Uh, can you tell me about some of the debates that are surrounding, uh, this whole process of, uh, uh, trying to bring back abducted women, and what does this say about women's agency and, uh, the role of Indian state in women's choices?

Um, I mean, this is an incredibly interesting, um, set of kind of stories and debates, which I think it remains particularly relevant even today.

You know, and I- it goes back to the way, I suppose, in, I suppose in which women and their, their bodies, their physical bodies, their sexuality come to represent, uh, either the nation or, uh, the sort of honor and identity of their families and communities.

And we see this still, for example, in the way in which I think the law treats, uh, rape and sexual assaults, uh, where it's framed in terms of, uh, you know, sort of, um, honor, sort of women's honor, but by extension also a rape is never just the rape of the individual body, but it's a violation against, uh, a, a community or a society.

And I think that's why, uh, you know, following conflicts like, uh, the war, uh, in B- in Bosnia and other places, Rwanda, uh, you know, the United Nations has, um, actually, uh, developed conventions which, um, um, uh, uh, kind of, um, um, what would be, uh, legislate or make provision for, um, uh, uh, sexual assault and rape to be a war crime itself.

So particularly relevant in that sense.

Okay, so, um, and then I think one can see in, in, in that kind of context, um, uh, you know, why the, uh, kind of the, the role of mass rape and abduction on both sides during and following partition, um, uh, was kind of, I suppose, embroiled and very much connected to the other sort of forms of, of violence that were taking place, um, and the sort of, uh, the, the threats and anxieties around sovereignty, identity, control, community, et cetera, that accompanied, um, partition.

Would you like to reflect about, a little bit about how do you see the contemporary feminist politics in India or the larger South Asia, and what do they look like today? What are the significant debates they are engaged with, and how these debates continued from, I don't know, a century ago?