She then returned to India and, along with Ritu Menon, set up a feminist publishing house, Kali for Women, in 1984.

Butalia's main areas of interest are the Partition and oral histories from a feminist and left-wing perspective.

Butalia is a consultant for Oxfam India and holds the position of Reader at the College of Vocational Studies at the University of Delhi.

Apart from several newspaper articles and op-ed pieces dealing with feminist issues, Butalia has authored or co-authored several books.

The Other Side of Silence (1998), the product of more than seventy interviews conducted with survivors of the Partition, is being used as an academic text in some Indian universities.

The Goethe Institute has described it as "one of the most influential books in South Asian studies to be published in recent decades...

"[11] The Other Side of Silence won the Oral History Book Association Award in 2001 and the Nikkei Asia Prize for Culture in 2003.