Gender in South Asia : Social Imagination and Constructed Realities

This book is about gender construction in India. The generalized model of gender in India has two polar points – Devi (goddess) and Dasi (slave). The main argument of the book is that gender cannot be viewed as an independent variable situating it away from the social and cultural realities.

This book is an examination of gender in South Asia and its intersection with other social variables like caste and class. It spans a wide canvas in terms of different social classes, ranging from elite to Dalit women of India, and takes material from ancient texts and modern media, literature and ethnographic materials forming a historical discourse. There is an appraisal of what feminism means in the Indian context and the cross-cultural construction of patriarchy that varies in its manifestations across time and space. The readers are taken on a journey that shows how gender can only be understood in its social and historical context and as a dynamic and performative concept that emerges out of both collective imaginations and social realities. The use of descriptive and narrative style makes the book readable and enjoyable to both academic and non-academic readers.