There was, indeed, a time in India's history, when the country's parliament was run by a woman, the Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, – and yet, at the same time, female railway workers would be fighting for the permission to take home the coal speckles swept from the station floors, to use it as a fuel additive for kitchen stoves.

The shortage of public officials, nurses, teachers and salespersons demanded that women join the employment system... But the tradition insisted that they must not leave the house unaccompanied or should never use the same transport as men!

These and many other contrasts are described in the book by Evgenia Yurlova, which was written to summarize the author's observations over the life of India and its citizens from 1962 to 2014.

The book is divided into two large parts. The first of them is a comprehensive account of how the position of women in India has been defined and shaped since the ancient times:

- what the religious teachings of Vedism, Brahminism, Hinduism and Buddhism say about gender difference and family management,

- how the struggle for Indian independence motivated women to fight for their rights – and why the majority of them still could not profit from these rights in the end,

- how difficult it is for Indian women to get an education, a job and the right to manage their salary even now (hint: this largely depends on where they live and what caste belong to).

The second part of the book tells us about the life and fate of ten prominent Indian women: politicians, social reformers, movie stars and even military officials.

The entire book can be found online on the website of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences: https://book.ivran.ru/sites/31/files/ww-of-india-7-11-15.pdf