Hindu Women: Normative Models

Hindu Women: Normative Models seeks to answer the contemporary question of how and why women came to lose their position in society by making an incisive study of the role of women and the position accorded to them in the religious and secular Hindu texts. The book traces the transition of women from bold, knowledgeable individuals to pliant, submissive beings. It discusses in detail how a specious idealisation of meek domesticity in the Arthashastra down to Manusmriti, though with subtle shifts in perspective, led to women’s gradual loss of social position and economic rights.