A Question of Silence: The Sexual Economies of Modern India

Has there been a “conspiracy of silence” regarding sexuality in India, be it within social movements or as a focus of scholarship? The essays in this volume use diverse perspectives to develop an understanding of the institutions, practices and forms of representation of sexual relations, and their boundaries of legitimacy.

From unravelling the Kamasutra (the text) to investigating Kamasutra (the condom) the volume includes essays on how sexuality has been framed by the law, within social movements, or has been the site for patrolled caste, ethnic or gender identities.

CONTRIBUTORS: Mary E. John | Kumkum Roy | Samita Sen | Tejaswini Niranjana | Anandhi S. | U. Vindhya | Susie Tharu | Ravi Vasudevan | Uma Chakravarti | V. Geetha | Prem Chowdhury | Kalpana Ram

MARY E. JOHN is a Professor of Women’s Studies, Senior Fellow and Director (2006-2012) of the Centre for Women’s Development Studies, New Delhi. She was previously an Associate Professor and Deputy Director of the Women’s Studies Programme at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She has been working in the fields of women’s studies and feminist politics for many years, and her publications include Discrepant Dislocations: Feminism, Theory and Postcolonial Histories (1996), the co-edited volume Contested Transformations: Changing Economies and Identities in Contemporary India (2006), Women’s Studies in India: A Reader (2008), and the forthcoming co-edited volume Women in the Worlds of Labour: Interdisciplinary and Intersectional Perspectives.

JANAKI NAIR is a Professor of Modern Indian History at the Centre for Historical Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and was Visiting Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, Bangalore. She received the New India Foundation Book Prize for The Promise of the Metropolis: Bangalore’s Twentieth Century (2005), and her other publications include Women and Law in Colonial India: A Social History (published by Kali for Women, 1996), Miners and Millhands: Work, Culture and Politics in Princely Mysore (1998), and Mysore Modern: Reconceptualising the Region under Princely Rule (2012).