Ilavenil Meena Kandasamy (born 1984) is an Indian poet, fiction writer, translator and activist from Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India.

[4][5][6] Born in 1984 to Tamil parents, both university professors,[1][7][8] she developed an early interest in poetry, and later adopted the name Meena.

[12] She says, "Poetry is not caught up within larger structures that pressure you to adopt a certain set of practices while you present your ideas in the way that academic language is," and thus, prefers to use it for her activism.

[15] A review in The Hindu put the negative criticism into context, describing Meena's work as difficult for anyone whose politics were "mainstream".

[8] An analysis of Touch and Ms Militancy in the Journal of Postcolonial Cultures and Societies concludes that Meena "authors a poetic discourse that not only castigates the prevalent modes of subjugation but also resolutely strives towards futures that are yet to be born.

Meena was shortlisted among 21 short fiction women writers aged less than 40 from South Asia for an anthology published by Zubaan Books, New Delhi.

[22] Meena works closely with issues of caste and gender and how society puts people into stereotypical roles on the basis of these categories.

"[11] In 2012, a group of Dalit students of Osmania University, Hyderabad, organised a beef eating festival to protest against the "food fascism" in hostels.

The right-wing student group Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) staged protests against the event and organisers.