In some ways Meena Kandasamy, Indian feminist and anti-caste poet, activist and translator, has been working on The Orders Were to Rape You: Tigresses in the Tamil Eelam Struggle ever since she started writing. In this evocative book, she details the lives of the female combatants from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and her own relationship with Sri Lanka’s liberation movement.

The slim glossy edition has a hot pink cover, covered with bodies holding AK47s, interspersed with what look to be blotches of blood. It’s only fitting that it was published by Navayana (meaning vehicle or new path), named after Ambedkar’s anti-metaphysical interpretation of Buddhism. The anti-caste publisher has worked with Kandasamy before. With The Orders Were to Rape You, publisher and writer team up to reveal the stories of women who took up arms, were lauded for it, valorised and lusted after, then degraded and pushed to the periphery, forgotten by most. But not by Kandasamy.

• Tags: India, Issue 25, Meena Kandasamy, Sri Lanka, Suhasini Patni