"The ten essays in this book are drawn from a wide variety of disciplines and weave a complex pattern of the experiences of women in India over the last hundred years. The book departs from traditional historiography which has given inadequate attention to women, and in this sense, From the Seams of History attempts to ‘rewrite’ history. Beginning with the debate on widow remarriage in Bengal and Haryana, the book moves on to examine how the new fashions in clothing of the Bengali ‘gentlewomen’ in the nineteenth century were tailored according to the values and anxieties of their dominant male counterparts. The argument of male domination is taken further in an essay demonstrating that male oppression of women in Indian society was in fact remarkably similar to that of the colonial masters. One piece describes the condition of the Bengali Muslim bhadramahila (‘gentlewomen’) and their outstanding contribution to women’s education and literary activity. But the following points out that education largely reflected and reinforced the value system of the larger society. Subsequent essays concern the questioning of socially legitimized assumptions about the role of women, organized militancy among the peasant women of Bihar, and the marginalization of women in the economic sphere."
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Bharati Ray
Bharati Ray taught History at Calcutta University and was Pro-Vice-Chancellor there from 1988 to 1995. She was Founder-Director of the Women's Studies Research Centre at the university and is currently Honorary Professor and Member, Peace Research Group, Department of History, Calcutta University, and Editorial Fellow of PHISPC. She is a bilingual author and has numerous books, both authored and edited, to her credit. Some of her Pramountcy (1988); Detecting Disadvantages: A Pilot Study of Scheduled Caste Women in Two Districts of West Bengal (1994_; Early Feminists in Colonial Bengal: Sarala Devi Chaudhurani and Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hassain (2002); Women's Struggle: A History of the All Indian Women's Conference 1927-1990, jointly authored with Aparna Basu (1990-2002); From the Seams of History: Essays on Women in Colonial India, ed.(1995); From Independence toward Freedom: Indian Women Since 1947. co-ed. (1999); Women and Politics: France, India and Russia, ed. (2000) and Politics and Identity in South Asia, jointly edited with David Taylor (2002). She has also compiled and edited two volumes of articles published in the earliest women's journal in Bengal,Bamabodhini Patrika, 1863-1922. She was a Member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha), 1996-2002, and a member of the Joint Parliamentary Committee on the Empowerment of Women. Married with three children, Bharati Ray is fond of reading, writing, listening to music, watching plays, cooking and travelling. She loves the company of children and is currently President of the Children's Little Theatre, Kolkata.
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