As the title suggests the present book Gender lens, Women’s issues and perspectives in Contemporary Societies, explores the cultural meanings of gender and gender differences in the rapidly changing societies that offer us a multitude of meanings in these new contexts. It makes us think critically not only about gender but about other social divisions as well some of which have entered the mainstream vocabulary only now. Change has suddenly been thrust on our society propelling it into the future bringing about large scale transformations that have made our society unrecognizable,...

Recent years have seen a sea change in the way history is written and also in the way our conceptions of the past are being rewritten. In traditional historiography, women’s articulation is often marginalized and dominated by male voices. Through centuries of patriarchal control, women negotiated many layers and levels of existence working out different forms of resistance which have often gone unnoticed. Bhakti was one such medium. Religion provided the space in the medieval period and women saints embraced bhakti to define their own truths in voices that question society, family and...