A Question of Silence? The Sexual Economies of Modern India

Contents: Preface. 1. Introduction: A question of silence? The sexual economies of modern India/Mary E. John and Janaki Nair. 2. Unravelling the Kamasutra/Kumkum Roy. 3. Offences against marriage: negotiating custom in colonial Bengal/Samita Sen. 4. "Left to the imagination": Indian nationalisms and female sexuality in Trinidad/Tejaswini Niranjana. 5. Reproductive bodies and regulated sexuality: birth control debates in early twentieth century Tamilnadu/S. Anandhi. 6. Comrades-in-arms: sexuality and identity in the contemporary revolutionary movement in Andhra Pradesh and the legacy of Chalam/U. Vindhya. 7. Sexuality and the film apparatus: continuity, non-continuity and discontinuity in Bombay cinema/Ravi Vasudevan. 8. Citizenship and its discontents/Susie Tharu. 9. Inventing Saffron history: a celibate hero rescues an emasculated nation/Uma Chakravarti. 10. Uneven modernities and Ambivalent sexualities: women's constructions of puberty in coastal Kanyakumari, Tamilnadu/Kalpana Ram. 11. On bodily love and hurt/V. Geetha. 12. Enforcing cultural codes: gender and violence in northern India/Prem Chowdhry. 13. Globalisation, sexuality and the Visual field: issues and non-issues for cultural critique/Mary E. John. Index.

"Has there been a 'conspiracy of silence' regarding sexuality in India, be it within social movements or as a focus of scholarship? A question of silence? interrogates this assumption in order to thematise a crucial field. Prefaced by a detailed introductory overview, the essays use diverse perspectives to develop an understanding of the institutions, practices and forms of representation of sexual relations and their boundaries of legitimacy.

"From unravelling the Kamasutra (the text) to investigating Kamasutra (the condom) the volume includes essays on how sexuality has been framed by the law, within social movements, or has been the site for patrolled caste, ethnic or gender identities. Other essays analyse cinematic, televisual and literary representations of sexuality. Taken as a whole, this book makes room for more wide-ranging approaches for tackling the sexual economies of desire and violence among men and women in modern India." (jacket)

[Mary John is Senior Fellow at the Centre for Women's Development Studies, New Delhi. She also wrote Discrepant Dislocations: Feminism, theory and Postcolonial Histories.

Janaki Nair is Fellow at the Madras Institute of Development Studies. She also wrote Women and Law in Colonial India and Miners and Millhands: Work, Culture and Politics in Princely Mysore.