Forgotten Feminisms: a Subversive Retelling of Indian Womxn’s Resistance

In most historical accounts of the country, Indian womxn/women have largely figured as footnotes to the history of ‘great’ men, and have usually been cast as victims of the patriarchy. Forgotten Feminisms is a firecracker of a book that radically challenges this reading of history and posits an alternate ‘herstory’ of India. Sindhu Rajasekaran argues that, historically, Indian women weren’t helpless victims in need of saviours—our foremothers, across the socio-economic spectrum, gave fierce battle to both the brahmanic patriarchy and British colonialism. The first section of the book, ‘In an Antique Land’, chronicles the lives of Indian women from prehistory, through ancient andmedieval times, right up to the colonial moment. Rajasekaran rubbishes the notion that everyone in ancient India adhered to the tenets of the Manusmriti. Here, you will read feminist retellings of the lore of Draupadi and Surpanakha, the heroics of the daring Ezhava woman Nangeli who overturned the ‘breast tax’, and others such as dasis and enslaved women, courtesans, queens, saint-poets, and more. The second section, ‘In Coloniality’, shows how, when the British Crown took control of India, it did everything it could to put Indian women and queer people in their place, branding them as ‘prostitutes’ and passing a whole posse of laws to persecute them. But the women—from social reformers like Savitribai Phule, warriors like Rani Lakshmibai and Jhalkaribai, rebellious sex workers like Piro Preman, to a whole host of transwomen, labourers, and tribal women—persevered in the quest to be seen, heard, and treated with respect and dignity. The final section, ‘Coda’, deals with revolutionary women who participated in the freedom movement, led workers’ and peasants’ movements, and fought against the dictums of caste. From there the book builds towards a stunning final argument, calling for a new ‘tryst with destiny’. Queer, subversive, and seeped in the rage of generations of women, Rajasekaran’s Forgotten Feminisms is a reclamation of the history of India—one that has never been attempted before.