Feminist Vision or ‘Treason Against Men’?: Kashibai Kanitkar and the Engendering of Marathi Literature

Kashibai Kanitkar (1861-1948) was the first major woman writer in Marathi. She was largely self-taught and keenly conscious of the benefits of women’s education. She promoted this and other emancipatory measures for women through her prolific and wide-ranging writings–both fiction and non-fiction–deploying them as a mode of social reform discourse. The present book includes translations of most of Kashibai’s works: both her novels (in abridged form); a review of Pandita Ramabai’s American travelogue; long extracts from Kashibai’s episodic autobiographical narratives as well as from her biography of India’s First Woman Doctor, Dr. Anandibai Joshee; and an article tracing the history of women’s education in Maharashtra. A comprehensive introduction by Meera Kosambi contexualizes these texts and situates Kashibai within her social and literary milieu. Kashibai, Professor Kosambi shows, was a pioneering writer who created a new paradigm in Marathi literature. It was she who enabled Maharashtra’s rich tradition of women’s writings by foundational contributions which ‘engendered’ Marathi literature.