Background

Urvashi Butalia was born in 1952, in Ambala, Haryana, to Subhadra and Joginder Singh Butalia. Butalia has a sister, Bela, and two brothers, Pankaj and Rahul.

Education

Butalia earned a Bachelor of Arts in literature from Miranda House, Delhi University, in 1971, a master’s degree in literature from Delhi University in 1973, and a master’s in South Asian Studies from the University of London in 1977.

Career

Butalia started her career working with Oxford University Press in Delhi. She later worked for a year at their Oxford headquarters, before briefly to London-based Zed Books as an editor in 1982. She then returned to India and, along with Ritu Menon, set up a feminist publishing house, Kali for Women, India's first exclusively feminist publishing house, in 1984. In 2003, following the closure of Kali for Women, she founded Zubaan Books.

Her writings have appeared in several newspapers and magazine publications including The Guardian, the New Internationalist, The Statesman, The Times of India, Outlook and India Today. She has been a regular columnist for the left-wing Tehelka and for Indian Printer and publisher, a B2B publication dealing with the print and publishing industry.

Butalia is a consultant for Oxfam India and she holds the position of Reader at the College of Vocational Studies at the University of Delhi.

Achievements

• Urvashi Butalia is India’s first feminist publisher and now director of Zubaan Books. She is also the author of the award-winning oral history of Partition, The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India.
  
  In 2000, Butalia won the Pandora Award for Women in Publishing. In 2011, she was awarded the Padma Shri by the Government of India, and in 2017, the German Federal Republic awarded Butalia the Goethe Medal, an official distinction that "honors individuals who have displayed exceptional competence of the German language as well as in international cultural exchange."

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India

    (In The Other Side of Silence , Urvashi Butalia fills this...)

    1998
  • Speaking Peace: Women's Voices from Kashmir

    (Kashmir has been, for some years, a key issue on the Indi...)

    2002
  • Inner Line: the Zubaan Anthology of Stories by Indian Women

    (20 short stories on women's experiences, violence, patria...)

    2006
  • In Other Words: New Writing By Indian Women 1992
  • Women and the Hindu Right: A collection of essays 1995
  • Making a Difference: Feminist Publishing in the South 1995
  • Women and Right-Wing Movements: Indian Experiences 1995

Views

As a director of the first feminist publishing house for women in India and a longtime crusader for women’s rights, Urvashi Butalia is in close touch with the problems faced by women in her country. As a member of a family who was expelled from Pakistan after the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan, she also has a special interest in the history of that era and the ongoing problems that this division has precipitated.

Connections

Father:

Subhadra Butalia

Mother:

Joginder Singh Butalia

Sister:

Bela Butalia

Brother:

Pankaj Butalia

Born in 1950

Pankaj Butalia is an Indian documentary filmmaker.

Brother:

Rahul Butalia

colleague:

Ritu Menon

Born on December 25, 1949

Ritu Menon is an Indian feminist, writer and publisher.

References

• Contemporary Authors New Revision Series: A Bio-Bibliographical Guide to Current Writers in Fiction, General Non-Fiction, Poetry, Journalism, Drama, Motion Pictures, Television, and Other Fields In response to the escalating need for up-to-date information on writers, Contemporary Authors New Revision Series brings researchers the most recent data on the worlds most-popular authors.
  2010