The Two Lives of Leela Dube Introductory Remarks on her Life and Work

In: Indian journal of gender studies, Band 24, Heft 3, S. 380-395

Abstract

This essay presents an integrated account of the personal and professional lives of Leela Dube. Born and brought up in a traditional, Maharashtrian, Brahman household, which was urban and in some respects modern too, Leela Dube journeyed from such a home through modern school and college education into a marriage by personal choice and a professional career in anthropology. It is an account of the engagement of an intelligent and highly educated person with two distinct — in some respect discrepant — worlds without completely separating them. Happy to be a home-maker with a family, she also carved out a place of distinction for herself as a scholar of kinship studies and the anthropology of women. Indeed, she came to be hailed as a pioneer in the field of gender studies in India. One of the implications of the interpretation offered here is that the enclosing of complex lives in easy-to-grasp theoretical pigeon holes may well fail to capture in their fullness the struggles and achievements of an extraordinary multi-dimensional person.