Bhatkal & Sen is a publishing partnership between Mandira Sen and

Popular Prakashan Popular Prakashan is an Indian independent publisher and bookseller founded in Bombay in 1924. History In 1924, founder Ganesh R. Bhatkal, a former employee of Oxford University Press India, established the Popular Book Depot as an independent ...

. The company is based in

Kolkata Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , the official name until 2001) is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal, on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River west of the border with Bangladesh. It is the primary business, comme ...

and publishes the imprints Stree and Samya. It is noted for publishing authors such as

Kancha Ilaiah Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd (born 5 October 1952) is an Indian political theorist, writer and a Dalit rights activist. He writes in both English and Telugu languages. His main domain of study and activism is the annihilation of caste. Early life ...

Om Prakash Valmiki Omprakash Valmiki (30 June 1950 – 17 November 2013) was an Indian writer and poet. Well known for his autobiography, ''Joothan'', considered a milestone in Dalit literature. He was born at the village of Barla in the Muzzafarnagar district o ...

Uma Chakravarti Uma Chakravarti (born 20 August 1941) is an Indian historian and filmmaker. Beginning in the 1980s, Chakravarti wrote extensively on Indian history highlighting issues relating to gender, caste, and class, publishing seven books over the cours ...

Gail Omvedt Gail Omvedt (2 August 1941 – 25 August 2021) was an American-born Indian sociologist and human rights activist. She was a prolific writer and published numerous books on the anti-caste movement, Dalit politics, and women's struggles in India. ...

Manikuntala Sen Manikuntala Sen ( bn, মণিকুন্তলা সেন; c. 1911–1987) was one of the first women to be active in the Communist Party of India. She is best known for her Bengali language, Bengali-language memoir ''Shediner Kotha'' (publ ...

Ashok Mitra Ashok Mitra (10 April 1928 – 1 May 2018) was an Indian economist and Marxist politician. He was a chief economic adviser to the Government of India and later became finance minister of West Bengal and a member of the Rajya Sabha. Early life ...

V. Geetha V. Geetha is an Indian feminist activist who writes on issues related to caste, gender, education and civil rights. She operates from Madras (now known as Chennai) and has carried out research on the nature and proliferation of NGOs operating i ...

, and

Bani Basu Bani Basu (born 11 March 1939 bn, বাণী বসু) is a prolific Bengali Indian author, essayist, critic, poet, translator and professor. Life She received her formal education from the well-known Lady Brabourne College, Scottish Chu ...

, and has prominent scholars such as

Susie Tharu Susie Tharu (born 1943) is an Indian writer, publisher, professor, editor and women's activist. Throughout her career and the founding of several women's activist organizations, Tharu has helped to highlight those issues in India. Career Tharu ...

and Maithreyi Krishnaraj as editors. It publishes academic works in the social sciences, memoirs and classic fiction in translation in English and Bengali. Popular Prakashan is a Bombay-based publishing firm established in 1920 by Ganesh R. Bhatkal, a former employee of

OUP Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...

Bombay.

Beginnings of Stree

Mandira Sen worked as a publisher's editor for

Houghton Mifflin The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , ''asteriskos'', "little star", is a typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a heraldic star. Computer scientists and mathematicians often voc ...

among others in the US, until she returned to India in 1978. She worked for a year for Orient Longman, then set up Mandira, which published bilingual children's books; with English text on the

verso ' is the "right" or "front" side and ''verso'' is the "left" or "back" side when text is written or printed on a leaf of paper () in a bound item such as a codex, book, broadsheet, or pamphlet. Etymology The terms are shortened from Latin ...

pages and the same text in an Indian language on the

recto ''Recto'' is the "right" or "front" side and ''verso'' is the "left" or "back" side when text is written or printed on a leaf of paper () in a bound item such as a codex, book, broadsheet, or pamphlet. Etymology The terms are shortened from ...

. Some books were also published in

Hindi Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been de ...

Bengali Bengali or Bengalee, or Bengalese may refer to: *something of, from, or related to Bengal, a large region in South Asia * Bengalis, an ethnic and linguistic group of the region * Bengali language, the language they speak ** Bengali alphabet, the w ...

Punjabi Punjabi, or Panjabi, most often refers to: * Something of, from, or related to Punjab, a region in India and Pakistan * Punjabi language * Punjabi people * Punjabi dialects and languages Punjabi may also refer to: * Punjabi (horse), a British Th ...

Urdu Urdu (;"Urdu"
''

Gujarati Gujarati may refer to: * something of, from, or related to Gujarat, a state of India * Gujarati people, the major ethnic group of Gujarat * Gujarati language, the Indo-Aryan language spoken by them * Gujarati languages, the Western Indo-Aryan sub- ...

. The books were intended for export to help the children of non-resident Indians to learn their

mother-tongue A first language, native tongue, native language, mother tongue or L1 is the first language or dialect that a person has been exposed to from birth or within the critical period. In some countries, the term ''native language'' or ''mother tongu ...

s. Distribution was a major problem, and in 1986 Mandira Sen met Ramdas Bhatkal of

at an international book fair. Bhatkal and Sen was set up in 1990, creating a new imprint "Stree" which publishes books dealing with women's issues and social sciences.

The early years

During her time in the US, Mandira Sen had come into contact with many

women's rights Women's rights are the rights and entitlements claimed for women and girls worldwide. They formed the basis for the women's rights movement in the 19th century and the feminist movements during the 20th and 21st centuries. In some countries, ...

activists and she wished to use this experience to highlight the work that was being done concerning women's issues in India; and to help educate people about the movement and its contributions to civil society. Stree's early titles fell into the following categories: # Scholarly translations of important texts in Indian languages by or about women that deserved to reach a wider audience. # Works of scholarship in the social sciences with an Indian context or sources, or by Indian scholars, with special reference to women, and # Popular works dealing with concepts and ideas of the women's movement with the objective of introducing them to Indian audiences. Stree's first title was a translation of a Gujarati novel by S. J. Joshi, ''Anandi Gopal'', a fictional retelling of the life of the first Indian woman to qualify as a doctor. Many titles followed, including ''Women as Subjects: South Asian Histories'' edited by Nita Kumar (), ''The Struggle Against Violence'' edited by Chhaya Datar (), and other works.

The Bengali List, and Samya

In 1996, the singer-songwriter

Moushumi Bhowmik Moushumi Bhowmik (born 29 December 1964) is an Indian singer-songwriter, writer and researcher based in Kolkata, she is known to perform Bengali folk songs, as well as her own compositions. She has released four albums― ''Tumio Chil Hao'' (19 ...

came to Stree as an editor. She began and developed Stree's Bengali lists, which included works such as Sambuddha Chakrabarti's ''Andare Antare'' (Inside, Within), on the lives of Bengali

bhadralok Bhadralok (, literally 'gentleman', or 'well-mannered person') is Bengali for the new class of 'gentlefolk' who arose during British rule in India in the Bengal region in the eastern part of the Indian subcontinent. Caste and class makeup Accordi ...

women in the nineteenth century. There was also ''Pinjore Boshiya'' (Inside the Cage), a collection of essays by Kalyani Dutta, edited by the School of Women's Studies at

Jadavpur University Jadavpur University is a public state university located in Jadavpur, Kolkata, West Bengal, India. It was established in 1905 as ''Bengal Technical Institute'' and was converted into Jadavpur University in 1955. In 2022, it was ranked fourth am ...

. The third title was a translation of

Kamla Bhasin Kamla Bhasin (24 April 1946 – 25 September 2021) was an Indian developmental feminist activist, poet, author and social scientist. Bhasin's work, that began in 1970, focused on gender education, human development and the media. She lived in ...

's ''What is Patriarchy?'' into Bengali. The year 1996 also saw the inception of the Samya imprint. The occasion for this was the publication of Kancha Ilaiah's ''Why I Am Not a Hindu: A Sudra Critique of Hindutva Philosophy, Culture and Political Economy''. Ilaiah had been turned away by a number of publishers who felt his work was too controversial; Sen felt his critique of the caste system fitted in with Stree's parallel critique of patriarchy and gender, and began the Samya imprint (meaning 'equality' or 'fairness') in 1996 with his book. Since then Samya has published Om Prakash Valmiki's ''Joothan'', an account of a Dalit's growing up under caste oppression, and Tirumaalvalavan's ''Talisman: Extreme Emotions of Dalit Awakening'', translated by Meena Kandasamy.

Literary translations

Stree also publishes an extensive list of works in translation by women writers past and present. These include Sulekha Sanyal's ''Nabankur'' (The Seedling's Tale) and

's ''The Birth of the Maitreya'' (Maitreyo Jatak). Marathi works translated into English include

Kamal Desai Kamal Desai (10 November 1928–17 June 2011) was an Indian novelist writing in Marathi. She was born in Yamkan Mardi in the Belgaum district. She studied in Belgaum, going on to complete a master's degree in Marathi at Bombay University. ...

's ''Dark Sun and The Woman Who Wore a Hat'', Saroj Pathak's ''Whom Can I Tell? How Can I Explain?'' and Vibhavari Shirurkar's ''Kharemaster''. Many of these books form part of the Gender Culture Politics series, edited by Susie Tharu. Stree has helped to bring to a wider audience many forgotten memoirs by early women writers such as Lalithambika Antherjanam's ''Cast Me Out If You Will'' which documents

Namboodiri The Nambudiri (), also transliterated as Nampoothiri, Nambūdiri, Namboodiri, Nampoothiri, and Nampūtiri, are a Malayali Brahmin caste, native to what is now the state of Kerala, India, where they constituted part of the traditional feudal e ...

oppression of

Nair The Nair , also known as Nayar, are a group of Indian Hindu castes, described by anthropologist Kathleen Gough as "not a unitary group but a named category of castes". The Nair include several castes and many subdivisions, not all of whom histor ...

women in nineteenth century

Kerala Kerala ( ; ) is a state on the Malabar Coast of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, following the passage of the States Reorganisation Act, by combining Malayalam-speaking regions of the erstwhile regions of Cochin, Malabar, South ...

. In this category falls Manikuntala Sen's ''In Search of Freedom: An Unfinished Journey'', a translation of her ''Shediner Kotha'' which traces the early years of the

Communist Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...

movement in India.

Theorizing Feminism series

Stree also publishes a series "Theorizing Feminism" which includes Patriarchy (book) by V. Geetha.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Bhatkal And Sen Book publishing companies of India Companies based in Kolkata Indian companies established in 1990 1990 establishments in West Bengal Publishing companies established in 1990