This book brings together selected papers presented in the international conference on "Women Thinkers and Thoughts in Colonial and Postcolonial India: Ideas, Histories and Methodologies" held at the Department of English, Dr. Meghnad Saha College, India, on 17–18 March 2025. The conference was held in association with Kailashbasini Centre for Women’s Studies, Dr. Meghnad Saha College and in collaboration with the UGC-MMTTC, University of North Bengal, and the Department of English, Gour Mahavidyalaya. The aim of this international academic gathering was to reorient the critical focus on women thinkers and their intellectual contribution in colonial and postcolonial India in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. 

The papers collected here showcase how women’s right to think and articulate has long been inadequately recognized by the conventional structure of subordination owing to the politics of control and discrimination; how these intersecting forces relegated women’s thought in the history of ideas in colonial India. They also illustrate how, despite this structure of suppression, women thinkers have consistently engaged with the social, cultural, political and religious debates since the mid-nineteenth century and have asserted their agency as social, cultural and political thinkers. 

Found in this volume are critical dialogues on the ideas, histories and methodologies presented by women thinkers in colonial and postcolonial India. The analytical arguments presented in this conference lead to a rethinking of the categorization of the “intellectual” to understand the trajectory of the gendered intellectual tradition. As well, there is a remapping of the different modes of cultural translations to reconstruct the transcultural conversations among the women thinkers across temporal and spatial boundaries. 

This conference proceedings focuses on recovering the lost voices of those women who reshaped methodologies and ethnographies to unearth the hidden terrain of women’s thought by challenging male-centric canonization. In this manner, the gendered barrier to explore new avenues of knowledge production is broken down, making the world a more sustainable place, equitably shared by each gender.

Sanchayita Paul Chakraborty, Dr. Meghnad Saha College

Anjan Some, Dr. Meghnad Saha College

Mukunda Mishra, Dr. Meghnad Saha College

Anjan Chakrabarti, UGC-MMTTC, University of North Bengal