SHAKTI STORIES

MP: So you have a publishing house… where was it when you started and how far has it come?

 

UB: So you know it’s been a long time since we started, almost 34 years, and we started under a different name. When we opened, nobody was doing work like us. At the time, there was a very big women’s movement, which I was a part of. We had a lot of questions about the issues we faced, such as dowry, rape, violence against women, but we had no idea of the background of why things were taking the shape that they were taking, what were the sociological phenomenons… this was the late 80s. We looked for material on the subject, and there was nothing written by women about women. You could literally count the number of books on two hands. I was working in publishing and I was also a part of the women’s movement. I thought it was time to start publishing books about women, so I talked to my bosses. But they all felt “what do women write? Do they read? Why should we publish non-serious subjects?” So in the end we decided that if they were not going to do it, we were. I dumped my job and decided to set this  up. The aim was really to create a body of knowledge about women, by women, that could counter the existing knowledge which was, of course, by men, and which took no account of women. And what little material we could find were written by western researchers who had spent 3 months in India and then produced what was supposedly “the definitive book” about us, which we had to buy at high prices. It seemed to us a bit loony that we were doing this. So we started slowly, and we published from within the women’s movement. We had no money, so my partner’s husband gave us the garage of their house, and then gradually it grew. The limitations were that we were working in English, and we were sitting in Delhi. So we could have gone on and congratulated ourselves that we were doing something against the grain, but the fact is that if you are only publishing in English, then the work you’re doing is very limited. You can hardly call yourselves feminists.

 

MP: Because feminism, by definition, is inclusive.

 

UB: Inclusive, and it is much wider, there are many forms it takes. So very quickly, we became aware that we had to be more inclusive and we had to address women on the margins. So we decided then to start looking at various languages and publishing in them. And so we started to reach out beyond the middle class. One day we had a visit from a group of village women form Rajasthan, accompanied by 4 urban feminists that we knew. They had a book that they had made by hand… and this was a book in Hindi titled “Know Your Body”. It was a book about how women’s bodies change from the time that they are an infant through adolescence, marriage and old age. And they told us that they had created this book for women who were illiterate. And it had visuals and text that worked separately. But when they made the book, people thought it was pornographic, though there was nothing pornographic about it. And they came to us asking us to publish it. They had made two versions, one with a naked body. But when they tested that one out, people laughed and said “how can you call this realistic, you will never see a naked woman in a village. So then they came up with a version where the woman is fully clothed, but they have flaps where you see how the woman is made. We loved this idea, and agreed to publish it. They imposed two conditions, however. One was that they wanted all 75 names on the book as co-authors. They also said that every copy sold to a village women will be sold at cost, that we will not make a profit. If we sold any in the market, we could sell it at a profit. So that was the book that allowed us to think that we could move beyond the borders of English, middle class, Delhi. So we started working with women on the margins of caste, of economic status etc. And the list of books we published became more inclusive. For example in recent years, we tried to publish books by trans women, Dalit women, young people’s work addressing caste and so on.

 

MP: You have mentioned that your company is thought of as inhabiting the mainstream. What impact do you think that has had on the mainstream women’s movement?

 

UB: I think many women think we act as their voice. But many mainstream publishers nowadays are open to publishing feminist work, which is good. I think that at this particular moment, when there are so many feminist issues, and there is so much discourse about it, and when there seems to be an environment where these issues have vibrancy, we are extremely well-placed to be publishing there. I think that,, in answer to your question, for us, it’s a challenge to really retain our political principals, and not give in to the market. There is tremendous pressure, and we operate as a business. And as a business, you have to make profit, or at least break even. So our books are distributed by Random House, and they are always saying to us “why aren’t you publishing more, why aren’t you publishing “x” kind of books, it’s so much easier to sell, etc”. And we know that if we bring out a bestseller that sells 100,000 copies, we’ll be set for the next three years. So the temptation is huge, and the pressure is huge, so we really have to fight to keep our principles. And that means you have to sacrifice commercial success. But we’re alright as long as we break even. But it’s not as if we are not thinking about ways we can make ourselves more commercially sustainable. For example, I know that for now, I am running this company. Up until three years ago, we had three people who were extremely competent, and extremely committed, and to whom I would have handed over. But for one reason or another, which had nothing to do with us, each of those people left.

 

MP: So I remembered that you mentioned that now, especially with the case of Asifa, more dialogue about feminism and women’s rights is taking place. What kind of progress has India made in terms of safety for women, and other key women’s issues, like safe menstruation products for women, etc?

 

UB: So it’s very difficult to have any sort of comprehensive and general picture on that, because one issue is that how one measure things statistically. You will get very different realities in different parts of India. I was reading an article on the significant drop in workforce participation rate sin India. So women in the workforce, who were at 35%, have gone down by 9% to 26%. Now, what is this due to? This is due to more and more women are in education, and are staying in education. As in they are completing their education. So more and more women, instead of entering the workforce, are staying in education. Now, if you measure it only looking at the workforce, you will see a dismal thing. If you look at it compared to education, you’ll see a different reality. But there are negatives to it. So many women are stepping out of the workforce because of the threat to safety and security of women. The media coverage which looks as if there is a lot of sexual violence against women in India makes it difficult to step out. Then many offices are very scared of hiring women because of the new sexual harassment law. It has zero-tolerance policies, and things that were accepted earlier are now considered occupational hazards. Now they are required by law to address them. So they feel it may be easier to simply not hire women. All these realities feed into each other. So it’s difficult to say what is the single truth, because there isn’t a single truth. Even statistically, UN statistics show that if you take the rate of rape per 100,000 people, India’s really low on that list. It’s at 1.2. And the United States is 27, the UK is 28, and Sweden is 63. You must question that statistic, because these are only reported cases. So now the received wisdom in the world is if you take figures of sexual violence of only reported figures, you must multiply them by a factor of 10 to receive an accurate statistic. But even if you multiply our factor by 10, it’s still low. So what does that mean? Does that mean we have a problem with counting or reporting? Is it that other countries have a really good legal system to deal with sexual violence and therefore they don’t make it to the media? Whereas we have a terrible legal system, a terrible police system, and sexual violence is always in the media. Now one of the tactics that the women’s movement adopted was that in order to bring attention to sexual violence in India, they would never let it go off the public agenda. And, in a sense, that tactic has turned on itself, because it makes it seem like sexual violence is rampant in this country! But it’s crazy, because I step out of my house all the time, my colleagues take taxis late at night. You must look at statistics in relation to other statistics, and in relation to what they don’t tell you.