THE DASHING LADIES OF SHIV SENA

Tarini Bedi

This book is based on more than ten years of fieldwork interviewing dozens of women political workers and leaders of the Shiv Sena in urban Maharashtra. It shows how the women of the party conjure political authority through inventive, dangerous, and transgressive political personas, coming to be known as “dashing ladies.” Through the narratives of these women, the anthropologist Tarini Bedi argues that these women employ various resources in a system that can be termed “political matronage.”

Aleph Book Company, 318 pages, Rs 699