Neera Desai was born in 1925 to a
middle class Gujarati family that
ardently supported the freedom
movement. As a schoolgirl, along with
Mandakini (later on Kunnikal Narayan)
and Usha Mehta (who started an underground
radio for the freedom movement
called, “Vioce of India”) she actively
worked for the Monkey Brigade formed
by Mahatma Gandhi. Later on, as a college
student at the time of the Quit India
movement in 1942, Neeraben, as she
came to be known, was arrested several
times. She completed her postgraduation
studies immediately after India gained
independence (she had turned to Socialist
ideas by then) and her doctoral thesis in
Sociology touched economic, anthropological
and historical dimensions of
women’s role in India. This interdisciplinary
work was published in a book
called Woman in Modern India in 1952. It
was welcomed by critics as a seminal contribution
that provided historical understanding
on the status of Indian women
from the Vedic period to the early years of
independent India. Kamaladevi Chattopadhaya
in the foreword to this book,
labelled her analysis as “feminist”. What
she observed in the early 1950s was validated
by the women’s rights movement in
the 1970s onwards. She was much ahead
of her time.

Desai joined the SNDT Women’s University
in the late 1950s and served on several
decisionmaking
bodies as professor
and head of the postgraduate department
of sociology, as founder director of the
Post Graduate Studies and Research
Centre for Women’s Studies and the Centre
for Rural Development till she retired in
1984. She also offered her valuable
services several times as officiating vice
chancellor during 197084.
At SNDT, she
will always be remembered as a very
warm, kind and empathetic individual,
who was humble even when she was at
the peak of her career.

Her research on the Bhakti movement
of the 12^th century and the social reform
movement of the 19^th century inspired
many young scholars to examine the liberative
aspects of their writings, debates,
poetry, symbolisms and varied art forms.
Desai played a crucial role in the Towards
Equality Report of 1974; the Shram Shakti
Report of 1988 and the National Perspective
Plan for Women, 19882000.
She
coauthored
a book, Women and Society
in India (1988) with Maithreyi Krishnaraj
that helped institutionalise women’s
studies in academia by providing a benchmark
for curriculum development and
textbook writing for teaching women’s
studies courses in sociology, economics,
political science, languages and foundation
course. She collaborated with Usha
Thakkar to bring out another popular
book Women in Indian Society published
by the National Book Trust, India,
New Delhi on the occasion of Women’s
Empowerment Year, 2001.

During the 1990s, she took up the task
of preparing the profiles of 100 feminists
from western India by using the qualitative
method of research. It took her 17
years to complete this stupendous work
and as a result, a solid volume emerged in
the form of Feminism as Experience:
Thoughts and Narratives which was published
by Sound and Picture Archives for
Research On Women (SPARROW) in 2007.
Her research and writings in English and
Gujarati reflect a deep concern for issues
related to gender and power, and an effort
to understand the social constructions
of feminist ideo logy. She collaborated
with young scholars to produce
training manuals for poor rural women
and women’s studies series in Gujarati.
She was a friend, philosopher and guide
for Veena Poonacha (director, Research
Centre for Women’s Studies) and Divya
Pande of SPARROW who are currently
making important contri butions to
women’s studies. Neeraben always
admired the commitment of C S Lakshmi
(director, SPARROW) to feminism and her
writings in Tamil.

 Solidarity with Social Movements

Neera Desai always looked upon herself
as a fellow traveller of all progressive, secular, democratic and people’s
movements. She always walked the talk
and lent her support for campaigns to
release political prisoners and to oppose
draconian laws that repressed the democratic
rights. She supported the Narmada
Bachao Andolan, the Kashtakari Sangathana
and women’s rights groups in Mumbai,
Hyderabad, Delhi, Vadodara, Valsad,
and Ahmedabad. She loved the songs of
the revolutionary poetsinger
Gaddar and
never missed an opportunity to attend a
public meeting where he would be singing
whether in Surat or in Mumbai. In
academic meetings or conferences if anyone
tried to trivialise any of the concerns
of any people’s movement, an otherwise
polite Neeraben would stand up and make
a sharp rebuttal. One never heard her
grumble about facilities or ask for comforts
when she attended workshops of
women’s rights groups held in spartan
surroundings and on shoestring budgets.
Wherever she was, she would attend
8 March (International Women’s Day)
rallies held by the united front of women’s
organisations without fail.

Activists from the movements for rights
of women, tribals, dalits, and the working
class could always look forward to a warm
welcome, gracious smiles, food and moral
support from her.

 Institution Builder

The Research Unit on Women’s Studies
(that she set up in 1974) became the model
and inspiration for other such centres and
the University Grants Commission considered
it a model to be emulated. In 1990,
she supported the efforts to establish
SPARROW and was one of the mainstays of
the India Centre for Human Rights and
Law in Mumbai, and the Centre for
Women’s Development Studies (CWDS,
Delhi). She was closely associated with
feminist groups such as Vacha (Mumbai),
Astitva (Valsad) and Sahiyar (Vadodara).
During the 1990s, she was on the advisory
board of the Centre for Enquiry into
Health and Allied Themes (Mumbai) in its
formative years.

Desai was one of the founding members
of the Indian Association for Women’s
Studies, the Gujarat Association of
W omen’s Studies and the Maharashtra
Association of Women’s Studies. In 1981,
under her leadership, the first national
conference on women’s studies was o rganised
that set the tone by networing
among academicians, researchers, teachers,
students, administrators, policymakers
and political activists for women’s causes.
Everyone was touched by her simplicity,
hard work and spirit of voluntarism. Those
who had the opportunity to work with her
closely found that she was a source of immense
knowledge, warmth, understanding,
depth, guidance and depend ability.
She bonded very well with Veena Mazumdar,
Kumud Sharma and Latika Sarkar
from CWDS.

Mary John, director of the CWDS says,
"Isn’t it interesting that she is one of the very
few women of her generation who openly
called herself a feminist (way back in 1952)
and also made it the theme of her reflections
– there is an early article in the Indian Journal
of Gender Studies and her book of interviews
that came out very recently."

Neeraben occupied a unique position in
institutional and individual memory because
she did not only build institutions;
she also built feminists and women’s
studies scholars.

 ‘The Personal Is Political’

In Vadodara, I used to attend a study
circle conducted by A R Desai on Marxism
in the early 1970s, during the Diwali and
summer vacations and was introduced to
his wife, Neera in 1972. We invited her to
our students’ organisation Study and
Struggle Alliance. She spoke to us about
the Committee on the Status of Women in
India of which she was one of the members.
When Towards Equality Report came
out in 1974, she conducted the study circle
on the findings of the report. Till then
the younger generation of women’s activists
had read the writings of only western
feminists such as Eveleen Reed, Mary
Alice Waters, Kate Millet, Betty Friedan
and Simon de Beauvoir. She was happy
that I had translated several essays of
Reed’s book Problems of Women’s Liberation
into Gujarati.

When life became difficult for me in
Vadodara due to my marriage with my
comrade who happened to be a Muslim
R Desai suggested that I should move to
Mumbai. I boarded the train to Mumbai
with him and came to his house. Both
Neeraben and their son Mihir welcomed
me, introduced me to Mumbai, guided me,
drew maps to negotiate the different
suburbs of Mumbai and explained the
intricacies of the suburban railway
system. I stayed with them for a week and
emerged as a wellinformed
Mumbaikar.

Neeraben’s house was my second home in
times of illhealth,
ups and downs in life
and for e motional support. The intellectually
and politically charged environment,
the family’s interest in music, art,
poetry, songs, vegetarian cuisine, and
tolerance towards ideological differences
served as a tonic for a young political
activist like me.

It was in 1979, when I went to see her
with Madhu Kishwar, armed with the first
issue of Manushi, she confronted us sharply.
In the reading list published therein, we
had mentioned Altekar, M N Srinivas and
all those who had published books on
women but her book Women in Modern
India was not mentioned due to our ignorance
about it. We had an animated debate
on “Women’s Question” and “Trends in
Feminism”. She gave us a copy of her book.
After reading it, my relationship with her
took an 180 degree turn. From a sympathiser
of the left movement, she became a
fellow feminist.

Our most productive years were during
the 1980s. We worked together for an
alternate country report: Response from
Women’s Movement for the End of the
Decade Conference in Nairobi, 1985, the
Indian Women: Change and Challenge,
status report for the Indian Council of
Social Science Research, Critical Evaluation
of Women’s Studies Researches in the
Post Inde pendence Period (1988), the
Gujarati version of the Shramshakti Report
(1989) the publication of the feminist
quarterly in Gujarati (19882002)
and
case studies for Feminism in Western India
sponsored by the CWDS (Delhi).

 Neeraben as Mentor

She taught the younger generation of Indian
feminists to get out of abstractions
and generalisations and to examine our
own reality and evolve the intellectual
tools rooted in our society. She also convinced
many women activists like Anuradha
Shanbag, Flavia, Lata P M, Kalpana
Kannabiran, Sonal Shukla, Trupti Shah,
Shiraz Balsara and me that for an effective
women’s movement, we needed
strong analytical skills and must orient
our energies towards women’s studies. To
construct knowledge on women with
women’s sensitivities, sensibilities and
women’s prism, we needed five arms –
panch mahabhootas – teaching, training,
documentation, research and action.
Young women activists and researchers
named her the “mother of women’s studies”
as she was always available to four
generations of women with her wisdom,
intellect, information, advice and vast experience.
What we liked was the relationship
of mutual respect; she never
preached. With her there was a rapport
based on equality.

The bonding with her enjoyed by the
younger generation of feminists is expressed
aptly by Kalpana Kannabiran,

"In Neeraben’s passing away we in the women’s
movement and in women’s studies have
lost a mentor, a generous and caring teacher
and a friend and confidante who shared her
time and ideas willingly, and offered unstinting
support – personal, professional and
political to entire generations of activistscholars.
Several of us, especially those of us
who began our journey in women’s studies
in India in the very early 1980s benefited
enormously from her presence, her generosity
and her guidance over two decades.
At a time when women’s studies was struggling
for recognition, she gently prodded
young scholars along, teaching them and
helping them build the courage and resolve
to c ommit themselves to this field – and
she s ucceeded through the art of persuasion
which was her greatest strength. But
of course she had already long long before
walked that path, virtually alone, convinced
that women’s studies had a political role to
fulfil in the postindependence
academic
scene in India. The two of them – Prof A R
and Neeraben were together and individually
visionaries of women’s liberation in
independent India."

 Last Days

On 3 April 2008, Neeraben along with
five outstanding women who have contributed
immensely to Women’s Studies
in India was felicitated by the Centre for
Women’s Studies, Tata Institute of Social
Sciences. The centre had also prepared
panels on each of them, capturing rare
pictures profiling the women’s contribution
and milestones in their lives. She
had health problems and looked pale
but, as always, she spoke with stoic conviction
on theoretical issues, research
methodologies and epistemo logical challenges
faced by women’s s tudies in the
21^st century.

The last six months were painful for her
due to the cancer spreading all over her
body. But whenever we visited her she
never discussed her discomfort, showing
us instead her translations of feminist
writings from different parts of India into
Gujarati, discussing novels, films, poems
and music. She would converse on a wide
range of issues from identity politics to the
film Parzania made by her nephew, Rahul
Dholakia. She shared a beautiful intellectual
and emotional relationship with
her son, Mihir Desai, a human rights
activist lawyer and his feminist companion,
Sandhya Gokhale.

A fitting tribute to Neera Desai, who
was among those nominated for the “1000
Women for the Nobel Peace Prize”, would
be to take women’s studies to newer
heights in terms of its epistemological
growth and construction of a new body of
knowledge for strengthening transformatory
processes for better quality of life not
only for women but for all humanity. She
always said that the women’s liberation
cannot come about without liberation of
humankind and vice versa. Neeraben, we
will always celebrate your spirit!