India

This week features Sulekha Sanyal’s Nabankur (The Seedling). Dhar contextualizes the significance of Sanyal and her work in the context of how her work became coincidently emerged “national” literature, hiding her socialist feminist positioning. Also, Dhar contextualizes her work as part of MARS, the Bengalese Indian women’s organization corresponding to Indonesian Gerwani in regard to its strong foot in local peasants’ women’s life against hunger and sexual violence, at the same time being affiliated with WID (see Armstrong). If Loomba contextualizes the historical background of the communist/socialist feminist movement in India in general, Dhar specifically discusses Sanyal’s Nabankur.

Primary text

Sulekha Sanyal’s Nabankur (The Seedling)

Secondary texts

Dhar, Nandini. 2022. “Othered Places and the Bengali Leftist Female Bildungsroman: Sulekha Sanyal’s Nabankur and the Pre-Independence Communist Everyday.” Rethinking Places Through Literary Form. Pp. 29-55

Loomba, Ania. 2019. “The Dance of Hunger” Revolutionary Desires: Women, Communism, and Feminism in India. London: Routledge. Pp.195-240

Armstrong, Elisabeth. 2016 “Before Bandung: The Anti-Imperialist Women’s Movement in Asia and the Women’s International Democratic Federation” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 41(2): 305-331.