The book focuses attention on the single women in Assamese Hindu Society. While lack of education and rigidity of social structure would not permit any widow, divorcee or unmarried woman to exist as independent entities outside particular kin groups in the rural society, in the modern urban context it is not unusual for such a category to emerge. In the urban milieu, education, delayed marriage and occupational opportunities, all of which reflect social change, pave the way for the emergence of single women' as a definable component of the women's world. They constitute a segment which has been trying to achieve adjustment to the demands of changing socio-economic and cultural circumstances on individual terms.
This study is perhaps the first scholarly attempt to scientifically explore and analyze the life history and problems of single women. The findings of the study have been arranged under three parts with twelve different chapters. The first part, divided into three chapters, is concerned with the general background of the study. Part two, comprising four chapters, is devoted to the profiles of the single women. This part has analyzed cases of single women to depict how they are pushed into single status. Part three reviews the social horizon of the single women under five chapters which examines her patterns of living arrangement, work situation, social and gultural context and her position in Assamese society under the provision of enacted legislation. What makes the study more valuable is the author's efforts to give a deep insight into the matter coupled with some concluding observations and suggestions regarding future course of action.
Dr. Jeuti Barooah received her M.Sc. in Anthropology (Social) from Gauhati University. She completed L.L.B. from the same University and Ph.D. from Dibrugarh University.
Dr. Barooah started her career as Associate Editor in Assamese Encyclopaedia, Publication Board, Assam, and at present working as the Research Officer at the Law Research Institute, Eastern Region, Gauhati High Court, Guwahati.
An active researcher Dr. Barooah's field of study includes the customary laws, land laws, administration of justice, etc. in the North Eastern region of India. She regularly writes for journals and newspapers besides contributing seminar papers in her concerning fields.
This book is the outcome of the author's passionate commitment to a subject of investigation dear to her heart. Dr. Barooah had been in the pursuit of authentic information, within the accepted framework of objective social anthropological and soicological field research, through the better part of 1980s on the emerging position, problems and status of 'single women' in contemporary Assamese Hindu Society. I should know all this, for I happened to be her tutor when she prepared the material for her doctoral thesis which was accepted by Dibrugarh University in 1990. I remember quite vividly how on numerous occasions the author, as a field researcher, got involved in the various issues that she raises and discusses in the book taking an activist position and I had to argue her back on the role of a 'dispassionate' social researcher!
The book, resulting out of the thesis, presents singularly relevant information, a point of view and a model for social re-search that are of importance not merely to the Assam region but India as a whole. She deals with an important segment of women in India whose number is on the rise, here in Assam and elsewhere, and it is high time we understand their special problems of adaptation to the changing society and coping with the demands of life. As I see it, this case study of Assam should have relevance in understanding the life situations of single women elsewhere in India.
The women who for one reason on another never enter into wedlock; women who are widowed young or in the prime of their life with crushing responsibilities of surviving and often raising children on their own in an alien urban world; and the women who are estranged or divorced from their husbands together constitute the author's universe of 'single women'. While as single women they all share certain common problems and difficulties, each subcategory also has certain distinctive characteristics and problems of adaptation. All these aspects have been competently dealt with, with copious support of field data by the author. I find the author's style of narration and insertion of case material as illustration to a generalizations or observation absorbing. The book is a very readable account which leaves one a little disturbed and even a little provoked to take up a social activist position, like the author herself.
I leave it to the readers to explore for themselves these qualities of Dr. Barooah's work.
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