Kali for Women was the first start-up feminist publishing in India. It was set up by writers Urvashi Bhutalia and Ritu Menon in 1984. It published several popular and seminal works on women, and continued for nearly two decades.
Another important work published by Kali in the early years was Recasting Women: Essays in Indian Colonial History, edited by Sudesh Vaid and Kumkum Sangari, (Kali for Women, 1989) which continues to be part of every reading list even today within the country and outside on gender and colonialism in South Asia. Butalia remembers ‘trapping’ the two editors in her flat and babysitting Sangari’s young child while they finally wrote up the introduction to the book which had been delayed for long. Another early book which established Kali’s reputation as a cutting-edge feminist press was a Hindi title called Sharir ki Jaankaari (The Knowledge of the Body) which was authored by 75 village women, and on their insistence, sold at a special price below cost to women from villages. Almost 70,000 copies of the book have been sold to date.
After running Kali for Women together for a little short of two decades and creating an enviable corpus of feminist titles spanning creative writing, activist tracts and scholarly texts, Butalia and Menon decided to go their separate ways in 2003. There has been much speculation about their decision in the book trade and outside; however, the lists that they subsequently developed at Zubaan and Women Unlimited put to rest any whispers about the ‘death of the feminist press’ in India. Both presses have grown beyond Kali for Women while keeping the original commitment to self-aware women’s writing intact.
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