Feminist Vision or Treason Against Men? :Kashibai Kanitkar and the Engendering of Marathi Literature

Kashibai Kanitkar (18611948), was the first major woman writer in Marathi. She was largely self-taught and keenly conscious of the benefits of womens education. She promoted this and other emancipatory measures for women through her prolific and wide-ranging writingsboth fiction and non-fictiondeploying them as a mode of social reform discourse. The present book includes translations of most of Kashibais works: both her novels (in abridged form); a review of Pandita Ramabais American travelogue; long extracts from Kashibais episodic autobiographical narrative as well as from her biography of Indias first woman doctor, Dr. Anandibai Joshee; and an article tracing the history of womens education in Maharashtra. A comprehensive introduction by Meera Kosambi contextualizes these texts and situates Kashibai within her social and literary milieu. Kashibai, Professor Kosambi shows, was a pioneering writer who created a new paradigm in Marathi literature. It was she who enabled Maharashtras rich tradition of womens writings by foundational contributions which ‘engendered Marathi literature.