Anveshi was set up in 1985 in Hyderabad by a small group of activist-scholars to provide resources to research and develop a feminist theory relevant to women’s lives in contemporary India. Today we are one of the foremost non-university research centres in India. Our work focuses on the following research initiatives: trends in contemporary health care systems; Dalit literature and movements; histories of the Deccan; migration and urban spaces. Acknowledgments: We would like to express our gratitude to Srinivas Vellikad who has designed (and is continuing to maintain) this website pro bono and Devashree Somani, who updated it. The earlier version of website was designed (also free of charge) by Adley Siddiqi who is now unable to continue maintaining it. Our presence on the web is due to these generous and quiet contributors of effort to the Anveshi cause.
Current research in these initiatives examines the shifts in gender discourse in Dalit movements, experiences of gender during urban migration, Muslim women’s movements, minority representation in legislative debates, emerging home health care industry; archiving subaltern caste cultural practices.
Our history of campaigns around violence and law in the last thirty-five years has contributed to rethinking on questions of feminist law reform, rights and advocacy in relation to sexual violence, domestic violence and personal law reform. Our involvement in the Uniform Civil Code debates in the 1990s enabled us to interrogate entrenched notions of nation, secularism and religion. Over the past two decades, Anveshi has engaged in debates on and movements against caste and minority discrimination, especially in educational institutions.
Anveshi’s work has constantly engaged with caste as it operates in the procedures and institutions of everyday life in modern India. Beginning with a strong focus on caste atrocities, discrimination and reservation policies, our work has since traveled to examining institutions such as welfare and education with the caste question in mind. Our research in school education has foregrounded the problems with existing wisdom on curricular transactions, children from marginalized backgrounds, and notions of ideal childhoods.
Our research on political histories of the Deccan include investigation of 1940s in Hyderabad history, of contestations around the legacy of the Nizam, trajectories of Muslim religious education after 1948 and madrassa education for women since 1980s, the problematic of Muslim representation in the Hyderabad State and after the formation of the linguistic state of Andhra Pradesh.
In all our research we have found it useful to situate women and their experiences in the relationships, institutions and structures that give them an objective reality: as recipients of health care policies; undervalued participants in political struggles; bearers of the costs of development; and victims of violence seeking state protection. We have been alert to the problems of dominant perspectives that focus solely on ‘women’, treating constitutive contexts such as nation, caste, development and culture as mere additive categories. This caution has enabled us to interrogate some of the major impasses of Indian feminism and work towards crucial alliances in relation to caste, minority and law.
Our most recent public domain initiative is Queer Up!, an attempt to create a platform to deepen the discussion on queerness and queer lives in the city. Organized by a group of young queer activists, Queer Up! involves activists and academics from Hyderabad and elsewhere. Discussions have been held around the relationship between women’s movement and the queer movement, transgender movements against discrimination and discriminatory laws, the new debates on sexuality and gender, consent in relationships, and the need for queer representation in the media.
Read about Anveshi’s institutional and working culture.