Shiv Sena Women: Violence and Communalism in a Bombay Slum

This engaging book, based on Atreyee Sen's immersion into the low-income, working-class slums of Bombay, tells the story of the women and children of the Shiv Sena, one of the most radical and violent of the Hindu nationalist parties that dominated Indian politics throughout the 90s and into the present. The Sena women's front has been instrumental in creating and sustaining communal violence, directed primarily against their Muslim neighbors. The author presents the Sena women's own rationale for organizing themselves along paramilitary lines, as poor women and children have used violence and gang-ism to create a distinctive social identity, networks of material support, and protection from male violence in the explosive environment of the slums. Sen's moving account foregrounds the ethical dilemmas that surrounded her covert research and writing of the book, and she considers wider questions involving women, violence, and religious fundamentalism.

Author: Atreyee Sen
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 12/19/2007
Pages: 224
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.55lbs
Size: 8.40h x 5.40w x 0.50d
ISBN: 9780253219411

About the Author

Atreyee Sen is Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Sussex. She has previously worked as a features reporter specializing in social issues for The Telegraph, a national daily based in Calcutta.