Religion, Patriarchy and Capitalism

The book attempts to address the various issues concerning patriarchy, religion and capitalism with special reference to India. Highlighting the intimate link between patriarchy, religion and capitalism, it makes a detailed discussion on declining sex ratio, ideology of oppression under secular constitution, various aspects of woman's life, women's search for new identity, and the problem of human rights violation.
Making a comparative study of the social position of Chinese, Vietnamese and Indian women, the book also discusses at length how the Ramayana, the Mahabharata and Manu Samhita strengthen patriarchy and how capitalism is supported by patriarchy and religion. Tibetan Buddhism as a way of life finds place in the discussion as well.

Jayanti Alam is a researcher, writer and human rights activist. She has a long experience of teaching and has taught Masters in Human Rights at Calcutta University. She completed her Ph.D. on "China's Policy in North Vietnam". She has to her credit over 35 articles and 5 books. Presently she is working on another book, being a Senior Research Fellow of Indian Council for Social Science Research, New Delhi.

The anti-Mandal agitation of the late 80s, so violent and casteist that it was, was a bane for almost all but, a boon for me! I was a school teacher at Shimla at that time and the schools did not want to take any risk with the life of the young citizens of India and therefore, closed down for an indefinite period! I was never a typical home-maker to feel contented with cooking, washing, making pickles and knitting sweaters and chatting away. I started feeling workless and started visiting a library of a well-known research institution to spend my spare time by reading.
First, reading was just at random and after a while it started getting focused; I started reading more and more on human civilisations, human rights, women's and children's rights, etc. These started giving me such insights that I started concentrating on religion, patriarchy, capitalism and the inevitable imperialism (that has to follow Capitalism). I started slowly to ponder over those and tried to understand them from my own angle or the angle of my life situation. Writing or putting down my thought-out ideas thus became the inevitable consequence. Caste was the overpowering ethos of that time; so, the very first article that came out of my understanding or mind was "Women, the Backward amongst the Castes"; I tried to show how a dalit woman is doubly disadvantaged! In fact, this is true about the women from all the disadvantaged, deprived and discriminated categories of the Indian citizens or people in general!
I had produced three articles during those three months when the schools were closed down and all got published in EPW, Mainstream and others. Once the wheel of writing started rolling, there was no stopping. I kept on writing side by side with my school-work and those started getting published in various national and international journals. The present book is a collection of those articles, revised and updated. I have classified them. under different categories. There are a few on China since China and pre independence Vietnam was the topic of my Ph.D thesis and I did visit China twice as the guest of the government of PRC. My first visit was about 10 years back as a consequence of the government of PRC being highly impressed by my book on China's Tibet as well as the Tibetans who live in India both as refugees and settlers for 4 or 5 generations.
I am therefore, extremely grateful to Kalpaz Publictions for encouraging me to revise and arrange all my published articles to be brought out as a book.