Books published by Zubaan

Feminist Subversion and Complicity brings together contributions from women in Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and India who, while working at diverse kinds of institutions, are all closely involved in the intersection of development policy and gender. They offer critical feminist perspectives on governmental education and health projects, as well as legal reforms in these regions. As a whole, the essays reveal that, in general, feminist politics are not merely assimilated into governmental projects, but as part of the process of assimilation, they often serve as a subversive interruption, destabilizing and contesting orthodox meanings and assumptions.

Offering vital new perspectives on the role of sexual violence as a weapon of war in Pakistan, Disputed Legacies examines the situations that arise when secular law comes into conflict with traditional practice and belief and how this directly affects policy, pedagogy, and medical practice. Focusing specifically on Pakistan, a country with a long history of internal and external conflict, the contributors to this volume trace the often troubled interaction between the state and its female citizens and examine the ingrained and pervasive structures and social systems that enable impunity for perpetrators of sexual violence to gain strength. Disputed Legacies is part of the Sexual Violence and Impunity in South Asia series, which brings together a vast body of knowledge on this important--yet suppressed--subject. It will be essential reading for scholars of women's studies and sexual violence.

Fault Lines of History is the second volume in Zubaan's Sexual Violence and Impunity in South Asia series, to focus on India. This volume addresses the question of state impunity, arguing that when it comes to the violation of human and civil rights, particularly in relation to sexual violence, the state of India has played an active and collusive role, creating states of exception, where its own laws can be suspended and the rights of its citizens violated. Drawing on patterns of sexual violence in Kashmir, Northeast India, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, and Rajasthan, the contributors focus on the histories of militarization in regions of conflict, as well as the histories of caste violence that are often ignored out of convenience. The essays come together to offer an urgent call for action. Though the contributors acknowledge the difficult odds facing the victims and survivors of sexual violence, they urge resistance and an end to silence as the most important weapons in the fight to hold accountable the perpetrators of sexual violence.

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Fateema Lokhandwala, a young Muslim woman in present-day Gujarat. A member of the Muslim minority, she struggles to carve out a place for herself, seeking her true identity and encountering triumph and tragedy along the way. This book is a critique of the damage caused by Indian identity politics.

The midnight knock on the door and the disappearance of a loved one into the hands of authorities is a 20th-century horror story familiar to many destined to "live in interesting times." Yet, some stories remain untold. Such is the account of the internment of ethnic Chinese who had settled for many years in northern India. When the Sino-Indian Border War of 1962 broke out, over 2,000 Chinese-Indians were rounded up, placed in local jails, then transported over a thousand miles away to the Deoli internment camp in the Rajasthan Desert. Born in Calcutta, India, in 1949, and raised in Darjeeling, Yin Marsh was just thirteen years old when first her father was arrested, and then she, her grandmother and her eight-year-old brother were all taken to the Darjeeling Jail, then sent to Deoli. Ironically, Nehru - India's first Prime Minister and the one who had authorized the mass arrests - had once "done time" in Deoli during India's war for independence. Yin and her family were assigned to the same bungalow where Nehru had also been unjustly held. Eventually released, Marsh emigrated to America with her mother, attended college, married and raised her own family, even as the emotional trauma remained buried. When her own college-age daughter began to ask questions and when a friend's wedding would require a return to her homeland, Yin was finally ready to face what had happened to her family.

The first volume to come out of a South Asia wide research project entitled Sexual Violence and Impunity (supported by the International Development Research Centre, Canada), this book focuses on Bangladesh and showcases some of the best writings on the subject. Contributors include new and established scholars who look at areas as wide-ranging as the law and its histories, nationalism, memory and sexuality, the status of minorities, religion and its directives, universities as sites of gender-contestation and more. A comprehensive overview of the situation in Bangladesh since the 1971 war of liberation, written by acclaimed scholar Meghna Guhathakurta provides an entry point to help the reader understand the complex realities of the ways in which impunity for sexual violence has come to acquire so much resilience in Bangladesh in particular, and South Asia in general.

The second volume to come out of a South Asia wide research project entitled Sexual Violence and Impunity (supported by the International Development Research Centre, Canada) this book focuses on India and showcases new, pathbreaking research on the subject. For the first time in recent history, young and established scholars come together to explore areas such as medical protocols, the functioning of the law, the psycho-social making of impunity, histories of sexual violence such as in Kashmir and the northeast of India, the media, sectarian violence, the use of stripping and parading and much more. Peer discussed and reviewed in a series of workshops, the essays here present much that is new in research.

Acts of sexual violence are also acts committed with impunity. Those who commit them do not consider their actions consequential, and this is as true of perpetrators in the social realm, as it is of state actors. Such impunity is sustained by what it refuses: shared humanity and the recognition of suffering. Yet throughout history impunity to do with sexual violence has been challenged by fearless, just and compassionate speech, in courts of justice and outside of it. Those who did do, and continue to do so, not only advance a politics of accountability but also an ethics of recognition, of suffering and hurt. This book explores the contours of such politics and ethics in the modern South Asian context. It takes a historical lens to our collective struggles with sexual violence and the question of impunity, and builds an archive of speech, partial silence and of the unspeakable, from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. It examines closely explicitly feminist responses from the region: drawing from the latter, it suggests that sexual violence and the impunity it claims for itself are best understood in the manner they relate to the sexual everyday in our cultures.

In her sequences of pictures, the author illustrates such scenes as feminist gatherings against violence and discrimination, the encroachment of large corporations in farmlands, and what the world may look like to a poor woman in a village in India.

The Partition of British India into the nations of India and Pakistan in 1947 and the further redrawing of the borders in 1971 to create Bangladesh were major, wrenching events whose effects are still felt today. This volume gathers essays from scholars that explore substantial new ground in Partition research.

The right to equality regardless of gender or caste is fundamental in India. This volume presents an analytical overview of the complexities of the systemic violence that Dalit women face, through analysis of five hundred narratives by Dalit women from four states.

Even in a realm that would seem to be as far removed from issues of gender as natural resource management, gender bias is pernicious and persistent, in India. This book looks at the reasons for this bias, including the socialization of attitudes, the shaping of community ideologies, and the construction of disciplines and research methodologies.

Originally published in Marathi in 1989, this title details the history of women's participation in B R Ambedkar's Dalit movement. Focusing on the involvement of women in various Dalit struggles since the early twentieth century, it goes on to consider the social conditions of Dalit women's lives, daily religious practices and marital rules.

In her detailed readings of a wide range of Indian writers - including Anita Desai, Shashi Deshpande, Anita Nair, Jhumpa Lahiri, and many others, the author focuses on domestic spaces in women's fiction. The house is not merely a backdrop, but often almost a character itself, one that bears witness to the changes in the protagonists' lives.

What are the underlying causes and consequences of gender-based violence in public spaces? This book explores the causes, nature, and consequences of gender-based violence. It also offers suggestions for policy changes that can help address the pervasive problem of gender-based violence, and make our societies safe for men and women alike.

A collection of short stories that are set against - and frequently driven by - the picturesque yet often violent backdrop of Assam, a province in India's northeast.

On a rainy afternoon in Cherrapunji, the postman arrives with a letter for fourteen-year-old Saphira, and her life will never be the same. Dalinia, meanwhile, seems to have the perfect life: successful husband, cute children, a beautiful home.

Born in 1945 in the Assamese town of Jorhat, Temsula Ao lost both her parents in quick succession when she was young. Left to fend for themselves, she and her five siblings ran wild, skipping school and wandering the streets. This is a memoir of those early years and the career they led to, which saw Ao become an acclaimed writer.