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40 Books found in this category

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Health Studies

Negotiating Intimacies: Sexualities, Birth Control and Poor Households

By: Arna Seal

In this book, a hundred women who live in Calcutta's slums talk directly about their sexual and birth control experiences. As the facts and stories accumulate, we get a picture of these women's lives that is frighteningly bare of choice.
The author asks how women's income-earning capacities as well as those of their men, their status in their families and their relations with other kin affect their social and sexual autonomy. Seal goes on to consider whether their interests conform to the ideals of feminist liberation. How far has the movement been able to address their concerns?

Arna Seal is a consultant in marketing and social research. She received her masters and doctoral degrees in sociology from Tulane University, New Orleans.

Published by: Stree

Publication Date: January, 2000

ISBN Code: 81-85604-29-0

Price: Rs 290.00

Pages: 126

Sociology

My Reminiscences: Social Development during the Gandhian Era and After

By: Renuka Ray

In writing about her life and work, Renuka Ray also relates the momentous history of India, from her birth in 1904 to her death in 1997, encompassing the years of the growth and consolidation of the nationalist movement, to partition and independence, and the equally compelling post-independence period. As a participant member of the ruling elite, a close associate of Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, Jawaharlal Nehru, Bidhan Chandra Ray, Durgabai Deshmukh, a member of the Constituent Assembly, and later of the Lok Sabha and the West Bengal State Assembly, she provides an insider’s view to the historical events she witnessed. Of particular interest is her cogent critique of the Central Government’s policy towards refugee rehabilitation in West Bengal, where she was minister for Rehabilitation and Relief.

Published by: Stree

Publication Date: January, 2005

ISBN Code: 81-85604-78-9

Price: Rs 350.00

Pages: 271

Cultural Studies

Shabari: A Novel

By: Vibhavari Shirurkar. Translated from the Marathi by Yashodhara Maitra Deshpande

Shabari, named after the protagonist, is the story of an educated middle-class woman in pre and post-independent India which reveals her life as it transforms through marriage and family. It deals with the tensions inherent in a ‘love- arranged’ marriage, the changing attitudes of the newer materialistic and hypocritical order, the generation gaps and the utter despair and loss at betrayal. Yet, it is never melodramatic or overtly sentimental. Extremely believable, Shabari is a fine balance between the contrasting and complementary minds of the man and the woman. It is interesting how Shabari’s education is constantly used against her. The protagonist is never idealized, she is extremely down-to-earth. This novel operates in the realm of grey, as opposed to strict compartments of black and white.

Published by: Stree

Publication Date: March, 2011

Translated from: The Marathi by Yashodhara Maitra Deshpande

ISBN Code: 978-81-906760-7-6

Price: Rs 325.00

Pages: 181

Caste / Cultural Studies / Gender Studies / History

Towards a Non-Brahmin Millennium: From Iyothee Thass to Periyar

By: V. Geetha and S. V. Rajadurai

The revised edition of the history of non-brahmin assertion to brahmin hegemony in the old Madras Presidency argues that this complex and layered past has to be critically re-claimed for our times. An analytical study of the gestation of the movement, of its forebears like Iyothee Thass and his contemporaries, it also provides an incisive discussion on the contributions of Periyar E. V. Ramasami, the path-breaking founder of the Self-Respect movement. It offers a textured history of a crucial decade, the 1920s to the 1930s, which witnessed important attempts and achievements at building a historic bloc that knit together the interests of non-brahmins and dalits. It analyses the Justice Party, the first non-brahmin political initiative in government, revealing its successes and significant limitations, and where the interests of the non-brahmins and that of the adi dravidas diverged. Revisiting the debates of the 1930s, the authors point out can be ‘exciting as well as sobering’.

Published by: Samya

Publication Date: 2008

ISBN Code: 978-81-85604-37-4

Price: Rs 650.00

Pages: 546

Caste / Cultural Studies / General / History

God as Political Philosopher: Buddha’s Challenge to Brahminism

By: Kancha Ilaiah

In this provocative and scholarly book, Kancha Ilaiah propounds a view of Gautama Buddha and his monasterial order that will change the way we think of both. Eschewing religious obscurantism and a conventional reading of history, he takes to rediscover the life and thought of this man who gave up kingship to search for the truth.
Critical of the caste system and its attendant power structures, Buddha inducted low caste members into the sangha and made them his trusted advisors. This inchoate democracy was in sharp contrast to the rigidities of brahminical Hinduism which was then in the process of using the concepts of dharma and karma to rationalize caste exploitation.
In contrast with the growing harshness of contemporary Hindu society towards women, Buddha gave them an honoured place in the sangha, and the right to attain enlightenment and follow knowledge just like the men. The book discusses the role of individual bhikkhunis (nuns) and presents extracts from their songs.

Published by: Samya

Publication Date: 2001

ISBN Code: 978-81-85604-44-2

Price: Rs 300.00

Pages: 256

Cultural Studies / History / Politics and Political Theory / Sociology

Writing Indian History: A View from Below

By: Achuthan M. Kandyil

This comprehensive history of India, from ancient to modern times, presents an alternative, even iconoclastic, view. Arguing that the history written by professional historians has been strongly influenced by their concept of Hinduism, caste and its implications, or by an over-dependence on Marxism, and their upper caste status, Achuthan M. Kandyil urges that it is time that the counter view of the lower castes cannot be considered.
Achuthan deconstructs the intellectual labour of iconic scholars and personalities like S. Radhakrishnan, M. N. Srinivas, Swami Vivekananda and Mahatma Gandhi, among others, to show how they supported the caste system, albeit condemning its excesses.
Challenging orthodox interpretations, and more radical ones, Achuthan raises many key questions on what is history and how it is written.

Published by: Samya

Publication Date: November, 2008

ISBN Code: 978-81-85604-72-5

Price: Rs 700.00

Pages: 465

Caste / Contemporary Issues / Cultural Studies / Gender Studies

Why I Am Not A Hindu: A Sudra Critique of Hindutva Philosophy, Culture and Political Economy

By: Kancha Ilaiah

Kancha Ilaiah writes with passionate anger, laced with sarcasm on the caste system and Indian society. He looks at the socio-economic and cultural differences between the Dalitbahujans and Hindus in the contexts of childhood, family life, market relations, power relations, Gods and Goddesses, death and Hindutva. Synthesizing many ideas of Bahujans, he presents their vision of a more just society. He presents an Afterword discussing the history of this book, often seen as the manifesto of the downtrodden Dalitbahujans. He wrote the book ‘for all who have open minds. My request to Brahmins, Baniya and Neo-Kshatriyas [upper class Sudras] is this; you learnt only what to teach others: the Dalitbahujans. Now in your own interest and in the interest of this great country you must learn to listen and to read what we have to say.’
‘The most gratifying thing for me was that it [this book] was listed as a millennium book [by The Pioneer].’

Published by: Samya

Publication Date: February, 1996

ISBN Code: 978-81-85604-82-4

Price: Rs 595.00

Pages: 178

Cultural Studies / History / Politics and Political Theory / Sociology

A Question of Community: Religious Groups and Colonial Law

By: Amrita Shodhan

In writing history, the story of those who succeeded is well known. What happens to the losers? What changes can we expect when we examine the defeat of the Khojas and Pushtimargis who went to court because of internal dissent and found that they lost some of their autonomy as self-functioning polities? The law court in the mid-nineteenth century would decide who they were. Could any inferences be drawn on the construction of unitary religious communities of today? Taking two famous and popular legal trials in Bombay, the Aga Khan Case and the Maharaj Libel Case, the author shows that the court worked with a notion of group membership as religious community where experts, Westernized Indians or British scholars, elicited the "truth".She further asserts that the colonial judiciary's denial of the polities' ability to govern themselves and their simultaneous governance by the colonial state meant that individuals were identified in law or in the courts with a marked religious community.

Published by: Samya

Publication Date: 2001

ISBN Code: 978-81-85604-43-5

Price: Rs 350.00

Pages: 230

Caste / Contemporary Issues / Cultural Studies / Politics and Political Theory

Buffalo Nationalism: A Critique of Spiritual Fascism

By: Kancha Ilaiah

Kancha Ilaiah emphasizes the productivity of the ordinary people, the Dalit-Bahujans of India, who receive so little in return, deprived of the gains of development and globalization but not of the losses in their wake. Arguing forcefully for social justice, this book contains a selection from his columns in popular newspapers and journals.
Strongly advocating the Dalitization of Indian society that will undo its moorings in spiritual fascism, which refuses equality or freedom to the majority, he commends the positive values of the buffalo as a productive animal that epitomizes the qualities of the Dalit-Bahujans. Among the many issues he tackles are the right to conversion, the role of the OBCs as providing muscle power to the Hindutva forces, the imperative need for the spread of English amongst all castes, for reservation quotas in education and employment, on globalization and gender. Combative, heartfelt, intellectually rigorous, these present his vision of a more just society.

Published by: Samya

Publication Date: February, 2004

ISBN Code: 978-81-85604-69-5

Price: Rs 200.00

Pages: 237

Caste / Cultural Studies / History / Politics and Political Theory

Journeys to Freedom: Dalit Narratives

Edited by: Fernando Franco, Jyotsna Macwan and Suguna Ramanat

A path-breaking book that presents subaltern voices offering lengthy interviews with fifty six dalits of Gujarat who pinpoint experiences of discrimination and assertion that co-exist in India today, suggesting the complexities of social and political change. The respondents came from a variety of geographical areas of Gujarat, where the Scheduled Castes (SCs) number about 7 percent of the population, from different castes within the SCs, of varying backgrounds, education, gender and identity. This was, as the authors explain, to give as wide a spread of dalit life in Gujarat as possible.
Despite disadvantages, the interviews reveal that dalits have undertaken journeys to self-respect. Many dalit women have been interviewed, and the authors suggest that they are the ‘base on which the future of the dalit journey to freedom rests’.

Published by: Samya

Publication Date: February, 2004

ISBN Code: 978-81-85604-65-7

Price: Rs 600.00

Pages: 412

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