Feminist historiography in India emerged as a critical intervention against the male-centered nature of traditional historical writing. Earlier histories of India largely focused on kings, wars, dynasties, political institutions, and elite male actors, while women remained invisible or appeared only in stereotypical roles such as queens, wives, mothers, or symbols of honor. Feminist historians challenged this silence and argued that history could not be complete without examining women’s experiences, labor, agency, oppression, and participation in social change. Thus, feminist historiography is both a method of rewriting history and a critique of existing historical traditions. The rise of feminist historiography in India was closely connected with the women’s movement of the 1970s and 1980s. During this period, scholars and activists began questioning patriarchy in family, society, law, and politics. They recognized that historical knowledge itself had been shaped by patriarchal assumptions. Inspired by global feminist scholarship as well as local struggles, Indian historians started recovering women’s voices from archives, literature, oral traditions, autobiographies, legal records, and folk memory. This marked a shift from writing “history of women” to understanding gender as a category of historical analysis. One of the earliest concerns of feminist historiography in India was the recovery of women from historical invisibility. Historians studied women in ancient, medieval, and modern India not merely as passive subjects but as active participants. Research examined women’s role in agriculture, crafts, trade, religion, literature, and resistance movements. For example, studies of Bhakti and Sufi traditions highlighted how women saints such as Mirabai, Akka Mahadevi, and Lal Ded challenged orthodox norms and expressed spiritual autonomy. Such work demonstrated that women were present in historical processes, though ignored by conventional narratives. A major contribution of feminist historiography has been the study of patriarchy as a historical institution. Rather than treating women’s subordination as natural or timeless, feminist scholars showed that patriarchy changed across regions, classes, castes, and historical periods. They analyzed how property rights, inheritance laws, marriage customs, kinship structures, and religious codes regulated women’s lives. Uma Chakravarti’s concept of “Brahmanical patriarchy” became highly influential in explaining the intersection of caste hierarchy and gender control in ancient and early medieval India. According to this framework, control over women’s sexuality and marriage was central to maintaining caste purity and social order. Feminist historiography also reinterpreted colonial history. Earlier nationalist histories often portrayed women as symbols of the nation, while colonial accounts represented Indian women as oppressed victims needing Western rescue. Feminist historians criticized both views. They examined how colonialism transformed family law, education, labor, and social reform debates. Scholars such as Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh