, feminism and progress, all articulated by the women's movement, become lived realities. Looking at popular women's journals like Sananda, Femina, Cosmopolitan and Meri Saheli, among others, advertisements that depict 'modernity', TV serials where women are not always meekly subservient, media icons and books by women authors, she wonders whether popular culture could be used to disseminate the goals of feminism. Or is it a case of new accommodations being formed in the name of women's liberation? What are the implications for feminism?

Translated from the original anthology in Bengali. Throwing light on the work and lives of unknown or forgotten Muslim women writers of pre-Independence Bengal, when the state was not yet partitioned between India and East Pakistan (today's Bangladesh), in 1947, this anthology is like a rediscovery of their lives. First published in Bengali as Zenana Mehfil: Bangali Musalman Lekhikader Nirbachita Rachana, 1904-38, it compiles, for the first time, eleven Bengali Muslim women's writings: essays, short stories, poetry, a novel and some correspondence, each introduced and discussed separately. This anthology also gives a glimpse of their lives that were not always confined within the household. The writers include Akhtar Mahal, Sayyada Khatun and M. Fatema Khanum, and other much more familiar names like Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain and Shamsundar Mahmud. Among the immensely valuable interviews are those of Mohammed Nasiruddin, who devoted his life to the cause of Bengali Muslim women's emancipation, his daughter Nurjehan Begum, the poet Sufia Kamal, the writer Hameeda Khanam and Syed Mustafa Siraj, the celebrated Bengali novelist who witnessed the social changes that were to alter the Bengali Muslim world.

Suggesting that women are 'reshaping English' as Rushdie suggests, Kuortti interviews 7 women writers to find out why they write in English, which cannot be neutral. As a colony, the language was inescapably associated with class, race and power; after independence it has grown in power and status, yet the problematic of English as the language of the hegemonic West remains. Even so a new canon of women writing in English is being formed. Interviewing the writers Shashi Deshpande, the late Shama Futehally, Githa Hariharan, Lakshmi Kannan, Sujatha Mathai, Anuradha Marwah-Roy and Mina Singh, Kuortti also presents extracts from their writings.

While there have been many studies on HIV-positive people, this pioneering book studies the impact on affected families, highlighting changing family dynamics, once the diagnosis is known. It also makes recommendations to alleviate the situation, without ever losing sight of the human dimensions.

In writing about the times of the Buddha, Bani Basu composes a new Jataka, the traditional format in which the tales of the different births of the Buddha were written down. In this Jataka-as-a-novel, she grapples with history and the revolutionary ideas of the Buddha, who suggested new ways of living, new political formations, of a major change in belief, indeed, in thinking about God or the absence of one. Delving into history and biography, Sanskrit and Pali, her novel is intriguingly contemporary, though set in the sixth century BC

This book discusses explicitly the trauma of the Partition of 1947 in Eastern India in a way that has not happened before. The lack of overt public discourse has meant that people outside Bengal believed that the impact of Partition was limited in the east. Indeed, the sufferings, the loss of life, livelihoods and of shelter were very real but of a different nature from the fast-moving horror of the Punjab. In the east it seemed more like an oozing wound. The editors have drawn upon interviews with women who were uprooted, on diaries, memoirs and creative literature. The book provides an invaluable discussion on displacement, rape, loss, and why women pay the price.

Gender intersects with other factors such as race, ethnicity, economic, social and political aspects and geographical locations. Divided into four parts this book considers global discourses on water; water culture and the economy; water, time and place; and water, women and agency. It highlights the achievements and failures, in both developed countries and developing countries, and urges the mainstreaming of gender in the water sector, particularly in decision making in both North and South. The book will be of immediate interest to academics, development planners, administrators, educators, activists and water scientists.

Presenting the life and work of Vinodineeben Neelkanth (1907-1987), this book offers a portrait of a woman who played many roles with distinction: as a social activist, a champion of women's rights, in the struggle for independence and as a journalist who wrote the column 'Ghargharni Jyoti' in the daily Gujarat Samachar that made her famous among both women and men. Born into a family that championed social reform and education -- her mother, Vidyagauri, and her aunt Shardaben had become graduates in 1901 -- she made bold and unconventional choices all her life. In 1929, aged twenty-one, she won the prestigious Barbour scholarship at the University of Michigan and gained a Masters degree in sociology and child psychology in 1930. On her return to Ahmedabad, she became the principal of the Municipal High School, earning a living which was unusual for a woman of her privileged background. Later she was to make an unconventional marriage that led to much public criticism and initial ostracism. She also became a writer. Most of her journalistic writings aimed at encouraging women to speak up for themselves and take control of their lives. Insofar as she strove to give women a sense of identity, she may be regarded as one of the precursors of feminist literature of Gujarat. The book traces the social milieu in which she grew up and lived, capturing the immense political and social changes that were coming about by a rapid state of modernisation and urbanisation in the early twentieth century. The translation, for the first time, of her works into English, reveals her critical public gaze on many an institution and practice that had long been held sacred and inviolate. Divided into two parts, Part I offers the Biographical Sketch, while Part II presents selections from her writings as a journalist, her essays, short stories and an extract from a novel.

This comprehensive history of India, from ancient to modern times, presents an alternative, even iconoclastic, view. Arguing that the history written by professional historians has been strongly influenced by their concept of Hinduism, caste and its implications, or by an over-dependence on Marxism, and their upper caste status, Kandyil urges that it is time that the counter view of the lower castes be considered. Declaring that he is not a historian, the author also states that he has not used primary sources. A major reason for the perpetuation of the caste system, he suggests, was identified by the Mandal Commission Report, 1987: the unquestioning adherence to irrational, anachronistic ideas and beliefs that conditioned 'the consciousness of the lower castes in accepting their inferior status in the ritual hierarchy as a part of the natural order of things'. He sets out to lay bare historical truths in an accessible way for those who have acquiesced in this discrimination. Achuthan deconstructs the intellectual labour of iconic scholars and personalities like S Radhakrishnan, M N Srinivas, Swami Vivekananda and Mahatma Gandhi, among others, to show how they supported the caste system, albeit condemning its excesses. Arguing against the prevalent distortions, the author talks of how the destruction of non-Brahminic literatures has been the key to wrongful interpretations of ancient India, and to the way Dravidian culture was undervalued until the discovery of the Indus Valley civilisation in the early twentieth century. Similarly, Buddhism had flourished for a millennium, BC 250-AD 800, bringing forth astonishing cultural achievements that travelled beyond India to the rest of the world. Yet this has not received its due; instead the glories of a golden age that mirrored Buddhism's decline at the hands of a violent resurgent Brahminism were emphasised. The latter with its rigid caste system and orthodoxy maintained by the Dharmashastras, reinterpreted extremely narrowly, led to India's long-term decline, its absence of unity, its vulnerability to invasions and its loss of creativity. The first glimmers of modernity based on equality before the law with attendant social reforms appeared only under British rule. Challenging orthodox interpretations, and more radical ones, Achuthan raises many key questions on what is history and how it is written.

Combative, however partisan, and yet often beguilingly playful, these essays, many translated from the Tamil for the first time, bring Ravikumar's concerns to a wider audience. Ranging from the centrality of caste, the logic of communalism, ideas on culture, the politics of the media, education, censorship and literature, just to mention a few of his interests, these essays provide an unsettling impact on the consensuses of democratic India. As he himself talks of in the Preface, for him the personal is political, and questions of power in society, derived from his engagement with Marx, Bakunin, Derrida, Foucault and other philosophers and his wide readings in Tamil literature, permeate his writings. Ravikumar charts the history of discrimination against dalits in terms of land ownership, labour and education, condemns the celebration of the golden jubilee of independence under Hindu authority in 'independent India'. He declares that fundamentalism moves hand in hand with consumer culture. He provocatively critiques the film-maker Lenin's much awarded docu-feature, Knock-Out. He writes on some of the most horrendous tales of the slaughter of dalits -- the Melavalavu murder -- where power overturns the rule of law. Throbbing with righteous anger at centuries of oppression and denial against dalits, this collection of essays, as Susie Tharu says in her incisive Foreword, act as 'both poison/venom and remedy'.

Offering a thought-provoking, incisive analysis of Bengal and India, these memoirs, translated for the first time into English, spanning the 1930s to today, bring contemporary India alive. Mitra mercilessly dissects the middle class, the 'bhadralok', of which he is a member. He analyses the fledgling democracy of India, taking us through the heady days of state planning on the Soviet model, criticising the worldwide mantra of globalisation and liberalisation which he believes aggravates poverty. He held considerable positions of power within the establishment, including the office of economic adviser to prime minister Indira Gandhi. He provides much insider information on the emergence of Bangladesh in 1971. Most intriguing are his thoughts of being a Marxist in a poor country and his discussion of his stint as minister for nine years.

Bridging theoretical discussions with fieldwork, these contributions consider social change in various gendered sites: orphan girls, middle class and working class housewives, Dalit Vankars, control of fertility, divorce and domestic violence. Offering ethnographic description and analysis, these articles suggest new ways in which women challenge predominant ideologies. Tellingly, the case studies suggest there is no sharp demarcation between culture as the weapon of domination and as the weapon of the weak.

Investigating the impact of globalisation on women workers, the author demystifies the phenomenon of globalisation, offering an overview of its prime drivers, processes and forces. Four sectoral studies of women workers are provided: two on factory women in garment exports and electronics; the third on home-based workers in a range of manufacturing processes and industries and the fourth on middle class women working in Information Technology Enabled Services (ITES). Offering an analysis of the effects of the changed policy paradigms on women workers, of global sectoral trends and their ramifications, and cutting through the hype on India's growth statistics, the author makes a valuable contribution to the reality of women's work in conditions of increasing insecurity.

Calcutta's extraordinary ability to be obsessed with itself, the marvellous tension between its cosmopolitan features and inherent provincial character that contemporary writers find engaging, were probably explored for the first time in Hootum Pyanchar Noksha (literally, Sketches by Hootum). This book, primarily a series of lampoons on the manners and morals of its citizens, cutting across all classes, was written by Kali Prasanna Sinha between 1861 and 1868. Sinha uses comedy and scatology as agents of subversion: The potpourri of street lingo and Calcutta cockney, peppered with Sanskrit, Urdu and English, Hootum's language is an anachronistic milestone in the time of Victorian sensibilities that no one has dared emulate. This book presents the rise of a new social class. An uncensored portrait of its sleazy backstreets and vibrant inner courtyards that excite, entice and also threaten their occupants.

Ajita Chakraborty presents her memoirs and selected essays that throw light on psychiatry and the way she practised it. Born in 1926, she was a pioneering women psychiatrist in India. She took a stand against the mainstream that simply used the premises and methods of western psychiatry, insisting that an Indian school of psychiatry must develop to suit Indians who were certainly not to be seen as just a variant of westerners. Right from her childhood, the author knew she wanted to be a psychiatrist., At the age of twelve she read Bijoylal Chattopadhyay's Moner Khela (The Mind's Games) where he analysed fictional characters, following Freudian methods, and she was riveted. She says she was propelled by the need to know herself; to 'pursue a career that explained things to me' She left for the UK to train in psychiatry as soon as she received her MBBS degree in 1950, returning to Calcutta in 1960 as the first fully trained female psychiatrist of the country. The memoirs discuss her difficulties in building up her career; there was resistance from the medical establishment despite her formidable qualifications. Her first appointment was at the prestigious Presidency General Hospital, at the adjoining Mental Observation Ward, in the absence of a department of psychiatry. She worked very hard in making it almost a full-scale department, creating records of patients and their treatments, providing a much needed database. This experience helped her in conducting the massive survey, covering ten millions, in Greater Calcutta, reminiscent of the Manhattan Project of the USA, with valuable information and analysis. Of special interest is her account of new developments in psychiatry in the West, the anti-psychiatric movement which was a revolt against mainstream psychiatry, led by brilliant practitioners like Dr R D Laing, whom she acknowledges as her guru. She also writes of the growing recognition of the primacy of culture in psychiatry.

Written in the 1930s, the stories and novella take a remorselessly radical stance against society's hypocritical mores, with women across classes fighting to live as they choose. Her frank social critique incited violent reactions in an intensely conservative society that burnt effigies of the author.

Reflecting contemporary conflicts in India, this novel, translated from the Marathi into English for the first time, is set in a village in Maharashtra, where panchayat elections are due. Roused by the new Ambedkarite jalsa, folk theatre, of Tatya Kamble that graphically portrays the dalits' role in their own enslavement, dalits stand up for their self-respect and turn to political participation. Under the rules of reservation of seats in politics, the post of the village sarpanch falls to their share, and a dalit candidate is successfully fielded by his upper caste employers, leaving the upper castes frustrated and angry. What happens to caste relations, the new political consensus that emerges slowly, if violently, are delineated perceptively. The text switches from the first person narrative of a dalit, Milind Kamble, a friend of Tatya Kamble and also of the corrupt and dissolute upper caste twins, Gopichand and Manikchand, who aim to make politics a successful business investment. A third person narrator also exists, the text alternating between the two, playing up a dual perspective. Vividly showing the contradictions within most individuals and the plight of women who suffer gender injustice regardless of their caste, this novel points to our own compromises and complicities.

Trained in India and at Johns Hopkins University where she and her husband, Dr Ajay Bang, learnt public health and research methodologies, the couple returned to India to set up a health clinic in Maharashtra's neglected Gadchiroli district, about 170 km from Nagpur, where the Gonds are the dominant tribal group. As co-author Rupa Chinai points out, this is a very old centre of settlement of about 3000 years, from here stretches eastwards the tribal crescent that arcs across Central India and encompasses the ancient Dandakaranya forest. Dr Rani Bang's research found that 92 percent of women in this region had no access to treatment for gynaecological disorders in the absence of women doctors. Such neglect is accompanied by globalisation and liberalisation which adds further stresses: rural families are unprepared for the rapid changes wrought in the spheres of education, information, material enhancement and changes in lifestyle. All of this has an impact on human relationships and health. In his foreword, Rahul Goswami points out that the book plays many roles. It is a commentary on the chronic myopia of a planning process that refuses to see millions of Indians and the ways in which their lives can be bettered. It reveals the way tribal society is being buffeted by the modern and whose traditional kinship and ecological systems are being sorely stressed'. It is also a logbook of case medicine. Quite different from the revolutionary activity of the Far Left, the Bangs have set in motion a type of revolution that equips women and men, communities and administrators with the tools to build an indigenous expression of development, one in which the fundamentals of healthcare, interdependence and sustainable economics are paramount'.