Feminism in India - Indian Feminists, Vandana Shiva, Amrita Pritam, Sarojini Sahoo, Evangeline Anderson Rajkumar, Malati Choudhury (Paperback)

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Pages: 29. Chapters: Indian feminists, Vandana Shiva, Amrita Pritam, Sarojini Sahoo, Evangeline Anderson Rajkumar, Malati Choudhury, Pink Chaddi Campaign, Tarabai Shinde, Aroti Dutt, Saroj Nalini Dutt, Prajwala, Mira Datta Gupta, Vina Mazumdar, Manikuntala Sen, Gauri Ma, Barnita Bagchi, Lalithambika Antherjanam, Jasodhara Bagchi, The Blank Noise Project, Mahila Paksh, Sarala Devi Chaudhurani, Padma Gole, K. Ajitha, Uma Narayan, Dharmaram Vidya Kshetram, Manushi, Ramabai Ranade, PAKAV+M. Excerpt: The history of feminism in India is regarded as mainly a practical effort and very limited in scope. Compared to some other countries, there has been only sparse theoretical writing on feminism in India. Pre-colonial social structures and women's role in them reveal that feminism was theorized differently in India than in the west. Colonial essentialization of "Indian culture" and reconstruction of Indian womanhood as the epitome of that culture through social reform movements resulted in political theorization in the form of nationalism rather than as feminism alone. Historical circumstances and values in India make women's issues different from the western feminist rhetoric. The idea of women as "powerful" is accommodated into patriarchal culture through religion. This has retained visibility in all sections of society; by providing women with traditional "cultural spaces." Another consideration is that whereas in the West the notion of "self" rests in competitive individualism where people are described as "born free yet everywhere in chains," by contrast in India the individual is usually considered to be just one part of the larger social collective, dependent for its survival upon cooperation and self-denial for the greater good Indian feminist scholars and activists have to struggle to carve a separate identity for feminism in India. They...