New Gender Politics in South Asia

“This thoughtfully curated collection of interdisciplinary essays not only interrogates Western understandings of feminist resistance but also challenges conventional understandings of the South Asian subcontinent as a motley crew of postcolonial states. Revealing it instead as a dynamic region marked by a variety of interconnected activisms. Taken together, the editor’s and authors’ feminist and critical regional South Asian lens on ideas and representations of gender and sexuality as well as movements, policies, and everyday experiences pertaining to gender and sexuality offer us invaluable fresh perspectives that help us re-envision linkages between the global, regional, and local.”
—Elora Shehabuddin, Professor of Gender & Women’s Studies, University of California, Berkeley, USA

“South Asia’s  rich tradition of multiplicity in gender, colonialism and postcolonial, law, culture and economy, new patterns of gender politics, grassroots organizing, key legal cases, violence, migration, media and state strategies are all illuminated in this valuable collection of studies from six countries.”
—Raewyn Connell, University of Sydney, Australia

“Drawing on ethnographic, historical, and theoretical legacies of gender diversity authors offer nuanced, original, and complex enactments of identities and activist social movements in South Asia.   A provocative and valuable contribution to decolonizing studies of gender and sexuality”.
—Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Distinguished Professor and Chair, Women’s and Gender Studies, Syracuse University, USA

This edited volume is a decolonial/deconstructive approach to South Asian gender and sexuality studies, which it reimagines through a pluralized, multivariate lens. It decenters hegemonic feminist debates and rearticulates gender and sexuality through critical regionalism, border-politics, land and social movements, indigeneity, law and jurisprudence and broader social textuality. Chapters offer perspectives from the humanities, social sciences, public health, international relations and law, as well as organizers and advocates committed to women and gender studies. 

Ahonaa Roy is Associate Professor of Anthropology, Sociology and Policy Studies at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, India, and Research Associate at the Department of Sociology, University of Pretoria, South Africa.