Review: Making the ‘Woman’ by Sutapa Dutta and Shivangini Tandon

Discussions on gender often trigger an intense debate about whether it is tied to biology or is a social construct. {{^userSubscribed}} {{/userSubscribed}} {{^userSubscribed}} {{/userSubscribed}} 240pp, ₹1295; Routledge It assumes even greater importance as gender has been central to India’s experience of alien rule and cultural subjugation. {{^userSubscribed}} {{/userSubscribed}} {{^userSubscribed}} {{/userSubscribed}} {{^usCountry}} {{/usCountry}} All this is skillfully articulated in Making the Woman; Discourses of Gender in the 18th-19th Century India by Sutapa Dutta and Shivangini Tandon. {{^userSubscribed}} {{/userSubscribed}} {{^userSubscribed}} {{/userSubscribed}} At the outset, the editors state: “This collection critically examines and questions the notions and formations of women and gender binaries which have been historically shaped by multiple and competing actors, practices, institutions and discourses in 18th and 19th century India.” The obliteration of women from history is not the result entirely of social practices and prejudices. “Nilanjana Mukherjee astutely locates Kali within nationalist iconography and discusses how the colonial power denigrated the goddess.” {{^userSubscribed}} {{/userSubscribed}} {{^userSubscribed}} {{/userSubscribed}} The second part of the volume, entitled Questioning the Normative, includes four intriguing readings of subjects that include masculine norms in Mughal society, Dalit counter histories of 1857, gender and tribal identity, and the iconicity in Indian goddesses.