Books published by Bhatkal & Sen

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.

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.

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?

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 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''.

In his life-long mission to make the world a better place, Jolly Kaul takes us to the heart of what concerns India and, indeed, any nation: its values, politics and governance. At the age of nineteen in 1941, convinced that only the Communist Party could fight effectively the fascist and imperialist forces and bring about a more just society, Kaul abandoned his family, any possible career, and went underground. He did not know what he was going in for, he admits, but knew that he must give ''his all''. He was to remain a dedicated and disciplined member till January 1963 when he left the Party, shocked by the China-India war and by the forthcoming split within the Party. The points he raised in his resignation letter resonates today. An unusual contribution is Kaul''s incisive critique of the developments within the Party based on the twenty-two years he spent in it, first as a trade union organiser and later as Secretary of the Calcutta District Committee. Jolly Kaul built three additional careers: in the corporate world as the head of public relations for Indian Oxygen Ltd, as a journalist with a news agency, editing the economic journal, Capital, and, finally, as a social activist in the Gandhi Labour Foundation at Puri. On each occasion, he has continued to search for ways to contribute towards the improvement of society and is still active at 89. The distinguished economist and former Vice Chancellor of Viswa-Bharati and the University of North Bengal, Dr Amlan Datta, has written the Foreword. Aditi Roy Ghatak, a well-known journalist, who has known the author for thirty years, presents a lively portrait of the author in an Afterword.

Sirpa Tenhunen provides an ethnographically rich study of local politics and gender in rural India. It is based on her extensive fieldwork in Janta, a village near Bishnupur in Bankura, West Bengal, a state where the Communist Party of India (Marxist), CPI(M), has been in power since 1977. She documents carefully how women are emerging in the forefront of political struggles and the rise of the opposition movements in rural West Bengal, a true marker of the momentous social and political change in India. The book explores both women''s political participation and agency, including marriage, dowry and women''s role in the panchayats, local government in the villages. Her observations and interviews with both male and female political activists give a candid picture of the strengths and weaknesses of the CPI(M). She also observes how building of mobile networks has led to the intensification of rural networks. The book relates the study of the political domain to that of cultural practices and considers how translocal discourses facilitate local dialogue. Tenhunen argues that the gendered understanding of politics not only limits women''s political participation, but also enables and shapes women''s political action and critical discourses because the local concept of politics does not exclude home, kinship, and the women''s domain. She suggests that the notions of modernity and development are not applied in local disputes because of their universality or the supremacy of the Western model of modernisation, but because these, through their local interpretations, offer concepts through which the taken-for-granted practices can be discussed and questioned, which in turn become means of awakening: of turning women''s personal experiences into questions of social change.

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''.

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.