Articles by Kamala Ganesh

Carnatic vocalist T M Krishna’s critiques may shift the genre’s middle ground, but the broad contours and deep structures of this ancient civilisational resource are likely to endure.

In Search of the Great Indian Goddess Kamala Ganesh The mother goddess can be interpreted as expressing ideas of power,autonomy and primacy in the widest sense of the terms' She conveys not so much the idea of physical motherhood but a world view in which the creative power of feminity is central; the goddess mediates between life and death and contains in herself the possibility of regeneration. Is there a basic unity of theme and continuity of ideas to be seen in the variety of goddesses which abound in India? This article explores the mother goddess tradition.


State of the Art in Women's Studies Kamala Ganesh THE Regional Conference on 'Women and the Household', held recently at the Indian Statistical Institute, New Delhi, was notable for being predominantly of Asian scholars meeting on Asian soil. A collaborative venture, it was sponsord by the Committee on Women of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, Research Committee 32 on Women in Society of the International Sociological Association and the Indian Association of Women's Studies. More than a hundred papers were presented, covering a good number of Asian countries. The participants were drawn from different disciplines: anthropology, economics, political science, history, sociology, law, literature, statistics, and so on. They included academics, activists working in grassroot organisations, and planners and administrators from government. This plurality of institutions and disciplines involved in the Conference is suggestive of the emerging position of Women's Studies at the intersection of a variety of disciplines and approches. To my mind, the most significant aspect of the Conference was that it gave one a good feel of the current state of the art in Women's Studies.