The slogans ‘Naari Sashaktikaran’ (women’s empowerment), ‘Beti Bachaao, Beti Padaao’ (save a girlchild, teach a girlchild) and ‘Nari Shakti’(women power) are a common sight on the billboards planted next to the main roads of (my hometown) Bhopal, in the state of Madhya Pradesh, perhaps like in some other states in India. These slogans are written alongside smiling headshots of the Bhartiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) male leaders and pop up every few minutes in a car drive within the city. Reactions are a long story, but such sightings have ignited a curiosity about the connections between the neoliberal state, Hindu nationalism and feminism.

It was this curiosity about the co-optation of feminism by the Hindu Right in India that made me first jump at the prospect of reading Srila Roy’s book Changing the Subject: Feminist and Queer Politics in Neoliberal India (published by the Duke University Press in 2022). Not only did the book address my long-held curiosity (that seems quite superficial now), but it kept moving above and beyond my (already high) expectations, with each page laden with nuanced insights about sexuality politics in neoliberal India. I highly recommend this book, especially to those grappling with the confusion around accounts of contemporary feminisms in India and (like me) are sometimes tempted to declare them as co-opted and apolitical.

With a persuasive and inspiring writing style, Srila Roy shows the paradoxes and complexities of feminist mobilizing entangled with India’s economic liberalization––suggesting that these struggles are caught between an autonomous and co-opted existence. One of the many strengths of the book lies in providing much-needed clarity on the changes to the terrain of queer feminist politics in liberalized India, and, offering a sharp critique of contemporary feminist accounts (as opposed to the defensive logic of rendering them as co-opted and depoliticized). Additionally, through a discussion on queer entanglements with Indian state law, the book also sheds clarity on the trajectories of alliances and frictions in queer-feminist organizing. At the same time, also taking enough care to expand the transformative potential of queer feminist practices.

Contextualising her ethnographic research on two self-identified feminist organizations––‘Sappho for Equality (SFE)’, a queer feminist organization and ‘Janam’ (name changed in the book), Roy highlights the contradictions interwoven in the political, ideological and the feminist past of West Bengal. Alongside, the book takes the reader into separate worlds of the two organizations through their transformations and subjective changes, for example, SFE’s makeover from an informally organized residential flat to an office in a private home with a ‘reception’ area; or Janam’s changing status from a community-based NGO in 1990s to a registered one a few years later. Along with the detailed explanation of the different methods used in studying these organizations, the reader encounters an intimate account of Roy’s relationship with the members and with the organizations themselves. While reflecting on her positionality, Roy also weaves in delicate tales of friendship, coffee shops and co-travel with the research participants.

With an interesting employment of ‘queer feminist governmentality’– referenced as an ‘assemblage of techniques, practices and discourses aimed at empowering subaltern subjects of the Global South’ (based on gender and sexuality) – and its intersection with neoliberalism; Roy shows the changing and complex nature of activist governance. For example, SFE’s initial anxieties and aspirations around the reach of its activism–especially towards the graamar meye (the subaltern lesbian of rural Bengal), and how the need to expand scales of activism (facilitated by transnational funding) overlapped with the postcolonial Indian feminist compulsions to speak for the poor rural ‘others’. Later, these challenges extended to the digital expansion of SFE’s queer activism and created further divides within archaic forms of regulations and activist governance. Or, Janam with the twin goals of microlending and women’s rights, practised feminist governmentality that provided feminist tools, vocabulary and training–but the organization’s feminist aspirations and punitive logic on governance of early marriage were met with refusal and defiance from the rural women.

There is also a simultaneous exploration of the change of the self, alongside the fluid and adaptable nature of neoliberalism within the studied context. Among many others, the making (and unmaking) of the feminist and queer selves through life choices, aesthetics and training creates a deep impression. The queer Indian lives of Joy, Sushmita and Durba in the book– while they speak well to Muñoz’s ‘queer critical utopianism’ and Ahmed’s ‘unhappy queers’[i], also go much beyond relative homogeneity and Roy walks the reader through the contestations within the queer community based on social differences and aspirations of upward social mobility and caste concealment. In discussions around Janam’s organizational workings, Supriya’s perceived change of self, one that Roy describes as self-creation through Janam’s feminist development tools, tells a powerful story about the projects of self and worldmaking undertaken by rural women. Similarly, heartwarming accounts of Janam’s group members embracing joy, friendship and care, make the reader appreciate the ambivalent gifts of neoliberal feminist governmentality despite the feminist failure.    

It is not possible to capture the several rich dimensions of Srila Roy’s book within eight hundred words, but to say the least–the proficiency and ease with which she threads together the fluid entanglements within and between feminism, queerness, neoliberal governmentality and the self, is awe-inspiring; especially for a reader incapable of articulating such deep connections. In addition, theorizing such entanglements and recounting powerful feminist subaltern stories from the margins, has opened new pathways to imagine self-(re)making and feminism in a neoliberal age.

[i] Both the texts are cited in Srila Roy’s book. I recently read these for a student’s thesis at the University College Freiburg and found these concepts relevant.

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Amya Agarwal is a Senior Researcher at the Arnold Bergstraesser Institut (ABI), Germany.