Raman reflects on the various ways in which Indian women have developed and expressed their own feminist agenda.
Volume 1 - Early India Preface List of Abbreviations Map of India - Physical Introduction 1. Region, environment, gender 2. Vedic goddesses and women 3. Mothers and wives in the smriti texts 4. Buddhist and Jaina nuns and laywomen 5. Women in classical art and literature 6. The divine feminine: Devis, yoginis, Taras 7. Queens, saints, courtesans Bibliography Volume 2 Later India 8. Muslim women in pre-modern India 9. Women in the colonial era 10. Male reformers and womens rights 11. Feminists and nationalists 12. Conclusion: Women in India today Map of India - Political Bibliography
SITA ANANTHA RAMAN is Associate Professor Emerita, History, Santa Clara University, California; Member of the Board of Directors, Pacific Coast Immigration Museum; and History Adjunct, University of Georgia, Athens. She is the author of Getting Girls to School: Social Reform in the Tamil Districts, 1870-1930 (1996) and A. Madhaviah: A Biography and a Novella (2004).
…Women in India is a collection of scholarly essays that roughly
follows a chronological order. As such, it makes for a good
starting point for academic research and is highly recommended for
college and university libraries.
*Library Journal*
In this two-volume set, Raman (history, Santa Clara U. and U. of
Georgia, Athens) discusses the role of women in the social and
cultural history of India, with a focus on gender and female
sexuality in terms of representations in male texts of the
premodern era; their later use by men and women for contemporary
social and political purposes; women's narratives in their social
contexts; and the issues of female agency and objectification. She
addresses women's subordinate nature in India, but also their
active resistance, avenues for self-expression, negotiations with
patriarchy, and support of oppressive traditions. Included in
chapters is discussion of goddesses, queens and courtesans, nuns,
women saints, motherhood, representations in art, education,
castes, feudal norms of sati and domesticity, Western influences,
laws, marriage and divorce, Indian feminism and suffrage, and
individuals such as Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. She
organizes the text by two chronological sections: the premodern era
from antiquity to the early medieval Hindu kingdoms and the later
era under Turko- Afghan and Mughal dynasties, colonial rule, and
the independent state after 1947.
*Reference & Research Book News*
. . . this is a top pick for any women's issues or cultural
collection.
*Midwest Book Review*
… a timely addition to the growing number of scholarly works on the
historical status and development of women in India. … Women in
India definitely fills a gap in the reference literature. Other
works on this topic are more narrowly focused or cover the issues
on a more intermediate level; none has the range, depth, or level
of scholarship of this set. This is a must for academic libraries
with programs in Indian history, and it will be a valuable addition
for general reference collections in many academic and public
libraries.
*Feminist Collections*
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