Talk:Srila Roy

By Sachi Anjunkar

Srila Roy is Professor of Sociology at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg as of June 2023. According to her University profile, her research interests and expertise is in the field of transnational and decolonial feminist studies.

In 2021, she endorsed the "Dismantling Global Hindutva" conference and made the allegation

"the current government of India [in 2021] has instituted discriminatory policies including beef bans, restrictions on religious conversion and interfaith weddings, and the introduction of religious discrimination into India’s citizenship laws. The result has been a horrifying rise in religious and caste-based violence, including hate crimes, lynchings, and rapes directed against Muslims, non-conforming Dalits, Sikhs, Christians, adivasis and other dissident Hindus. Women of these communities are especially targeted. Meanwhile, the government has used every tool of harassment and intimidation to muzzle dissent. Dozens of student activists and human rights defenders are currently languishing in jail indefinitely without due process under repressive anti-terrorism laws."

Publications related to India

Journal Articles

1. Roy, Srila, and Debanuj DasGupta. “Aparajita and Nishith Chetana: The City’s Contested Fabric.” Contemporary South Asia, vol. 28, no. 4, Oct. 2020, pp. 434–45, https://doi.org/10.1080/09584935.2020.1842861.
2. Roy, Srila. Trusting and Thinking Anew. June 2023, https://doi.org/10.1111/anhu.12463.
3. Roy, Srila. “Precarity, Aspiration and Neoliberal Development: Women Empowerment Workers in West Bengal.” Contributions to Indian Sociology, vol. 53, no. 3, Sept. 2019, pp. 392–421, https://doi.org/10.1177/0069966719861758.
4. Roy, Srila. “#MeToo Is a Crucial Moment to Revisit the History of Indian Feminism.” Economic and Political Weekly, 2018.
5. Roy, Srila. “Enacting/Disrupting the Will to Empower: Feminist Governance of ‘Child Marriage’ in Eastern India.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, vol. 42, no. 4, June 2017, pp. 867–91, https://doi.org/10.1086/690954.
6. Roy, Srila. Empowering Women: The Contradictions of Feminist Governance. Jan. 2018, pp. 281–304, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90623-2_11.
7. Roy, Srila. “The Positive Side of Co-Optation? Intersectionality: A Conversation between Inderpal Grewal and Srila Roy.” International Feminist Journal of Politics, vol. 19, no. 2, Mar. 2017, pp. 254–62, https://doi.org/10.1080/14616742.2017.1291225.
8. Roy, Srila. “Breaking the Cage.” Dissent, vol. 63, no. 4, 2016, pp. 74–83, https://doi.org/10.1353/dss.2016.0077.

   Srila Roy cites incidents of violence that occurred before the BJP came into power and blames it on the BJP Government.

   • “Mass protests broke out in Delhi in early 2013 following the gang rape and murder of a young student, Jyoti Singh Pandey, in December 2012.”
   • “Indeed, it was the rape of a fourteen-year-old adivasi, or tribal, girl, Mathura, at the hands of two policemen while in custody that galvanized the mainstream Indian women’s movement in the late 1970s.”
   • “Throughout the 2000s, India witnessed a number of public protests and vigils led by middle-class youth in response to high-profile cases of violence against women. One such case was the murder of Jessica Lall, a Delhi-based model who was shot dead by Manu Sharma, the son of a politician, for refusing to serve him a drink at a private party.”
   • “In her book Queer Activism in India (2012) anthropologist Naisargi Dave documents how leftist women’s groups like the All-India Democratic Women’s Association refused to march with groups like the Campaign for Lesbian Rights (C.A.L.E.R.I.) on International Women’s Day in 2000.
   • “As a poor Dalit woman working for the state government, Devi was raped by five upper-caste men for trying to stop child marriage in a North Indian village in 1992.”
   • “Jordan, who in 2013 refused to hide behind the anonymous label of the “Park Street rape victim” (victims of rape cannot be publicly named according to Indian law), directly responded to those who tried to defame her. Jordan was gang-raped in February 2012 and was labeled a liar and a prostitute by various politicians, including the state’s chief minister.

9. Roy, Srila. “The Grey Zone: The ‘Ordinary’ Violence of Extraordinary Times.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, vol. 14, no. 2, June 2008, pp. 316–33, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9655.2008.00503.x.
10. Roy, Srila. “The Everyday Life of the Revolution.” South Asia Research, vol. 27, no. 2, July 2007, pp. 187–204, https://doi.org/10.1177/026272800702700204.
11. Roy, Srila. “Revolutionary Marriage: On the Politics of Sexual Stories in Naxalbari.” Feminist Review, vol. 83, no. 1, July 2006, pp. 99–118, https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.fr.9400283.
12. Roy, Srila. “The Indian Women’s Movement.” Journal of South Asian Development, vol. 10, no. 1, Apr. 2015, pp. 96–117, https://doi.org/10.1177/0973174114567368.

Book Publications

1. Roy, Srila. “Transnational Feminism and the Politics of Scale.” Transnational Feminist Itineraries : Situating Theory and Activist Practice, Duke University Press, 2021.
2. Roy, Srila. “Bricked in the Walls of Patriarchy.” Living a Feminist Life, Duke University Press, 2017, pp. 1–18.
3. Roy, Srila. “Changing the Subject.” South Asian Governmentalities : Michel Foucault and the Question of Postcolonial Orderings, Cambridge University Press, 2018.
4. Roy, Srila. "Wounds and 'cures' in south Asian gender and memory politics". Global Perspectives on War, Gender and Health: The Sociology and Anthropology of Suffering. 2010