The Past is Before Us: A discussion on collectively and collaboratively writing a 100 years of women’s histories from the margins

Thursday, 24 April 2025, 16:00-18:00

Panel*: Gorvika Rao, Navsharan Singh, Indira Tayeng, Aanchal Seema Khulbe, Sanghapali Aruna, and Bidisha Mahanta
Moderated by: Urvashi Butalia

In the context of Dalit History Month, Zubaan invites you to a collective rethinking of the histories of women in India. Zubaan’s ambitious project, ‘Our Stories, Our Words’ attempts to collectively research, write, and share the disappeared histories of women, and more specifically marginalised women, in India. Join us and be part of this journey.

What happens when you turn a critical, feminist, lens on history – what history is about, who writes it, how it is written and what it does and does not tell us? Taking our cue from the works of feminist and women historians, we plan to create a hundred-year history of women’s movements in India, focusing on the histories of marginalized communities, written, rendered in graphic form by young writers and artists, as far as possible also from those communities. ‘Traditional’ history has little to say about women, and those who are written about are inevitably from upper classes and castes. How, we ask, do histories look from the vantage point of those on the margins? Our attempt is to crowd-source these histories, make their collection a participatory enterprise, have them move away from mainstream tellings and through their collective creation and sharing, open up multiple inter-generational conversations on knowledge production and the battle for epistemic justice.

Is this an impossible dream? Will feminist researchers, writers, artists be equal to this radical task of rethinking and recreating? Come and give us feedback and ideas. We will give insights into the project and share some of the timelines our researchers have put together, as well as stories of individual and collective resistance that testify to the multi-layered nature of the movements that are our legacy. Join us and our speakers as we reflect on what it takes to uncover hidden histories and bring them to public attention.

*ISL (Indian sign language) interpretation will be available during this event. ABOUT THE PANELISTS
Sanghapali Aruna is an Anti-Caste Activist, Tech Activist and Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) Trainer. She is the Founder and Executive Director of Project Mukti, a Dalit Bahujan Adivasi (DBA) & Minority women led start-up working towards bringing a positive and sustainable change in the lives of DBA women and children. She has also pioneered many social media campaigns since 2013 including Dalit Women Fight, Dalit History Month, Justice For Rohith, and Smash Brahmanical Patriarchy.

Navsharan Singh is an author and activist with a strong background in women’s rights, democratic rights and social and cultural movements. She has published widely on sexual violence against women, impunity and land rights. Her current work revolves around the agrarian crisis in Punjab and landless Dalits and women in the crisis. She has addressed different audiences and engaged in academic, literature, art and culture, women’s movements, and democratic rights spheres in India and South Asia. She writes in English and Punjabi.

Gorvika Rao is a Senior Assistant Professor at Department of English, Miranda House, Delhi University, Delhi. She has been part of the Delhi University curriculum, 2019 which led to the introduction of new courses on Caste and Graphic studies. She is the recipient of SSAF-AAA Research Grant 2023-24 for her project “Ambedkarite Delhi: Booklets, Magazines, and the creation of a Dalit Public Sphere”. Through this grant, she aims to write Dalit history of Delhi which has been missing from the mainstream historical narratives.

Urvashi Butalia is an independent feminist publisher and writer. Co-founder of India’s first feminist publishing house, Kali for Women, she now heads Zubaan, another publishing imprint, set up when Kali shut down in 2003. She has a long involvement with the women’s movement in India and has written and published widely on issues related to women and gender. Among her best known publications is the award-winning oral history of Partition: The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India.

Bidisha Mahanta is a feminist researcher and lawyer, with a focus on gender, citizenship, conflict and more. Her work involves collaborating with women’s and feminist groups, unions, collectives and researchers across India, with a specific focus in Northeast India, facilitating conversations on research, knowledge and cultural production with marginalized communities. Her published work appears in Critical Feminist Peace and Conflict Studies, documenting indigenous and migrant experiences of gendered violence and citizenship in Northeast India. She is currently working as the Executive Director of Zubaan.

Indira Tayeng is a researcher specialising in Statelessness in South Asia’s Himalayan Borderlands. Her work examines the interconnected dynamics of identity, gender, displacement, citizenship and migration, with a particular focus on the complexities of belonging. Inspired by the resilience of marginalised borderland communities, Indira seeks to amplify their voices, struggles and lived experiences through storytelling. Indira is currently working as Project Associate in Zubaan, focusing on documenting and visualising a 100 years of the women’s and feminist movement from India, through the lens of oppressed communities.

Aanchal Seema Khulbe is a feminist and transformative justice educator, researcher, activist and artist. She holds an M.Phil. in Gender Studies and is dedicated to advocating for safer and more accessible women’s shelters across the world. She is deeply engaged with the issues of gender-based violence, queer politics and law, and is committed to work towards a gender-just world for all.

The Past is Before Us: A discussion on collectively and collaboratively writing a 100 years of women’s histories from the margins by Zubaan is taking place as part of the New Delhi edition of the travelling exhibition Empowerment – Art and Feminisms by Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg and Goethe-Institut South Asia.