Seeing Like a Feminist

by Nivedita Menon

To be a feminist is to recognize that, apart from gender-based injustice, there are multiple structural inequalities that underlie the social order, and to believe that change is possible, and to work for it at whichever level possible.

Cross-border solidarities and conversations defying dominant trends of nationalist politics are a significant feature of feminist activism and scholarship in South Asia. As a line of poetry in Hindustani by Kamla Bhasin puts it, Main sarhad pe khadi diwaar nahin, Us diwaar pe padi daraar hoon. (I am not the wall that stands at the border, I am the fissure in that wall.)