ThinkHer

How do you write the biography of someone who lived only 28 years? Not long enough, in conventional terms, to gather disciples, build institutions, or leave behind a lineage that carries their name forward. The usual markers of legacy feel inadequate. And yet, some lives resist that arithmetic. They do not stretch across decades but deepen within them, compressing intensity, curiosity, and conviction into a brief span of time. The question shifts from duration to depth. How deeply did they touch the world? J. Vijaya ’s life demands that question. J. Vijaya, PC@ Sactuary Nature Foundation Much of what we know about her comes through the recollections of those who worked alongside her. They remember her as someone who did not inherit a discipline, but helped shape one. At a time when herpetology (a branch of zoology that studies reptiles and amphibians) in India was still emerging, and when it was rare for a woman to enter such a field, Vijaya stepped in with quiet certainty. As a st...

My first encounter with the concept of ecofeminism was during my bachelor’s degree, in an English literature elective. Until then, my ideas of feminism, environmental questions, and scientific debates sat in separate compartments—each treated as though it belonged to a different intellectual world. But the day we read Vandana Shiva’s work as part of the English coursework, ecofeminism offered a language that pulled these strands together. It argued that the exploitation of nature and the oppression of women were not distinct injustices but expressions of the same systems of power—structures built on extraction, hierarchy, and the devaluation of labour and knowledge. As I read and wrote more about gender, politics, and science over the years, the depth of those connections became clearer. Ecofeminism did not merely place women and the environment side by side; it revealed how deeply intertwined our social, political, ecological, and scientific worlds are. What happens to land is insepar...