December 14, 2003

WRITER, publisher, activist, Ritu Menon is the founder of Women Unlimited, and a co-founder of Kali for Women, the first feminist publishing house in India. She is also the South Asian convener and founding member of Women’s World, an international free-speech network of writers and publishers working on gender-based censorship.

Menon does not attribute her commitment to the cause of women to any particular incident in her life. “You and I may not have been burnt, but none of us are really far away from it. We all have experienced discrimination in one form or another, whether it is subtle or overt. If it is not you, it could be a family member. We cannot remain unaware,” she says.

Ritu Menon is concerned about every aspect of women’s existence and is in agreement with the commonly accepted definition of feminism which according to her is “an awareness of patriarchal control, exploitation and oppression at the material and ideological levels, of women’s labour, fertility and sexuality, in the family, at the place of work and in society in general, and the conscious action by men and women to transform the situation”.

Being an activist, she firmly believes in unleashing all efforts to bring about the necessary change. Ritu Menon has been working on uplifting the condition of women for a long time. “The main issues facing women in India in the 80’s were violence, especially dowry related and rape; negative portrayal of women in the media; poverty; caste discrimination; the beginning of religious fundamentalism; reproductive health; the deteriorating environment; and discriminatory personal laws,” she says.

Her interests and commitments pull her in many directions, but publishing is her main occupation. She is most reluctant to talk about herself. “Publishing is my passion,” is all she says. She does not take credit for anything she has done. Her attitude seems to be that with all that was happening, it was the right time to start a feminist press.

She speaks softly and gently, never raising her voice. She doesn’t have to. She can be forceful without being aggressive. She continues talking about Kali, Women Unlimited and the women’s movement. She can tell you many anecdotes about women writers having difficulty finding a publisher. Did you know that Kali published River of Fire, the English translation of Quratulain Haiders’s novel Aag Ka Darya after it was rejected by 15 European publishers who found it too difficult?

“Ritu Menon is modest, firm, solid, and passionate. Without her the scene of academic publishing would have been incomplete,” says Roop Rekha Verma, Ex-Vice Chancellor of Lucknow University, who was named as the Most Respected Woman in a survey carried out on International Women’s Day in 2002 by Times of India, Lucknow.

Ritu’s love affair with the publishing world began more than thirty years ago in New York when she started working in the Marketing Research Division of Doubleday. It was at Doubleday that Ritu learned the importance of researching the market. “There was a tremendous serge of consciousness, mobilizing and solidarity. It was also the beginning of the women’s movement. Publishers began to take women writers seriously. Doubleday published Kate Millet’s Sexual Politics. Betty Friedan’s Feminist Mystique was also published around the same time,” she recalls.

Upon her return to India, Ritu worked with Orient Longmans and then moved on to Vikas, a very large social science publishing firm. At Vikas, she began the women’s imprint Shakti in the early 80’s. Shakti changed the direction of women’s publishing from anthropological and disciplinary publications to publishing literature and research that challenged the accepted social science ‘wisdom’ on women.

In 1979-1980, the government of India’s report on the status of women, Towards Equality, was published. Following the report, women studies centres were established in universities all over the country. The report also legitimized research in other academic disciplines on women’s issues.

Ritu says, “The chairperson of the University Grants Commission, Madhuribun Shah, played a very important role. She stressed the fact that when it comes to women, research and teaching were not enough. A third arm — activism — was also needed.”

The emphasis on activism, the resurgent women’s movement, the establishment of women’s study centres in universities, and research on women’s issues in other disciplines created a new awareness for social change. Ritu’s experience in marketing research and publishing culminated in her joining up with Urvashi Butalia and establishing Kali in 1984. Kali was founded as a non-profit feminist publishing venture aimed at bringing together all the creative output on women.

As feminists and activists, Ritu and Urvashi went beyond publishing books. They published material that commercial publishers would not touch, such as songs, posters, postcards, pamphlets and other material required to mobilize for social change. It was the totality of women’s experience that they were after. They did not exclude male writers as long as their writings were not gender blind. To them it was the gender perspective that was important. They published works on women and by women. Their objective was to be progressive, secular and gender sensitive.

The two partners ran Kali successfully for almost twenty years publishing books on and mainly by women in the Third World. They carved a niche for a non-profit feminist publishing house in the highly commercialized publishing industry in India. Their work brought them in contact with NGOs and other groups working for social change with whom they worked closely. Sometimes, they employed novel techniques to encourage women to tell their stories. A woman in Rajasthan, who could not write, drew pictures on women’s health from which Kali developed and produced the book. “Nobody had to tell her, she knew about women’s health,” asserts Ritu.

In July 2003, the two partners split to form two separate organizations called Women Unlimited and Zubaan under the umbrella of Kali. “The three have a very organic link,” says Ritu. “It is an extremely unusual transition. For one year books published will carry a double imprint: Kali and Women Unlimited or Kali and Zubaan,” she clarifies.

Ritu played down the division as a natural process of evolution. Most people I spoke to were sad at the breakup between the two partners. “Together they built a solid pillar in feminist publishing,” commented one director of women’s study programme.

It is too early to say what will be the long term impact of this division on feminist publishing in India. Women Unlimited has a number of books scheduled to be published in 2004: Inequality & Community Development: A Study of Muslim Women in India; Educating Muslim Girls: A Comparative Study of Five Indian Cities; The Diversity of Muslim Women’s Lives in India; No Women’s Land: Women from India, Pakistan & Bangladesh Write the Partition of India; and The Unmaking of a Nation.

The first three books Ritu Menon has co-authored with Zoya Hasan. Ritu has written and edited other books plus numerous papers and essays published in books and journals. Her book, Borders and Boundaries, published simultaneously by Kali and Rutgers University Press in 1998 is a history of Partition based on extensive interviews. She has edited Women Who Dared, autobiographical writings of 21 eminent Indian women (Delhi: National Book Trust, 2002). She has co-edited Against All Odds: A Collection of Essays from India and Pakistan on Women; Religion and Development; and three anthologies of short stories by Indian women: Truth Tales; The State of Life; and In Other Words.

The social, cultural, women’s and development organizations in India and at the international level that Ritu is associated with are too many to list. To mention a few, she is a member of the International Committee of Women in Publishing (UK) and Vice-President, International Board of Directors, Women’s World Organization on Rights, Literature and Development (USA). She is the regional editor of Interventions: Journal of Post-Colonial Studies (UK). She has been actively involved with the development of women’s studies programmes in India. She is a life member and a member of the Executive Committee of the Indian Association of Women’s Studies.

She has provided editorial and production consultancy services to several publishing houses at the national and international level. Amongst them are the FAO, UNICEF, Children’s Book Trust, The Times Research Foundation, The Krishnamurthi Foundation, The Afro-Asian Writers’ Association, The Indian Council of Historical Research.

After all these years of working as a writer, publisher, consultant and activist, what does she feel about the condition of women in India today?

“All the problems that women faced in the 80’s are still there. Now women are also confronted with the impact of globalization and structural adjustment; shrinking democratic space; militarism and prolonged conflict; strident communalism and fundamentalism; increasing level of violence; declining sex ratio; and political violence,” she says.

For Ritu the fight is not over, the challenge becomes even greater as new issues surface.

Being close to the issues, Ritu is much in demand at conferences, seminars, formal dinners and informal gatherings. She juggles her time between her professional activities and family responsibilities as a mother and a wife.

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