Introduction

This issue of IACS is based on a workshop, ‘Feminisms in Asia’, held in Bangalore in October 2001. Organised by the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society and the Women’s Studies Programme, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, the workshop brought together feminists from nine different Asian countries. Our attempt was to create a framework for comparison of women’s movements that did not assume the West as the implicit reference point for all political and conceptual discussions. The workshop made possible comparisons between Asian locations on issues such as sex-work and female sexuality, women and the law, feminist activism and war. The new political possibilities opened up by this set of comparisons were framed by our intention not to counterpose a unified region (Asia) with an equally monolithic ‘West’, but instead to explore the differences between Asian societies as well as the common elements in our histories. The workshop provided a rare platform for a dialogue that was not merely an exchange of information; instead, we explored the kinds of conceptual struggles undertaken by feminists trying to theorize their specific dilemmas.