Articles by Meera Kosambi

This is with reference to the two articles we wrote for EPW’s special issue on D D Kosambi (July 26).

Retrieving a Fragmented Feminist Image Meera Kosambi Anandibai Joshee was the first Maharashtrian woman to leave Indian shores in the latter half of the 19th century for higher studies abroad to become the first Indian woman to qualify as a medical doctor. The Maharashtrian psyche remains captivated by the image of Anandibai as a submissive and obedient girl-wife who fulfilled her husband's visionary ambition for her. However, the series of images sketched by Anandibai's own words produce a self-portrait in which the submissive wife coexists with an intelligent woman dispassionately perceptive of herself and her society. This essay attempts to reach the 'real Anandibai and reclaim her fragmented feminism.

and Colonialism Case of Pandita Ramabai Meera Kosambi Pandita Ramabai's relationship with Christianity was a long and complex one influenced by many factors. On the one hand was dissillusionment with Hinduismpn the other, the attraction of a faith which promised salvation to all without discrimination. Ramabai saw her own conversion as a protest against the inherent discrimination against women in Hinduism, a protest which remained a personal statement without developing into a social protest.

in Maharashtra Meera Kosambi The series of international conferences on 'Maharashtra: Culture and Society' has, over the years, produced scholarship remarkable for its depth as well as breadth, allowing an appreciation of what is uniquely Maharashtrian while treating the region as a microcosm of the Indian subcontinent A report on the fourth conference which was devoted to the theme 'Images of Women and the Feminine in Maharashtra'.

Glory of Peshwa Pune Meera Kosambi FEW Indian cities can boast of a past as dramatic as that of Pune which has encompassed, within a span of two and a half centuries from the early eighteenth century to the present, three major phases. Experiencing the first major spurt of growth for almost a century under the Peshwas (technically the hereditary prime ministers of the Maratha king based at Satara, but the de facto rulers of the vast Maratha dominions), Pune went into an initial decline after the Peshwa's fall at the hands of the British Government of Bombay in 1818. However, it was resurrected as the chief British military-civil cantonment in peninsular India. After the departure of the British, post-independence Pune thrives as an industrial centre in its own right, albeit forming an integral part of the Bombay-Pune urban-industrial belt, the largest in India. The first of these three phases in Pune's eventful history forms the subject' of B G Gokhale's book Poona in the Eigh- teenth Century: An Urban History.