Bhatkal and Sen

Beginnings of Stree

Mandira Sen worked as a publisher's editor for Houghton Mifflin among others in the US, until she returned to India in 1978. She worked for a year for Orient Longman, then set up Mandira, which published bilingual children's books; with English text on the verso pages and the same text in an Indian language on the recto. Some books were also published in Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi, Urdu and Gujarati. The books were intended for export to help the children of non-resident Indians to learn their mother-tongues. Distribution was a major problem, and in 1986 Mandira Sen met Ramdas Bhatkal of Popular Prakashan at an international book fair. Bhatkal and Sen was set up in 1990, creating a new imprint "Stree" which publishes books dealing with women's issues and social sciences.

The early years

During her time in the US, Mandira Sen had come into contact with many women's rights activists and she wished to use this experience to highlight the work that was being done concerning women's issues in India; and to help educate people about the movement and its contributions to civil society. Stree's early titles fell into the following categories:

Scholarly translations of important texts in Indian languages by or about women that deserved to reach a wider audience.

Works of scholarship in the social sciences with an Indian context or sources, or by Indian scholars, with special reference to women, and

Popular works dealing with concepts and ideas of the women's movement with the objective of introducing them to Indian audiences.

Stree's first title was a translation of a Gujarati novel by S. J. Joshi, Anandi Gopal, a fictional retelling of the life of the first Indian woman to qualify as a doctor. Many titles followed, including Women as Subjects: South Asian Histories edited by Nita Kumar (ISBN 81-85604-03-7), The Struggle Against Violence edited by Chhaya Datar (ISBN 978-81-85604-01-5), and other works.