Table Of ContentWOMEN’S AND GENDER
STUDIES IN INDIA
This book frames the major debates and contemporary issues in women’s and gender studies
in India. It locates them in the context of key theories, their interlinkages, and significant
crossings and overlaps within the field while juxtaposing feminist and queer perspectives.
The essays in the volume foreground emerging challenges as well as offer clues to future
trajectories for women’s and gender studies in the country through a comprehensive and
interdisciplinary survey of intersectionalities in feminist activism and theory; gender, caste
and class; feminist, masculinity, queer and transgender studies; disability and feminism;
feminist and queer pedagogies; and Indian, Western and transnational feminisms. The volume
traces how gender studies have shaped established social science as well as interpretative and
representational discourses (psychoanalysis, literature, aesthetics, cinema, new media studies
and folklore). It examines their strategic potential to draw upon and transform these areas in
national and international contexts.
This book will be useful to students, teachers and researchers in women’s studies, gender
studies, cultural studies, queer studies and South Asian studies.
Anu Aneja is Professor at the School of Gender and Development Studies, Indira Gandhi
National Open University (IGNOU), New Delhi, India, and is currently Associate Editor for
Gender and Education. She taught for several years at Ohio Wesleyan University, USA, where she
was the recipient of the Rebecca Brown Professor of Literature award. She was awarded the
Beatrice B. Maines fellowship for research in women’s studies, at the University of California,
Berkeley. Her research interests include feminist theory and aesthetics; contemporary French,
francophone and Indian women writers; feminist perspectives on mothering; and feminist
pedagogy. Her publications have appeared in various international journals. She is the author
of Embodying Motherhood: Perspectives from Contemporary India (co-authored with Shubhangi
Vaidya, 2016) and the editor of Gender and Distance Education: Indian and International Contexts
(2019). She has previously served as Chairperson, Department of Humanities and Classics,
Ohio Wesleyan University; and Director, School of Continuing Education, and Director,
School of Gender and Development Studies, IGNOU. She has also served on the editorial
team of the Indian Journal of Open Learning, IGNOU.
WOMEN’S AND
GENDER STUDIES
IN INDIA
Crossings
Edited by Anu Aneja
First published 2019
by Routledge
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© 2019 selection and editorial matter, Anu Aneja; individual chapters, the
contributors
The right of Anu Aneja to be identified as the author of the editorial
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Aneja, Anu, editor.
Title: Women’s and gender studies in India : crossings / edited
by Anu Aneja.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2019. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018055492 | ISBN 9781138090064
(hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780429025167 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Women’s studies—India. | Sex role—India.
Classification: LCC HQ1181.I4 W637 2019 | DDC 305.30954—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018055492
ISBN: 978-1-138-09006-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-20234-7 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-02516-7 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
CONTENTS
List of figures ix
List of tables x
Contributors xi
Acknowledgements xiv
Introduction: women’s and gender studies at the crossroads 1
Anu Aneja
PART I
Stirrings, across time and place 21
1 (How) ‘to be or not to be’: women’s and gender
studies in India today 23
Sharon Pillai
2 Feminist crossings in time and space: the question of culture 30
Mary E. John
3 Dynamics of the women’s movement and women’s studies
in India: an evolutionary perspective 43
Vibhuti Patel
4 Intersections of gender, caste and class: agenda building in
the Indian women’s movement 55
Mangala Subramaniam and Preethi Krishnan
vi Contents
5 Beyond essentialism: ecofeminism and the ‘friction’
between gender and ecology 66
Anindita Majumdar
6 Locating disability in the Indian women’s movement 79
Anita Ghai
PART II
Interleaves: conceiving theories, theorizing identities 91
7 Feminist theory and the aesthetic re-turn 93
Anu Aneja
8 Masculinity, sexuality and culture: entangled narratives 110
Sanjay Srivastava
9 Pride and prejudice: intersectional perspectives on
identity formation through Indian pride events 128
Namita Paul
10 (Dis)ability, gender and identity: crossing boundaries 137
Shubhangi Vaidya
11 Gender, caste and Indian feminism: the case of
the Women’s Reservation Bill 151
Vrinda Marwah
12 Bharat Mata, melodrama and the mediation of
the national subject 164
Karen Gabriel
PART III
In-disciplinarities 193
13 Feminism across disciplines: from Plato’s Academy to the
streets of Delhi 195
Deepti Priya Mehrotra
14 Reconfiguring the disciplinary boundaries of women’s and
gender studies through the genre of lifewritings 212
Meenakshi Malhotra
Contents vii
15 Transgender studies in India: locating folklore
and autobiographies as transgressive sites 225
Akshaya K. Rath
16 Crafting spaces at new intersections: in search
of psychoanalytic feminism for India 235
Rachana Johri
17 (Dis)respectable selfies: honour, surveillance and
the undisciplined girl 247
Sujatha Subramanian
PART IV
Entwining feminism and pedagogy: inside the institution 259
18 Working through the women’s and gender studies teaching
machine: notes on the way forward 261
Sharon Pillai
19 Blending in: reconciling feminist pedagogy and distance
education across cultures 271
Anu Aneja
20 Disrupting the gender binary: queering feminist
pedagogy 292
Leena Pujari
PART V
Conversations across borders 305
21 Transnational feminist crossings: on neo-liberalism
and radical critique 307
Chandra Talpade Mohanty
22 Globalization and Third Way theories: the beleaguered
family and the marginalization of women 328
Taisha Abraham
23 When feminists sidestep the nation state:
transnational feminist journeys 343
Krishna Menon
viii Contents
24 Queer and now: a roundtable forum with Dipika Jain,
Akhil Kang, Sheena Malhotra, Hoshang Merchant,
Shakthi Nataraj, Chayanika Shah, Nishant Shahani,
Oishik Sircar and Ruth Vanita 356
Aneil Rallin
Index 375
FIGURES
12.1 Abanindranath Tagore’s 1905 depiction of the goddess Banga
Mata reincarnated as Bharat Mata 166
12.2 Hind Devi 168
12.3 Bharat Mata, Hind Devi, in a print from the 1920s–1930s 168
12.4 Bharat Mata or Vande Mataram (1937), painting by
P. S. Ramachandran Rao, Coimbatore, 1937, used on
Independence Day 169
12.5 The Splendour That Is India: a Bharat Mata from
the 1970s, with no Muslims or Christians included 171
12.6 A 1930s depiction of a serene, inclusive Bharat Mata titled
Message of Love (Ravi Varma Press) 172
12.7 Bharat Mata in Shackles, print bearing the signature of
D. Banerjee, late 1930s–early 1940s 173
12.8 Durgaesque Bharat Mata, contemporary postcard, Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh, Karnataka 175
12.9 The Vishwa Hindu Parishad version of Bharat Mata 175
12.10 The RSS idea of Bharat Mata 176
12.11 Bharat Mata with buffalo 180
12.12 Publicity poster of Refugee 183
12.13 Publicity poster of Mother India 184
12.14 Publicity poster 1 of Deewar 185
12.15 Publicity poster 2 of Deewar 186
12.16 Publicity poster of Zakhm 187
12.17 Publicity poster of Karan Arjun 187
12.18 Publicity poster of Amar Akbar Anthony 188
19.1 MAWGS: programme structure at a glance 280
