Co-founder of Kali for Women, India’s first publishing house set up in 1984 to increase the body of knowledge on women in the Third World, Urvashi is now founder Director of Zubaan which is an imprint of Kali.

Dedicated women’s and civil rights activist, she writes on issues relating to women, the media, communications and communalism.

Urvashi has edited and authored many books including The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India, the critically acclaimed and path-breaking chronicle of the untold stories of Partition, which has been translated into several languages including Chinese and Japanese and has won international recognition.

Her main interests are gender and history and she has published various articles and essays in local and international journals (e.g. Media, Culture and Society, New Internationalist, Oxford Literary Review, Economic and Political Weekly, and Indian Journal of Gender Studies).

Urvashi taught for many years at Delhi University and then took voluntary retirement to work full time on women’s publishing. Today she serves as Visiting Faculty at Ashoka University, Vedica Scholars, Anant National University and the Naropa Fellowship.She has served on the board of national and international organizations including Panos (London and South Asia), the Aman Trust, Khoj International.

Urvashi was a member of the ARENA Executive Boards 1994-97 and 2000-03 and is instrumental to a large extent in bringing gender concerns to the forefront in ARENA. She has edited and authored several ARENA publications including Shadows Behind the Screen, Resurgent Patriarchies and The Disenfranchised, the second volume of Victims of Development in Asia.

She is a recipient of several awards including the Pandora Award for Women’s Publishing, the Nikkei Asia Award for Culture, the Oral History Book Association Award, the French Chevalier des Artes et des Lettres, the German Goethe Medaille, the Polish Bene Merito and the Indian Padmashri.