Search results for ""Zubaan""

In recent decades, the states in the northeast of India have been home to a number of protracted violent conflicts. And while the role of women's movements in responding to conflict and violence tend to be marginalized both by the media and by scholarship, they have played a crucial role in attempts to strengthen civil society and bring peace to the region. This collection offers a close look at the successes and failures of those efforts, adding important insight into ongoing debates on gender and political change in societies affected by conflict. At the same time, the book takes a fresh, critical look at universalist feminist and interventionist biases that have tended to see peace processes as windows of opportunity for women's empowerment while ignoring the complexity of gender relations during conflict.

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Twenty-five long years after the war that was supposed to liberate Bangladesh and that instead, for far too many people, merely brought fear, violence, and loss a young researcher arrives on the doorstep of one survivor in Dhaka, Mariam, armed with a set of questions that have no easy answers. How did Mariam and women like her who lived through violence and rape survive the war? How did the Pakistani army deal with women they found in homes, offices, or colleges? Why did Mariam send her brother away to keep him safe even as she stayed on? For Mariam, however, these questions are irrelevant her demons are different. Could she have saved her brother, she wonders? And what happened to the other men in her life? What did the war do to them, and to her? A powerful novel of shattering war and its aftermath, The Search tells of the difficulty of picking up the pieces and moving on after personal and national trauma.

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In the mid-nineties, Birjees Dawar Ali leaves India to return to Pakistan to seek out a history left unfinished, a life from which she had earlier fled, nursing heartbreak and betrayal. But when she returns, will she be able to find the family and home that had once been her own, and the friends who had promised her unquestioning love? Or will these past certainties have fled with the march of history? A deeply moving novel of love and loss, All Passion Spent focuses on the unresolved questions created by the 1947 Partition of India and the emergence of India and Pakistan as two separate countries. Zaheda Hina's richly layered narrative is brought to life in a lyrical translation by Neelam Hussain, as it touches on the many consequences of this painful history the profound sense of grief and displacement, the lives abandoned midstream, and the lost friendships, as well as the quest for new roots and lands under different skies. All Passion Spent is a powerful and poignant personal story about the impact of Partition from the point of view of one woman whose life and family was torn apart.

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Part of a new series titled Sexual Violence and Impunity in South Asia, supported by the International Development Research Centre, Canada, Of the Nation Born takes Bangladesh as its focus, compiling some of the best writing and research to date on sexual violence and impunity. The book brings together both new and established scholars to 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. With an introduction by acclaimed scholar Meghna Guhathakurta, the book offers a comprehensive overview of the situation in Bangladesh from the 1971 war for liberation to the present. Guhathakurta gives readers an excellent entry point for understanding the complex realities of how impunity for the perpetrators of sexual violence has become standard in Bangladesh in particular, and South Asia in general. Of the Nation Born is a valuable cross-disciplinary study and the first of its kind.

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King Vikram has a devil of a dilemma! In order to gain power and wealth beyond his wildest dreams, he must deliver a corpse to the sorcerer Shaitanish. The only problem with this simple task is that this particular corpse is home to Betal-an impish storyteller of a vampire with tricks up his sleeve. Betal gives the King a series of riddles to solve as he rides along on the King's back. If King Vikram solves the riddle, but forgets to speak his answer aloud, the vampire will continue to haunt him-spoiling his plans for innumerable riches! Nobody is quite as foolish as King Vikram and Betal runs circles around the poor man, quickly turning him into a royal punchline. Stories like this one of Vikram and Betal date back over a thousand years and in Vikram and the Vampire, Natasha Sharma brings the classic story to life in a hilarious and modern retelling. Children from eight to eighty will enjoy the tale of a dimwitted king and the tongue-twisting, punning vampire who is destined to outsmart him.

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Landscapes of Fear tackles a set of intricate questions about the workings of impunity in India. Considering why the world's largest democracy condones systematic violations of some human rights, and questioning how victims of abuse and survivors of sexual violence end up being denied justice, the contributors seek to understand what those on the margins - those of the wrong sex, wrong identity markers, or wrong political leanings - can tell us about violence by state and non-state actors. Bringing together senior academics, civil society leaders, and fresh voices from across the subcontinent, Landscapes of Fear offers analysis - contextual, structural, and gendered - to break new conceptual ground on the underbelly of "India Shining." A vital book for understanding the complexity of a fast-changing, often corrupt, and highly unequal rising superpower, the collection contextualizes hard-hitting cases of human rights violations in contemporary India.

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The first full-length autobiography in Bengali, Amar Jiban (My Life) was written in the early nineteenth century by an upper-caste rural housewife named Rashundari Debi. Published in 1868 when she was eighty-eight years old, the book is a fascinating snapshot of life for women in the nineteenth century. Debi, who gave birth to eleven children - her first was born when she was eighteen years old, the last when she was forty-one - ruminates on her very individual understanding of bhakti beliefs as well as the new times that were unfolding around her. Offering a translation of major sections of this remarkable autobiography, Words to Win is a portrait of a woman who wants to compose a life of her own, wishes to present it in the public sphere, and eventually accomplishes just that. The words, in the end, win out. First published in 1999, the book is a must-read for anyone interested in nineteenth-century Indian history. The classic text is reissued here in a new paperback format.

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"Taking care of our women and children builds not just a generation but the nation itself," writes the Indian film star Shabana Azmi in her introduction to this unique volume. "We neglect mothers at our own peril, at the peril of society. If we are to lead as a nation, we must put our women and children first." Of Mothers and Others takes a step toward the fulfillment of this goal. A thought-provoking collection of stories, essays, and poems by a wide range of Indian writers, it challenges cozy assumptions about motherhood to reveal messy but affirming truths about this vital role and the way we experience it. These works portray motherhood from a variety of perspectives, illuminating its difficult, funny, and tender moments while addressing such topics as single motherhood, adopted children, surrogacy, bereavement, special needs children, grandmothers, and reluctant mothers. Motherhood emerges as far more than a state of being: it has profound implications, the contributors show, for personal identity, one's place in society, and the very nature of the self. Contributors to this book include Urvashi Butalia, Tishani Doshi, Shashi Deshpande, Namita Gokhale, Manju Kapur, and Bulbul Sharma.

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Combining myth, legend, geography, history, and politics, The Saga of Satisar is the panoramic history of the Kashmiri Pandits. In it, award-winning Hindi writer Chandrakanta unspools a novel that spans two centuries, illustrating how Kashmiri lives have been transformed and the multicultural tradition disappeared in the face of military oppression. Finding as its culprits militancy, state mismanagement, and the dirty play of politics, The Saga of Satisar is a passionate and heartfelt cry for a treasured land and way of life that is quickly disappearing. Chandrakanta writes beautifully of her beloved Kashmir, remarking that even as the colorful memories of her youth mingle with the fragrance of the cool breezes, these realities are fading, leaving her only a world of memories to dwell in.

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