Unit IV:

History of the Women’s

Movement in India
GE-9 – Women and Politics in India: Concepts and Debates
Aditi Gupta
Assistant Professor
Department of Political Science
Lakshmibai College
University of Delhi
 1. Radha Kumar (1993), The History of Doing: An
Illustrated Account of Movements for Women’s
Rights and Feminism in India, 1800-1990,

Core Readings 2.
Zubaan
Anupama Roy (2010) Women’s Movement, in N.
G. Jayal and P. B. Mehta (eds). Oxford
Companion to Indian Politics, New Delhi,
of Concern 3.
Oxford
I. Agnihotri and V. Mazumdar (1997) ‘Changing
the Terms of Political Discourse: Women’s
Movement in India, 1970s-1990s’, Economic and
Political Weekly, 30(29), pp. 1869-1878.
4. R. Kapur (2012) ‘Hecklers to Power? The
Waning of Liberal Rights and Challenges to
Feminism in India’, in Ania Loomba (ed.) South
Asian Feminisms, Durham and London: Duke
University Press, pp. 333-355
Radha Kumar’s DEVELOPMENT MAJOR

The History of OF MOVEMENTS CAMPAIGNS

Doing (1993)
Selective
Brief interpretative history Survey of
HISTORICAL ORGANIZATIONS
of women’s movement in ATTITUDES AND FIGURES

India, from the beginning of

the nineteenth century until
the present day
TERMS AND
ISSUES THAT
WERE DEFINED
AND FOUGHT FOR
Major problems in interpreting the History of Doing

Absence of Paucity of literature available as a source

Sources
Inconsistency Unevenness of the traceable sources
in Sources
Lacunae in Nature, tactics, and strategies of Biographies,
autobiographies, memoirs,
Sources campaigns not detailed collections of speeches,
writings describing the lives
and work of individual
Subordination Contemporary movements avoid women, more representative
of the middle class and
of Concerns singling out of the women’s question upper castes most available
History that we History history
have been taught is
Past written from the Past transmitted from in
merely a fable
viewpoint of the male the form of oral tradition
agreed upon by the
half of humanity Even the large groups of men
males
Outcome of patriarchal who have been omitted suffer Despite the
exclusion because they were
construct historical
subordinate classes/castes
discourse of their
structural
subordination, we
● Recorded ● Unrecorded must be able to
● Interpreted ● Majorly preserved as visualize women
● Most tenuously collective memory as integral agents
distorted in history.

Gerda Lerner, in The Creation of Patriarchy

Distinguishing between
the history of women’s
movement in India pre
and post-Independence
 19th c. 20th c. 21st c.
20s 40s 60s 80s

Reforming the conditions under which Indian

women lived were largely conducted by men ‘Equality between the
sexes’ guaranteed by the
Constitution of
Reformer’s wives, sisters, daughters,
Independent India
protegees, and others affected by campaigns
joined in the movements

Women’s own autonomous

organizations began to be formed
Special category of
‘women’s activism’ newly
Special category of ‘women’s activism’
researched and expanded
to forge links between
Spate of new women’s organizations
feminism and Marxism,
was born and old ones revitalized
anti-casteism,
anti-communalism.
On the question of unequal treatment and gender difference

“Difference between the sexes was such that their roles, functions, aims, and desires were different.
And hence, not only had they to be differently reared but differently treated in general.”

As women themselves
Early 19th century reformers Later reformers
joined campaigns

Women’s difference from It was precisely this Point of difference, being

men was no reason for difference which made as mother, again stressed
their subjection women socially useful + argument for women’s
(women as mothers), and rights (to speech,
hence, proper care for education, and
their conditions of being emancipation)
was socially necessary
PRE-INDEPENDENCE WOMEN’S POST-INDEPENDENCE FEMINIST
RIGHTS REFORM MOVEMENT MOVEMENT
Clung on the one hand to gender-based Based itself firmly on principles of equality and
definitions of themselves while reaching with the asserting that gender-based structures, such as the
other for an existence based on equality and sexual division of labour, oppressed and
sameness rather than complementarity and subordinated women
difference

Difference between men and women informed Difference between men and women largely held
their treatment, and also became the reason for to be a biological one, which should not affect
reforming women’s conditions women’s right to equality with men in both public
and private spheres

Symbol of the mother (or wife) used as a rallying Images of the woman as daughter and the
or entitling device which focussed on the working woman which looked at her productive
(biological) formation of a woman rather than her rather than reproductive capacities
role
 Feminist assertions of women’s power as
Symbolic use of the mothers of the nation
‘mother’ as a rallying Assertion of maternal power by such women as
Madame Cama and Sarojini Naidu
device in the first half
of the 20th century Terrorist invocations of the protective and
ravening mother goddess

The creation of an archetypal mother

figure, evoking deep, often atavistic,
images through the use of metaphor Gandhian lauding of the spirit of endurance
and symbol and suffering embodied in the mother
Sought to curb the most fearsome aspects of
femininity, which lie in erotic/tactile domains

Gandhi hailed as the parent of the ‘Indian women’s movement’

because of his self-feminization and his feminization of
politics >> subsequent ambivalence in relationship
Use of imagery in the post-independence feminist movement

● A new kind of ● A rejection of the

self-exploration, wife-mother-power
Daughter
starting from childhood image, replacing it with
● Pain and helplessness the image of an
of being born a girl economically-independ
● Shock of puberty and A new ent woman
the associated ● Another development
development of sexual subjectivity of class-consciousness
fear brought to ○ Inequalities
● Terrible rejection of Indian among women
being ‘sent away’ at themselves
marriage feminism ● Growing involvement
● Loneliness and loss of of feminists with
the self after marriage workplace politics
● Repetition of the entire Working ○ Unequal wages
cycle of pain, fear, and Woman ○ Feminization of
rejection through the unskilled work
birth of another ○ Unpaid
daughter domestic labour
If ‘equality for whom?’ was an
inevitable question which feminists ● Equal right to
work for women
● Right to choose
now asked themselves, so was the to abort their
pregnancy
allied question ‘will demands for
equality which are framed in the
context of X structure of inequality ● Low-paid labour
performed by
the domestic
inadvertently create new inequalities help
● Preference for
in Y structure? boy child
leading to
female foeticide
Feminist assertion for a widened concept of equality

Whole range of inequalities in

all relevant structures of
oppression

Series of rights in other

spheres, such as woman’s
right to control over her
own body
Wider range of inequalities
in another structure

Limited range of
inequalities in one Economic
structure independence as a
means to ending
inequality
PRE-INDEPENDENCE WOMEN’S POST-INDEPENDENCE FEMINIST
RIGHTS REFORM MOVEMENT MOVEMENT
Concern for women’s bodies as sites of racial and Feminist assertion that a woman’s body must not
national regeneration, which manifested into the be treated as the subject of social control, which
demands for the cultural redefinition of the role of culminated into demands for the legal definition
women in society of crimes relating to the sexual invasion of
women’s bodies

Women’s right to be treated as useful members of Demanding that women should have the power to
society decide their own lives.

Focus of campaigns on the need for improvement Focus of campaigns on the rights of women to
in women’s lives - the right to parity in selected seek improvement in their own lives - the right of
areas self-determination
What self-determination means - Tension between sameness/ difference
Characteristic of feminism

Privileging/celebrating
Gender-
of the feminine and a
based
certain rejection of the difference
masculine
Equality with men in all The sex and
legally conferred rights, gender-based
implying that men and differentiation as
women should be
regarded as the same
non-hierarchical
Strict binary as a Masculinity and
construction to femininity being
be dismantled complementary
 Most of them appeared
Movements showing anti-patriarchal elements to affirm the principle
of complementarity
between the two
Women’s Movements Those which were primarily distinct biologically
dominated and widely defined areas of
participated in by women masculine/feminine,
Communist-led food campaigns
(1940s) + Chipko, the but opposed practices
anti-alcohol, and anti-price-rise Nationalist, such as Tebhaga and of privileging men
movements (1970s) Telangana movements over women

Focus on ‘women’s concerns’

Problems of male domination
because they were ancillary to the
brought up during the course
role of a housewife

● Women learnt to challenge areas of male control/oppression, to work

together in groups/organizations, and to feel united as women
● Did not demand parity/equality with men
● Did not struggle against sex-based definitions of gender roles, codification of
biological difference in social practice
Use of shame as a major tactic to punish their opponents in
anti-patriarchal women’s movements
Anti-alcohol, anti-wife
beating, and
Food and anti-price anti-dowry campaigns
rise campaigns 04 Women blackened the faces of
Women offered bangles to male culprits to humiliate them
male officials and politicians to before their communities
symbolize their emasculation

01 03
Working-class No-tax and no-rent
agitations such as campaigns during the
strikes nationalist movement
Women camped outside and
Women often put in the front 02 inside the houses of those who
ranks, so that blacklegs would
feel that ‘even women’ had bough confiscated goods from
more courage than them the government to embarrass
them into returning the goods
Effectiveness of shame as a tactic

Acceptance of Reasonably Use of shame as means of

gender-based well-knit punishment/humiliation
definitions community

Accepted value of Shaming someone for Power of shame is weakened by the

conventional transgressing the development of a modern society,
masculinity as norms of the which allows anonymity and
well-above femininity community, using possibilities of escape from being
values shared by both known
punishers/punished
Legislation as a dominant + continuous demand of movements

Putting state control in Legislation as a form of Fears about the nature

place of other modes of escape and protection of legislation + role of
social regulation from existing social state as a constant
practices undercurrent

Inadequacy of legislation at Legislation might actually

a time when violence lead to a conservative
against women is mounting backlash
 Similar Experiences + Responses of the Movement(s) with the Law

Judicial interpretation as one of the Methods used in dealing with Considerations for
problems in the working of laws the problematic legislation contemporary Feminists

● Leaving a possibility of Demanding an amendment of ● Whether the state should be

misuse of a law the clause, or plugging the encouraged to practice its
○ Widow Remarriage loopholes that make it power to curb judicial
Act, 1856 amenable to misuse options in this way
● Regulation ‘safety clause’ ● Whether safety clauses (not
which the Supreme Court Effectively, upholding the intended to provide for
could use to undermine supremacy of the legislative exceptions to the norm)
the entire logic of the to curb the power of the should be curtailed
changes effected by the judiciary to interpret ● Where to place the ingenuity
campaign of the judiciary in finding
○ Anti-rape law, 1980 ways to exercise their
freedom to interpret the law
 Similar Experiences + Responses of the Movement(s) with the Law
Fear of
wounding
religious
Laws were passed but not Existing bodies (more
sentiments
implemented, for a variety of women in the police force,
reasons Separate cells for CAW)
Culprit
being
“above State Implementation of Law Campaigns for reform in
the law”

Consequences Campaigns for reform in

Outraged protests, but no Existing structures (feminist

mechanisms to ensure groups to work with the police -
better implementation monitor/replace them when
they refuse to act)
Time 19th Century 20th Century 21st Century

Movements Brahmo Samaj, Arya Samaj, Sati All Indian Women’s Conference #MeToo Movement, Beti Bachao
Prohibition Act in 1929 (AIWC), Women’s India Association Beti Padhao, Sabrimala Temple
(WIA), National Council for Women in Entry, Nirbhaya protests,
India (NCWI) Same-sex marriage rights

Primary Codification of Laws implementation + codification of laws + voluntary mechanisms for

Focus need for a reformed state + implementation

Issues and Women’s education, Gender equality, Gender-based violence,

Concerns Widow remarriage, voting rights, labour rights, workplace equality,
Abolition of Sati anti-dowry reproductive rights

Leaders Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Ishwar Sarojini Naidu, Kamaladevi Kavita Krishnan, Tarana Burke,
Chandra Vidyasagar, Pandita Chattopadhyay, Durgabai Deshmukh,
Ramabai, Savitribai Phule B. R. Ambedkar, Periyar

Tactics, Advocacy for education, Political activism, protests, Social media campaigns,
Strategies Social Reform, Formation of women’s organizations Legal activism,
Establishment of schools Grassroots mobilisation

Challenges Patriarchal resistance, cultural Political apathy, caste and class Digital harassment, intersectional
Faced norms, limited resources divisions, violence against women issues, state policies
Overview of the 19th c. Primary focus on codification of laws

Preoccupation of the Main thrust of the reformers’ energies was in the

battle for state control through the ouster of the
Women’s Movement British + it was assumed that the ills of
with the Law state-instituted legislation would disappear with
Independence

Terrible dilemmas of fighting for legal

reforms which may never be embedded in
social practice

● Law as the last and hopeless resort 20th c. Concern for implementation + codification
of the weak of laws + need for a reformed state +
● Legislative reform as open mainly
to those with some power in the
voluntary mechanisms for implementation
modern nation-state, upper-middle The state has appropriated the task of managing
class urbanities
women’s involvement in social administration,
Ramifications of administering society through identifying ‘the household as a unit of
have become clearer for the movement society’
Other important resources
● The Swaddle’s In Perspective podcast episodes relevant for thinking about the
History of Women’s Movement in India
○ The Unknown Feminists of India’s Independence and more with Dr. Vibhuti Patel
○ How Indian Women Got the Right to Vote and more with Dr. Mrinalini Sinha
○ Indian Women’s Reproductive Rights Through the Ages and more with Dr. Sanjam Ahluwalia
○ Sati, Debates on Women’s Consent in Colonial Indian and more with Dr. Tanika Sarkar
○ Why We Romanticize Motherhood, Indian Women Going Childfree and more with Amrita Nandy
○ The Age of Marriage, Regulation of Sex Work in Colonial India and more with Dr. Ashwini Tambe
○ Debates Around Obscenity, Sexology in 19th Century India, and more with Dr. Charu Gupta
○ The Evolution of Girl’s Education in India and more with Dr. Divya Kannan
○ The Phulmoni Case, Child Marriage Debates in India with Dr. Ishita Pande
○ Colonial ‘Panic’ around the Hijra Community and more with Dr. Jessica Hinchy
● Puliyabaazi Hindi Podcast
○ नारीवादी आंदोलन The Three Waves of Feminism
Other important resources