India a Begumpura of reason & compassion: Githa Hariharan
Deccan ChronicleWriter and editor Githa Hariharan, who successfully challenged the Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act in 1995 to uphold the rights of the mother, has an idea of India that she explores in her new book, This Too Is India: Conversations on Diversity and Dissent. As for linguistic identity dilemmas: I think of the fact that my Tamil mixes Malayalam and Tamil, or that my Hindi is ‘Bambayya’, as ‘normal Indian hybridity’, rather than a dilemma! Two autobiographies, Bama’s ‘Karukku’ and Eknath Awad’s Strike a Blow to Change the World, act as conversation starters in your book. Your conversation on Mahasweta Devi’s short story ‘Draupadi’ with Samik Bandopadhyay which was dropped from DU’s English honours syllabus spotlights the current conversation on women’s agency and freedoms.