Reading Neera Desai: A Journey Straddling Women’s Studies and the Women’s Movement in India

This article attempts a re-reading of Neera Desai’s Woman in Modern India, to trace the evolution of her thoughts on women’s condition in India and the emerging women’s movement. It engages with the pioneering scholar’s efforts to identify the ‘oppressive institutional and ideological legacy’, which held back women’s rights and the achievement of the goals that the freedom struggle had upheld. Desai took note of material conditions and diverse regional and historical contexts as well as the efforts by women’s organisations to contend with the social reality. The linkages with social reform and political movements for change were central to Desai’s understanding of efforts to address their concerns, even as these were located within international efforts to advance women’s rights. Desai’s quest lead her to explore a Feminism going beyond ‘puff, powder and Poshak Parishads …’ as a step towards a direct confrontation with the forces opposing women’s rights. This in turn posited her in opposition to stalwarts from the women’s movement, who demarcated their activism from identification with a ‘feminist’ label. Is that a settled debate today or is there need for a continued engagement with ideological issues within the women’s movement? This key question emerges as a bigger challenge in contemporary India as the women’s movement is sought to be subsumed within the limited framework of the politics of feminism sidetracking, if not altogether erasing, mass based perspectives of mobilizing for change