In a world where words are shouted rather than spoken, Ania Loomba voices her ideologies in her books through literature. Her writings include – Gender, Race, Renaissance Drama (1989); Colonialism/ Post-colonialism (1998); and Shakespeare, Race, and Colonialism (2002). She has co-edited Post-colonial Shakespeares (1998), Post-colonial Studies and Beyond (2005), Race in Early Modern England: A Documentary Companion (2007) and South Asian Feminisms (2012). Her latest publication is a co-edited collection of essays – Rethinking Feminism in Early Modern Studies: Gender, Race and Sexuality (2016). She is currently working on left-wing Indian women from the 1930s to 1950s. Professor Ania Loomba, currently Catherine Bryson chair of English at the University of Pennsylvania, recently visited Bangladesh for a public lecture entitled “Remembering Commune-ism” under the Distinguished Scholar Series held at BRAC Centre Inn on March 3. She shared her views on the significant Jawaharlal Nehru University movement saying: “It’s been a very important movement in not only Jawaharlal Nehru university but all universities in India and more generally for democracy in India.” On February 9, police entered the campus, arrested a student, charged him with sedition, and circulated videos of the event, which turned out to be doctored. They also were hunting for other students who allegedly raised “anti-national” slogans at the event. Loomba said: “This is a conspiracy by the supporters of the current right wing Hindu government to shut down student debate. So they planted the whole thing, doctored the videos and put them in prison for saying these things.” One of the students charged with sedition argued that “If you do not have debates in a university. Then that university is a prison.” Loomba agrees, adding that it is vital to encourage freedom of expression in universities all over the world. Around two hundred universities in the world have expressed their support for these students and teachers who took part in the movement. Loomba further said: “Basically it is a water shed moment in Indian democracy where students are defending their rights to hold meetings and discussions about any issue even if the views expressed in the meeting are not to the liking of the government of India.” Professor Ania Loomba taught at Jawaharlal Nehru University for 10 years during the 1990s. “Jawaharlal Nehru University’s wonderful tradition is to encourage lively discussions by students on every issue under the sun,” she says with pride. The history of the communist movement in India is a new area of research for her. Ania Loomba completed her PhD from the University of Sussex, UK, where she worked on literature and culture of the English Renaissance. She has written on the histories of gender and women in this period, as well as of contact between Europe and the rest of the world at that time. She has also written on post-colonial studies, which was a field that only started during the 1980s, as well as on feminism, and Indian literature. “I am interested in communism now because I think that there has been wonderful scholarship on the history of feminism in India but we have heard very little about the contribution of left-wing women in that history.” Ania Loomba further elaborated: “We get a history of feminism that includes women who were part of nationalist movement, but leaves out left-wing women, except perhaps a few of the progressive writers like Rashid Jahan. There is very little about the other women who were part of the left movement. But I don’t want to talk only about their contribution to communism. What I am also interested in is their thinking on gender relations, on marriage and love, and how they negotiated their place within the family as well as the world of public action.” Ania Loomba started collecting the voices of women that she had known as a child. She interviewed them to ask what they felt about gender relations in their families and in the party, and what they now felt about women’s issues and the feminist movement. “Often times we tend to miss out on people’s emotional and private life so easily as if they don’t have anything to do with politics,” she commented. Regarding her visit to Bangladesh, Professor Ania Loomba ends by noting: “We have shared histories, but we tend to look at these histories from different vantage points and different perspectives. I think it is crucial to have more productive exchange of ideas between India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. We talk about living in a global world, but this ends up meaning only our interaction with the West. We neglect conversations with those who live right next door. It shouldn’t be so difficult for us to cross these immediate borders.”
Thursday, June 04, 2026
