This Book on 28 Women in India will Change How You See Agency

• The book Dialogue for Women’s Agency redefines agency, showing that for many women, it is shaped by faith, care, and everyday choices rather than solely by resistance.
• Through powerful stories across time, the book brings out how women use faith as a space to lead, question norms, and build social connections.
• This book is rich in lived experiences and storytelling, but has limited engagement with structural inequalities. Also, there is an absence of queer, non-binary, and indigenous faith perspectives, which points to areas for future exploration.

At a time when discussions on feminism often focus on independence and breaking away from tradition, Dialogue for Women’s Agency: Journeys of Women Faith Actors Contributing to the Cause of Social Cohesion in India by Dr Kanchan Chandan Mehra and Sohini Jana offers a refreshing perspective. Through the lived experiences of 28 women across different time periods, it shows that agency can take many forms and does not always look like resistance or rejection of tradition. By bringing together these powerful stories, the book encourages readers to see women’s choices and voices in a more open and inclusive way.

The book is structured into three sections. The first section deals with historical women figures. The second part features contemporary women leaders, and the third section highlights women from diverse professions who bring their faith to promote social cohesion. The power-packed narratives across the chapters highlight how women assert their agency within faith and societal structures.

Expanding the Understanding of Agency

As the book begins, the discussion centres around understanding the concept of agency. The book critically reflects on the “one-size-fits-all” approach of understanding women’s agency within feminist theoretical frameworks. The book very skilfully advocates for a context-based understanding, with the authors firmly challenging the understanding of agency as rupture, rebellion, or departure from tradition. The book urges readers to reflect on agency in terms of individual choices and as something that can be exercised through compassion, empathy, and resilience.

The book highlights women faith practitioners’ journeys across different domains and their ways of navigating faith, religious doctrines, cultural, and social norms to assert their agency.

For example, Greshma, an ecopreneur and climate activist, demonstrates how women can integrate their spiritual values with environmental activism, using their agency to address global challenges like climate change. Similarly, Nandini Bhowmick, a Hindu priestess, reinterprets religious practices to promote gender equality, challenging patriarchal norms within faith. These narratives showcase that agency can be expressed in diverse ways, from environmental activism to religious leadership, and highlight its role in transforming both personal and societal definitions.

Faith, Traditions, and Women’s Roles

Another core theme of the book explores how women understand and navigate their roles within faith and tradition.  In the process of exploration, faith emerges as a dynamic, evolving force that guides women’s actions in both the social and spiritual realms, shaping their engagement with communities and social structures. In this regard, the concept of the “Divine Feminine” emerges strongly through stories of women who embody strength, resilience, and leadership rooted in spiritual and cultural traditions. For instance, Mata Khivi’s role in leading the community kitchen (Langar) within Sikhism and Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati’s global interfaith work challenge traditional notions of women as passive figures.

The book also discusses how cultural traditions, more often than religious doctrines, place women in inferior positions. Fatima Apa’s journey demonstrates that while societal and cultural norms may limit women’s roles, religious teachings, particularly those rooted in equality and justice, offer a counterpoint where women can carve out space for leadership and autonomy.

The book also reflects on the socio-political realities of India. For instance, women faith practitioners from minority communities, particularly in incidents such as the Babri Masjid demolition and the Gujarat riots. The narrative accounts of Ruha Shadab and Arkamitra Ghatak reflect on changing socio-political realities. Their stories showcase how women, even in the aftermath of significant political upheaval, assert their agency in promoting unity and social justice.

What Makes this Book Different

What distinguishes Dialogue for Women’s Agency is the way it is approached. Instead of relying only on academic analysis, the authors focus on conversations, personal experiences, and lived realities.

By privileging first-person narratives, oral histories, and reflective dialogue, the authors resist the reduction of women’s lives into abstract variables. The book, in its honest attempts to bring together stories of women from the past and the present in the Indian subcontinent, reflects on their lives through first-hand interviews, dialogues with other men and women, letters, and other written modes of expression. The book allows agency to emerge from women’s own self-understandings, reinforcing its core argument that agency is neither a static possession nor a universal metric. It is an evolving practice which is relational and deeply contextual.

Critical Reflection

Despite its strength, there is some unevenness in analytical depth across chapters, which may be due to the limited nature of sources, especially in the first section of the book that centres around faith actors in history. Moreover, in the third section of the book, rich narratives occasionally outpace interpretation. More continuity in terms of how each story advances the book’s central argument on agency would have strengthened coherence. Additionally, while the authors intentionally avoid overemphasising patriarchy as an explanatory frame, this choice sometimes results in an under-articulation of structural constraints such as caste, class, and institutional exclusion. A more sustained engagement with these power asymmetries could have added analytical sharpness.

Finally, the absence of queer and non-binary faith actors, which is acknowledged transparently by the authors, also limits the otherwise expansive vision of agency. Future work building on this project could productively extend the dialogic model to include these voices as well. In addition, the book would have benefited further by incorporating the voices of women’s faith practitioners from indigenous, nature-based, and tribal religions. For instance, women faith actors within the Donyi-Polo tradition of Arunachal Pradesh or Sanamahism in Manipur or Sarna Dharma prevalent among Adivasis in Jharkhand would have further strengthened the book in terms of highlighting lesser-known women faith actors.

Why Is This Book a Must-Read?

Beyond its limitations, “Dialogue for Women’s Agency” is a thoughtful and timely contribution that expands feminist theory by refusing its inherited binaries. The book is also a timely addition for those who study feminist theory, religion, peacebuilding, and South Asian Studies. It is equally beneficial for practitioners working at the intersection of gender and community relations. In a field often dominated by assertive theoretical claims, this book is a breath of fresh air, which showcases the willingness to listen. Its arguments unfold slowly, dialogically, and persuasively, mirroring the very forms of agency which are often lost in theoretical rigidity.