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Based on the keynote address the author gave at the ISCHE conference in Turkey in June 2015, this article examines how female identities, in a predominantly non-white colonial setting, were variously constructed over a 145-year time period. The paper also sees some resonance with the power structures that drive female oppression in former non-white colonial domains today and begins with that discussion. The author then turns to develop a largely historical perspective concerning this issue and is interested in the changes in the interaction between females living in India and the colonial state over this extended time period. In so doing, the article illustrates the activism of females who were caught within the imperial ambit as they responded, with varying degrees of intensity, to the broader racial and class agendas, which were internal to British colonial rule. The article uses the paradigm of “femininity” to trace the self-actualisation of these females, as well as the official impositions placed on them; and how, even from this position of powerlessness, coercive agendas could still emerge as a result of their activism that the state, itself, was then forced to accommodate. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The focus of this paper is on the activism of the faculty of the Centre for Women's Studies and Development (CWSD), Pan jab University, Chandigarh, India. Several feminists of India challenge the academy-centered interpretation of feminism. They believe that attention solely to theorizing feminism reinforces the privilege still existing in the wealthy, sanitized, and disassociated model present among many university professionals of the West. Academic feminists in India with whom I have been acquainted know themselves as "organic intellectuals." The changing face of feminism in India includes the activism of academics challenging the patriarchal structures at the grassroots level as well as among the personnel of the institutions perpetuating such structures. This paper demonstrates the efficacy of fusing activism with theory by the faculty of the Centre in their efforts to work with the local government in Pan jab villages, and to attempt to record the incidence of female feticide and advocate for its end by changing law. The paper will also illustrate the role of the Centre's attempts to build coalitions even as it influences changes among law enforcement officers via gender sensitivity training of law enforcement agencies of three provincial governments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]