ABSTRACT
This article provides a brief introduction to contemporary thinking and controversies surrounding the study of gender in India. That said, we need to begin with several caveats. First, India is a multilingual country, and what is written in English represents a minuscule portion of the ongoing debates on the subject. Second, it is very difficult to draw a neat boundary around what constitutes “Indian.” A number of scholars from around the world have written extensively on gender with reference to India. Many scholars were born in India and live in that country. Other scholars were born in India, live in other parts of the world, but continue to maintain active research links in India. Yet others, such as Gail Omvedt, were not “born Indian” but have lived and worked in the country for decades. Moreover, we could not rely on our ability to identify “Indian” writing based on any particular style of presentation. Some scholarship focusing on gender in India is published in countries such as the United States and, therefore, reflects the norms of the peer review process in these societies. Other work may be published in India and reflects those publication criteria, but the ideas may, at times, closely follow similar work done in other countries. Many scholars publish in more than one country, complicating the choice about which of their work is “Indian.” Here, we follow a general rule: We focus primarily on scholars who are natives or primarily based in India and/or who have
written first for Indian audiences. We also restrict ourselves to contemporary work. We include work that would not be considered “academic” in the United States. However, our collective experience suggests that these “nonacademic” publications are important sites in which gender has been conceptualized. The role of the public intellectual remains much more vibrant in India than it is in the United States; thus, academic debates and controversies are expressed in multiple platforms. Nor do we confine ourselves to the work of scholars who identify with feminism. Indeed, some of the leading scholars, as we will discuss later, disavow the title. In sum, what is presented here reflects some of our own biases in terms of what we know the best and the need to keep the length of the article within acceptable limits. All of us are located in U.S. universities but maintain active research links in India. We originate from different parts of India, and English is the only language common to all of us. Thus, we are very aware of how our knowledge of gender literature in India is limited by our linguistic and regional-cultural competencies, as well as by our scholarly interests. The field of gender in India is too vast, too complex, and too contested, with historical roots traversing several centuries, to describe within a single review. This essay, then, simply provides a glimpse of the field of gender in India.
