women-authors-from-india

"There is no more terrible fascist system than the family."

"All women's stories are also stories of caste."

"Language is our identity, and literature is the expression of our collective consciousness. We should never think of ourselves as a small or weak people. We, the Adivasis, are the original inhabitants of this country. It is from us that the world has learnt everything. Our language, culture, and civilization are the oldest on this earth."

"Original quote was translated from Hindi language: "भाषा हमारी पहचान है और साहित्य हमारी सामुदायिक चेतना की अभिव्यक्ति है। हमें कभी भी नहीं सोचना चाहिए कि हम छोटे या कमजोर लोग हैं। हम आदिवासी ही देश के मूल निवासी हैं। हमसे ही बाकी दुनिया ने सब कुछ सीखा है। हमारी भाषा, संस्कृति और सभ्यता इस धरती पर सबसे पुरानी है।""

"If you were to build the world again, to create males and females again, do not be like an inexperienced potter. Come to earth as a woman, Prabhu! Be a woman once, oh Lord!"

"Material things had become priceless, and human beings worthless. Behind those material possessions, people's feelings were on sale. Things decided the relationships between small people with big shadows. A fridge had the capacity to change the life of a young bride. The different colours it came in could play Holi on her young dreams. Such possessions held a prominent spot not only in the house, but also in making life decisions. People were running, having tossed their worthiness and their relationships into the air."

"I have also been writing about how the media often misrepresents Muslims. I once saw a misleading photo of an elderly man garlanded by a young girl, implying child marriage. But in reality, it was a photo of a Quran teacher and his student after she completed her Quranic studies―a tradition where the teacher is honoured with garlands and gifts. Misrepresentation like this damages perceptions deeply."

"My stories are about women – how religion, society, and politics demand unquestioning obedience from them, and in doing so, inflict inhumane cruelty upon them, turning them into mere subordinates."

"Isn’t he a man? Whether he is there, not there, whether he carries responsibilities, whether he neglects them, who's going to ask? Who does he have to answer to? He is langoti yaar, after all, a man, everybody's best friend. His past does not rise up to dance in public. The present doesn't touch him. The future doesn't move him, nor is it a mystery. He does not have to remain shyly in the shadows. He does not have to say who he belongs to. He does not need to seek forgiveness, not ever at all, because nothing he does is a mistake."

"Our culture teaches us, whether it be Hindu or Muslim or Christian or whether it may be Kannadiga or Tamil or Malayali, the culture of human beings, the culture of neighbourhood. So we are Muslims, and if there was a feast the female elders of the family would bring a plate of sweets, coconut, prawn, flowers, everything to share with our neighbours, who were vegetarian [...] And they would invite us for their feasts. And this culture of coexistence is there even today. The fabric seems to be tarnished, but it remains there. So, there is no question of othering. There is a question of only inclusiveness."

"In a world that often tries to divide us, literature remains one of the last sacred spaces where we can live inside each other's minds, if only for a few pages."

"Women are often harder on women than men are. They step into the shoes of men and adopt their own strategies to oppress women… like how senior convicts become supervisors of other convicts."

"Why should there be fear? There should be an overcoming of fear. A desire to quest, go forward, a zest for adventure and a desire to delve into the unknown."

"Spirits have stories to tell. One must know how to listen."

"The world of spirits is very much a part of daily life. It is not something I switch on-off. And perhaps a sensitivity to them is inbuilt; an inherent part of me. Like my Wiccan training. That is why being a psychic investigator is not something which is to take on or take off. And that is also why it does not strike me as being something separate, or different which would collide with any aspect of my life."

"I started imbibing the Wiccan tradition from my mother Ipsita from the time I was a child. It teaches one to live with strength, dignity and a sense of oneness with something greater than ourselves. Pagans of old would have identified it with elemental worship. Ipsita taught us to have an open mind, to understand the mystical, and the scientific, and many sides of every phenomenon. This Wiccan perspective, which I have seen from childhood, shows science and mysticism have no quarrel. Ipsita’s teaching has also spoken of how, like many ancient traditions of the world, physical death is not the end."

"Wicca does not believe in allowing its followers to become mushpots. It stands for dignity and strength. If you lose your own will to another, then you belong nowhere. Least of all to Wicca. Wicca is of the Goddess, of Kali and Diana; true ‘witches’ are those who break barriers and defy a male dominated society."

"Dear Oxford—no other place can ever be to me what thou art!"

"As Vera Brittain explained, Sorabji had chosen: the wrong direction at an important moment in [Indian] history, and [had thus been] repudiated by the currents of her time … which tends to withhold from her the status that is her due."

"…next to home there is no place like Somerville"

"I am to read law: the desire of my heart is accomplished."

"Sorabji had an ambivalent attitude to British rule: she was wary of transplanting western values to India, but she opposed Mahatma Gandhi’s campaign for Indian self-rule."

"I will listen to their stories and will also tell the world about the problems they are facing. We will talk about long-term peace and development and how we can fight climate change together,"

"Indigenous people are playing a crucial role in protecting our planet. We are not on front covers, but we are the first line of defenders. Due to rising violence against Indigenous communities around the world, it’s an alarming situation for all of us along with the bigger challenges of protecting our forests and the environment. Even in my home state, the government has given licenses to big foreign companies based in the Netherlands to exploit our indigenous forest for oil exploration while local people are opposing it. Many Indigenous activists are in jail or are even murdered in several places across the world. Denial of the climate crisis by our leaders increases the threat to us. As both the climate movement and Indigenous rights movement are fighting for the common cause, it’s time to come together to strengthen our movement with one common voice to protect our rights and to defend the defenders. We are interconnected and interdependent. The climate movement will fail without indigenous people."

"Climate change has no border. India is also equally responsible for the global carbon emissions. Developed nations should invest more for a green economy as compared to developing ones, but India can lead and be a role model in fighting the climate crisis because we have full potential to do so. Besides the EU and the United States, two of the highest global carbon emitters like China and India are two giant neighboring countries and they’re not doing enough. They are still giving huge subsidies to fossil fuel companies, which are responsible for massive carbon and greenhouse gases emissions globally."

"Our leaders need political willpower to cut down emissions and become a net-zero, carbon-neutral country by 2035 or 2050. I understand developing countries have a bigger challenge. India also is a big country with a large population; our government faces a lot of challenges to set a deadline to achieve global commitments, but we need to increase the speed. I’m very much optimistic that if developed countries stand together with those developing countries, we can easily achieve the Paris Climate Agreement before the deadline. The biggest problem is that our leaders don’t trust each other. If they trust each other, we can easily fight the global climate crisis with a concrete action plan."

"My voice will represent the unheard voices of the millions of people of the world and also for the countless, voiceless animals.thumb|Licypriya"

"I was born in a small village of Manipur in North East India surrounded by lush green mountains and an alluring atmosphere. I never realized what I’m doing is activism until 2018 when people started calling me a climate activist. In 2016, I came to Delhi for the first time for my schooling, but my life became very messy due to the high air pollution level. Later, I moved to Bhubaneswar, Odisha, in the same year for my schooling. Again my home in Odisha was hit by Cyclone Titli in 2018 and Cyclone Fani in 2019. These incidences in my life turned me into an outspoken child that talks about the impact of climate change to our leaders when they failed to act on it."

""Your action today will decide our future tomorrow. We are already the victim of climate change. I don’t want my future generations to face the same consequences again. Sacrificing the lives of the millions of innocent children for the failures of our leaders is unacceptable at any cost…After thinking many times, I decided to do this protest. Even my mom tried to stop me but I convinced her that ‘Everything will be alright.’ I am taking the risks of my life because I want to save our Planet and our Future. My voice deserve to be heard by the world. Let's stand together by uniting, instead of dividing.”"

"This will bring transparency and accountability to our leaders. This will benefit people, especially millions of poor people in the country,"

"Climate education is very important if we really would like to fight the climate crisis. Adults are not doing enough already, and I don’t have much faith in them to come to the frontline and save our planet and future. The last hope is children. If we include climate education in schools, then we can fight climate change from the grassroots. It will help to educate adults and our leaders via their children and grandchildren, so that we altogether can support each other to save our environment and our planet. This also increases environmental consciousness among the people in addition to a love and respect for nature. I am even preparing to go to court to direct the government to include it as mandatory in all national curriculums of various school boards. I trust it will be a very successful mission."

"Finally I met my mentor Nobel Laureate & the next President of East Timor 🇹🇱 Sir Jose Ramos today. He will be taking oath (President's Inauguration) tomorrow. Despite his busy schedule, he personally came down to meet me in my hotel. I'm deeply touched by his gesture &humbleness."

"Usually at such big events, only foreign presidents and prime ministers are invited as special guests. I feel this invitation is very special and has a great message on how small island countries like East Timor are threatened by climate change,"

"I’m pressuring the government to ensure the health of every child in India. I will continue to put more pressure on our world leaders," Kangujam said. "The future is the children. The world needs to make a better planet for us. Our leaders need to act now before it’s too late.""

"“The inclusion of climate activists in every field and decision-making process is quite important."

"I have come here to tell world leaders that this is the time to act, and it is a real climate emergency,” she began confidently. “When I was born, our leaders had already met 16 times in the COP and already knew about the bad effects of climate change.... So why should I come here, why should I speak here? I have to go back to my school, I have to play, I have to study….”"

"In a second incident in Anjar, she played up the news that a Hanuman mandir [temple] had been broken and vandalized. I told her, "What are you up to? You are in Kutch which is a border district. There you are showing the attack and destruction of a mandir. Do you realize the implications of broadcasting such news? We haven’t yet recovered from the earthquake. Have you actually done proper investigation into the riots? Why are you lighting fires for us? Your news takes a few minutes to broadcast that such and such place is unprotected or a mandir has been vandalized. But it takes for me a few hours to move the police from one disturbed location to another since these incidents are breaking out in the most unexpected places.""

"When I was in my 20s, I covered the Kargil war from the frontline. I have grown up as the daughter of India’s first woman war correspondent. Before my mother died when I was 13, she would tell me how the newspaper she was working for did not agree to her going to the war front in 1965. So, she would take a couple of days off and go there with a notepad and a pen, and then start sending stories from there. Many years later, when I said that I wanted to cover the war, the organisation I was working for and the military said, “Absolutely not. We cannot have a woman at the war front"."

"In a changing India, gender finally does not exist only on the margins of public and political attention. It is now center-stage and we are demanding accountability and justice for all."

"I phoned Barkha and said, "Are you providing the address of this 'unprotected' bazaar to the rioting mobs? Are you inviting them to come and create trouble there by announcing that there is no police here so you can run amok safely?""

"It was my endeavour that we restore peace at the earliest possible. If you look at the data you will see that in 72 hours we had put down the riots and brought the situation under control. But these TV channels kept on playing up the same incidents over and over again. At the time, Rajdeep [Sardesai] and Barkha [Dutt] were in the same channel NDTV. During those inflamed days, Barkha acted in the most irresponsible manner. Surat had not witnessed any communal killings, barring a few small incidents of clashes. However the bazaars were closed [as a precautionary measure]. Barkha stood amidst closed shops screaming "This is Surat’s diamond market, but there is not a single police man here.""

"If you’d asked me what it is like to be a woman in this profession 20-30 years ago, I would have said that gender doesn’t matter. But today, gender does matter. At every stage, you have to fight at least four or five times harder, and when you get success, there will be people who will try to punish you for your ambition, professionalism and competence."

"Hindu Right is the corollary of the idea that India is a Hindu majority population and this is a false majority. The Hindu religion was invented in the early 20th century in order to hide the fact that the lower caste people are the real majority of India."

"We must begin to recognize [that] national forms of politics are the locus of the real crisis, and democracy can now be secured only through the assertion that the world belongs to all."

"But as we prepare for the future, there’s something that philosophy cautions us; the world is not an infinitely malleable matter that we can freely mould according to our world picture, whether through technological exuberance or hypophysical discipline."

"When the white nationalists come, I will be right here, waiting, with all the arms that I can gather to give their final farewell. Know this, the white nationalist moth is now whirling faster as it is approaching the flame."

"Hindutva’s organisational apparatus is the oldest, the most continuous, and certainly the most multifarious political formation in the world devoted to the service of mobilising hatred."

"She was the tree that grew in the centre of their lives and in whose shade they lived. (III, p110)"

"That was the way life was: it lay so quiet, so still that you put your fingers out to touch it, to stroke it. Then it leapt up and struck you full in the face so that you spun about and spun about, gasping. The flames leapt up all around, rising by inches every minute, rising in rings. (II, p78)"

"...the moon that hung over the garden like some great priceless pearl, flawed and blemished with grey shadowy ridges as only a very great beauty can risk being. (IV, p.159)"