Feminist publishing

Urvashi Butalia is an author and publisher whose work includes the history and memory of the 1947 Partition. In 1984 she and Ritu Menon founded Kali for Women, a feminist publishing house in India, according to the history published by Zubaan. Butalia later founded Zubaan, which grew from that publishing work. Publishing is part of this story as well as authorship: decisions about whose accounts reach readers affect the range of material available to future researchers. The publisher’s institutional history records its own development and can be read alongside interviews and independent accounts.[1]

The Other Side of Silence

Butalia’s The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India draws on interviews and research into people’s experiences of division. The University of Michigan’s Global Feminisms interview biography identifies the book as her work and notes its oral history award. Her book presents voices from people whose lives were affected by the division of the subcontinent. Oral history can bring personal and family experiences into view alongside official documents. It is also shaped by memory, the relationship between interviewer and narrator, and the time at which a story is told.[2]

Stories and the act of listening

In a Granta interview, Butalia discusses an individual Partition story and her work as a publisher. The interview format lets readers hear an author explain choices in her own words, although it remains a conversation shaped by its questions and date. Her approach to testimony encourages attention to people often absent from broad political chronologies. It does not make one person’s account a substitute for another’s: memories of migration, violence and rebuilding differ across families and places. Readers studying Punjab can compare oral histories with archival documents and scholarship while respecting the sensitivity of personal accounts.[3]

Sources & notes

Source records include access dates and, where known, limits on what was examined. Checks used AI assistance; independent human or specialist review has not been completed.

  1. Zubaan. The History of Zubaan ↗Written source · Source date: publication date not established · Locator: Kali and Zubaan history. Accessed 2026-11-03.Institutional biography, scholarly record or interview inspected.Return to Feminist publishing, paragraph 1 ↑
  2. University of Michigan. Urvashi Butalia: Global Feminisms interview biography ↗Written source · Source date: publication date not established · Locator: Biography and oral history work. Accessed 2026-11-03.Institutional biography, scholarly record or interview inspected.Return to The Other Side of Silence, paragraph 1 ↑
  3. Granta. Interview: Urvashi Butalia ↗Written source · Source date: 2011 · Locator: Interview and publishing. Accessed 2026-11-03.Institutional biography, scholarly record or interview inspected.Return to Stories and the act of listening, paragraph 1 ↑
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Record PH-PEO-0267 · English edition · human review not performed