Forty Years of Feminist Publishing in India

At the Jaipur Literature Festival’s second day, the session that featured Urvashi Butalia and Ritu Menon had a power-packed audience hankering for more from the two pioneers of feminism in India and the South Asia region. These two women have gone where no man had ever gone before, the title says very aptly. Urvashi Butalia and Ritu Menon are two leading Indian feminist writers, publishers and activists.

The two are known for their work and publishing in the women’s movement in India and South Asia. While Urvashi wrote iconic books like The Other Side of Silence: Voices from and the Partition of India and Speaking Peace: Women’s Voices from Kashmir, both founded Kali for Women, India’s first feminist publishing house, in 1984.

In 2003, Urvashi founded Zubaan Books, an imprint of Kali for Women. Ritu Menon, founded Women Unlimited, an associate of Kali for Women and she has many books to her credit.

In 2011, Butalia and Menon were jointly awarded the Padma Shri, India’s fourth-highest civilian award, for their work in Literature and Education. As Shivapriya, the anchor went ahead trying to explore the history and journey of feminist publishing in India, the struggle these two women had for establishing their beliefs in book forms became explicit

As they answered questions about their struggle, it became clear that activism was at the core of their publishing. There followed cases of such oppression after that and all these were published and recorded for generations to come.