Urvashi Butalia on feminist writing, the #MeToo movement and documenting women’s voices

Urvashi Butalia’s introduction to feminism came during her early childhood years, and from her mother, who taught her daughters how to circumvent the patriarchal and formidable Punjabi grandmother, the undisputed ruler of the household.

The 72-year-old feminist, publisher and author recalls those days of fighting the good fight with little tricks taught by her mother.

“My grandmother was a traditional Punjabi woman who always put her son first, then my two brothers, my sister and I and my mother last. My mother who was a teacher, instead of openly opposing my grandmother taught little tricks to win the battles that played out in the household,” she recollects.

Her grandmother would feed the men more and like most Punjabi women, she would have lots of food tucked away somewhere. The sweetmeats and savouries were stored in a trunk, with its key tied to the drawstrings of her salwar.

“My mother taught us to get hold of the key in the afternoons when my grandmother was sleeping and pick up whatever we wanted to eat,” Butalia says, with a chuckle.

For the young girl, it was also an early foray into feminism, which was honed in a conscious political way while she was at Delhi University in the late 1960s.

Combining the political and the professional

Speaking to HerStory on the sidelines of the Kerala Literature Festival in Kozhikode last week, Butalia says the end of the 1960s saw universities as hotbeds of discussions beginning with hostile conditions in hostels, transport for women and so on. This translated into fighting for women’s colleges to be part of the university students’ union and then getting connected to women’s groups that were coming up across India during the time.

Through her groups, she worked against the dowry system, and led the movement against rape. Butalia was also part of the collective that launched Manushi, a magazine devoted to feminism, gender studies and activism.

An English literature student throughout college, the natural option would have been to become a teacher, but Butalia got into publishing by accident, and fell in love with it.

“Literature was far removed from my realities and when the option to get into publishing came up, it sounded interesting. Gradually, two of my interests came together and I’ve been lucky to combine the two,” she says.

Forty years ago, Butalia co-founded Kali for Women with Ritu Menon, arguably, the first Indian publishing house dedicated to publishing on and for women.

It published several path-breaking titles; a Hindi reference book Shareer Ki Jankari, Vandana Shiva’s Staying Alive, Radha Kumar’s The History of Doing and others.

In 2003, Butalia founded Zubaan Books, an independent feminist publishing house that publishes both fiction and non-fiction, focusing on conflict studies, health, human rights, gender justice, feminist and queer theory, and more.

Addressing new forms of writing and thinking

Has feminist publishing and writing come of age in India? While it’s encouraging to see more women writers getting published, and many of them deliberately and self-consciously, feminists, she believes there are many new ways in which feminist thinking and feminism is being articulated. And it’s a continuous process.

Butalia elaborates, “When we published earlier, we didn’t ask some pertinent questions. Who were these women? Are they upper caste or upper-class writers, or from marginalised communities? Today, we are in a situation where we can say we will publish mainly voices from the margin, and that will be the norm, not the exception. The exception will be the voices from the upper class and castes.”

“There is a lot more to do as new fronts open out, and we will have to address new forms of writing and thinking,” she adds.

Have to think more about the process

As a strong feminist voice in the women’s movement for over four decades, Butalia has been a witness to the evolution of feminism in India. With a long history of the social movement in the country, does she think the #MeToo failed to sustain its momentum and has fizzled out?

She disagrees and points out that the #MeToo movement in India started long before 2008. According to her, three important cases – the 1988 case of Rupan Deol Bajaj, the Bhanwari Devi case that brought into effect the Vishakha Guidelines leading to the POSH Act, and the Miss X Vs Apparel Export Promotion Council case–opened up the importance of women in workplace relationships, and for women to speak up against harassment.

“I don’t think the movement has fizzled out; it has shown us the deeply patriarchal biases that still remain despite the laws. The law has its faults, but it has a good intention. Feminists like us raising this issue have think more about the process of redressal, seeking justice, the process of punishment—what do we want out of it. There are newer names coming up and we need to continually address it,” she says.

In this context, she believes social media is a mixed bag—it gives us a chance to articulate things in ways we have never been able to before, and the same time, with the trolling and cancel culture it’s a terribly unsafe and toxic place to be.

“We have to be conscious of not giving into the pressure of social media. The pressure to respond is immediate, and you end up saying something you may later regret. Recently, I was part of a panel with Meena Pillai that spoke about affective feminism in digital media, and the ways in which it has helped build a connected a connected community where people sympathise and empathise across transnational borders and that’s one of the definitive positives of social media,” she explains.

She also admits that even though the relationships formed on social media may be temporary or ephemeral, for the moment, it takes away a sense of loneliness as your share your thoughts with others.

The author of The Other Side of Silence: Voices from and the Partition of India and Speaking Peace: Women's Voices from Kashmir says documenting oral histories and women's voices on the margin is imperative for learning and moving forward.

“We have trying to do this for years, but we don’t have the kind of resources to undertake such a huge project. Before I retire, it’s my dream to create an archive of women’s voices and make it available to universities, student’s unions and other organisations in this space,” she says as she signs off.