31 Women’s Movement in India

Contents

1. Objective

2. Introduction

3. The First Phase

3.1 The Early Years

3.2 The Inter-War Years

3.3 The Call for Swaraj 

3.4 Post Independence

4. The Second Phase

4.1 The Affiliated Organizations

4.2 The Autonomous Women’s Movement

4.3 1980s: The Pro-Woman Enactments

4.4 The Rise of the Women’s Studies as an Academic Discipline

5. The Third Phase

5. 1 The Continued Legal Battle

5.2 The Dalit Feminist Movement

5.3 The Rightist Women’s Organization

5.4 Protesting Globalization

5.5 The LGBT Movement

6. Summary

1. Objective

In this module you will learn how women’s movement in India poses challenge to the dominant social, cultural and political trends of the country. This module remains animated with almost a 150 year journey of the women – their collective goals and disparate experiences, inspirations and impasses, protests and compromises, achievements and failures – living in a cartographic space called India.

2. Introduction

This module has conceived the multifaceted history of the women’s movement in India through three conceptual phases: the first, the second and the third and an in-between stage connecting the first and the second. The classification of phases, serving analytical purposes, remains grounded on certain contextual-chronological and thematic principles. The classification of phases, one must remember, do not necessarily invoke a unilinear evolutionary trail, based on the logic of a gradual proliferation of feminist consciousness (where each phase is always an ‘improvement’ over the previous one). The feat of a specific phase, in India, cannot be gauged in reference to a generic index of ‘feminist movement’ across the world. The questions raised in the course of the movement can neither be pigeonholed into the dominant/Western mode of categorizing women’s movement into liberal, radical or socialist categories nor be seen to follow the same developmental paths. Movement remains marked by the specific political and discursive contexts traversed by the multiple performative possibilities of individual/group of women.

3. The First Phase

3.1  The Early Years

The broader nationalist programme of nation-building largely informed the early phase of women’s movement in India. The nationalists seemed to think that a colony, which ‘required’ the ‘civilizing mission’ of the colonizer to ‘emancipate’ the native women (subjugated and oppressed, uneducated and ignorant) from the barbaric tradition, could not build a sovereign nation without addressing the question of the ‘woman’. The point was to incorporate women within the men’s discourse of nation building which involved self-determination, statehood, democracy, progress and modernity.

In the first wave of the feminist movement, Sen writes, “…women’s organizations were able to draw both on the benefits of modernity (from colonial rulers and male Indian reformers) and from the idiom of “Indianness” constructed in the nationalist discourse” (Sen 2000: 57). Both the colonial rulers and nationalist reformers were enthused by the ‘ideals’ of modernity – to uproot the social evil of sati, sanction widow remarriage, prohibit child marriage, diminish illiteracy, standardize the age of consent to marriage and guarantee property rights through legal interventions. The involvement of women in the reform movements demanding their civil and political rights, largely under the leadership of the nationalists, produced a ‘unique blend of feminism and nationalism’ (Forbes 1998 and 2005, Sen 2000, Chaudhuri 2010). Throughout the country, a few women associations were also established. Under the leadership of Keshab Chandra Sen (Brahmo Samaj) in Kolkata, Narayan Ganesh Chandavarkar, Madhav Govind Ranade and R.G. Bhandarkar in Pune and Mahipatram Rupram Nilkanth and his associates in Ahmedabad organizations were formed to demand prohibition of child marriage, widow remarriage and women’s education (Sen 2000, Kumar 1993, Mazumdar 2001). By the end of the nineteenth century a group of women, from the reformed elite families, come to establish a number of women’s organizations.

Swarnakumari Devi, the daughter of Devendranath Tagore, institutes the Ladies Society (1882 Kolkata) for empowering the deprived women. Ramabai Saraswati establishes the Arya Mahila Samaj (also in 1882) in Pune and Sharda Sadan in Bombay. Sarala Debi Chaudhurani (daughter of Swarnakumari Devi), the archetype of the first phase of women’s movement in India (Sen Chaudhuri 2014) – being critical of the women’s meetings held in conjunction with the National Social Conference – calls attention to the necessity of a distinct association for the women. In 1910 she establishes Bharat Stree Mahamandal and developed its branches in Lahore, Karachi, Allahabad, Delhi, Amritsar, Hyderabad, Kanpur, Bankura, Hazaribagh, Midnapur and Calcutta to unify women from all race, creed, class and party on the grounds of moral and material progress (Bagal 1964, Sen 2000, Ray 2002).

3.2  The Inter-War Years

The first phase of women’s movement in India, during the inter-war years of 1917 and 1945, successfully addresses two significant issues: i) voting rights (1917-1926), and ii) reform of personal law (1927-29). Edwin Montague, the Secretary of State for India, proclaims (in 1917) the British government’s intention to include more Indians in the governing process. Sarojini Naidu (with an all-India delegation of women) and Sarala Devi Chaudhurani (with the representatives of Bharat Stree Mahamandal) meet Montague and Chelmsford and appeal for women’s suffrage. They also secure the support of Congress for women’s franchise (Forbes 1998). Alongside, Annie Besant, Margaret Cousins and Dorothy Jinarajadasa (Irish Theosophists) jointly establish the Women’s Indian Association (1917): the first all India women’s association for obtaining voting rights. A delegation sent to England pursues the Joint Parliamentary Committee to finally remove the sex disqualification. Travancore-Cochin, a princely state, is the first to offer voting rights to women in 1920, followed by Madras and Bombay in 1921. In 1926, propertied women in Bengal get the right to vote.

The All India Women’s Conference was set up in 1927 at the initiative of Margaret Cousins to attend the issue of women’s education (Basu and Ray 2003). It was soon comprehended that the issue of education remains tagged to the general social problems including purdah, child marriage, and other social customs. AIWC thus conducted a campaign to rise the age of marriage. This resulted in the passing of the Sarda Act in 1929. AIWC also began to campaign for the reformation of the personal law. Facing resistance to a common civil law, it called for the reform of Hindu laws forbidding polygamy, offering women the right to divorce and to inherit property. An unrelenting campaign for these reforms eventually saw the passing of the Hindu Code Bills in the 1950s (several laws passed to reform Hindu Personal Law). Samita Sen (2000) has identified this phase of the movement, tagged to the wider nationalist movement, represented by the upper caste/class women as ‘social feminism’. The nationalist discourse authorized the Hindu elite women to speak on behalf of ‘Indian women’ from a common stand.

3.3  The Call for Swaraj

The “petition politics” of the 1920s had outlived its efficacy by the 1930s. The intensity of the movement petered out by the 1940s when the weight of the nationalist struggle trampled feminist issues, and their diverse range of activities broke the purported unity of “Indian women”. There was a visible departure from the radical probes of an earlier period to a time when the Hindu Code Bill was being opposed not just by conservatives but by many within the Indian National Congress (Sen 2010). During this decade, the fight against colonial rule gained height and women’s participation in nationalist movement assumed a new shape. Women had joined Congress sessions, took part in the Swadeshi (1905-11) and the Home Rule Movement earlier. Yet their mass participation never happened before the Gandhian call for the non-co-operation movement, rural satyagrahas, salt satyagraha, civil disobedience movement, and quit India movement. Women organized meetings, rallies, picketed foreign cloth and liquor shops, and were jailed in numbers (Kumar 1993). During the whole period, the rapidly growing women’s organisations such as Desh Sevika Sangh, Nari Satyagraha Samiti, Mahila Rashtriya Sangh, Ladies Picketing Board, Stri Swarajya Sangh and Swayam Sevika Sangh organised the mass boycott of foreign cloth and liquor (Kumar 1993). Now non-violence became a dominant mode of protest. While thousands of women joined the freedom movement in response to Gandhi’s call, there were others who could not accept his creed of non-violence and joined revolutionary or terrorist groups. Subhash Chandra Bose also claimed for the participation of women in the women’s regiment of the Azad Hind Fauj.

Now a large section of women came out of their home to join the mass movements. This exposed the nationalists to a host of perturbing questions about the contradictory role of women in the ‘contradictory’ realms of the public and the private. The nationalists had to review the question of woman’s participation, now directly in the realm of public, in terms of the sustenance of the age-old feminine virtues based on sexual purity (that could only be retained by remaining at home). The political practices of both Mahatma Gandhi and Subhash Chandra Bose, though oppositional in nature, tried to retain the iconic role of the ‘Indian woman’ based on ‘sexual purity’. Gandhi resorted to a clear cut distinction between two sets of woman; one is the married woman who is both a mother and wife involved in the nationalist activities from within the home, while the other is the sexually inactive unmarried woman or widow who has sacrificed her familial ties in the name of the nation (Patel 1985). Bose, who particularly supported female activism, adhered to the Gandhian stance of classifying women on the ground of sexuality. Emphasizing the active participation of mother rendering support and sister rendering direct assistance, he did not accommodate the sexually active “wives” in his scheme (Forbes 1984).

Nevertheless, the reform ideals and nationalist commitments had brought a number of women out of their domestic confinements. There is no account of the magnitude and severity of oppositions these women had to endure in the society in general and their families in particular (Gandhi and Shah 1992). Many scholars have rightly pointed at the subservient nature of the first phase. “[T]he independence of the country and of women had become so intertwined”, observes Vina Mazumdar, “as to be identical” (2001: 135). Yet, the first phase of feminist movement in India cannot fully be circumscribed within the scope of nationalism. The history of the Indian national movement and the women’s movement have overlapped at many points yet opposed in many others. One can ponder on the feminist possibilities of the first wave keeping in mind the overall context of colonization and discourses of nation-building (Sen Chaudhuri 2010).

3.4  Post Independence (linking the first and the second phase)

The ‘cause’ of women remained a national concern in the post independent India. The principle of gender equality adopted in the Fundamental Rights Resolution of 1931, was later secured as a constitutional measure guaranteeing “Equality between the sexes” (Articles 14 and 16). Various administrative bodies were also set up for the creation of opportunities for women. The question remains: who were these women the government of India were aiming at? Now, there had been a subtle shift of attention of the nationalist elites: from the upper and middle class women in the early 19th century – to the women at large in the Gandhian politics – culminating in marking the poor woman as the icon of independent India. Women’s Role in a Planned Economy (WRPE) happened to be the first Plan on women, by the National Planning Committee (NPC) 1938. Though it drew attention to the poor women (urban and rural workers), oriented in a ‘developmental model’ it remained incapable to identify their problems. Similarly the issue of women in the Ford Foundation community development programmes 1950s and 60s was a welfare mission rather an effort to empower them (John 1996). When the aspiration for the new governmental policies gradually dissipated, by 1960s, India witnessed a chain of revolt and unrest (peasant movements, anti-price-rise agitation in Kolkata, Bombay and Gujarat). During this time, the Nehru government had also to negotiate with the Tebhaga and Telengana Peasant Movement and a war against China (1962). Post-independence, 1950s and 60s, observed a relative lull in the course of women’s movement (Lateef 1977, Mazumdar 1985). The feminists were now more splintered than ever before. No longer was there a common enemy to fight against. Discrimination of gender was still not an independent issue clearly distinguishable from other socio-political problems. While many women still sought the membership of the congress government, there were various other groups increasingly seeking their autonomy.

All the way through women’ movement continued in fragments till the culmination of the new women’s liberation movement in the late seventies. This has its roots in the late sixties radicalization of the student, farmer, trade union and dalit politics (Patel 2002). Since the early seventies, quite a few movements on the radical left (Naxalbari movement in West Bengal, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar and Punjab) and the socialist fronts had interesting implications for women’s movement including the growth of the various women’s organizations (Kumar 1993). Shramik Sangathana (followed by the Shahada agitation 1970s), The Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA by Ela Bhatt followed by trade union movement in 1972, Ahmedabad) and many other organizations were formed. The anti price-rise movement, organized by the students in Gujarat, was joined by thousands of middle class women taking the shape of the Nav Nirman movement of 1974 (Kumar 1993). This was stimulated in Bihar, in the name of Sampoorna Kranti Movement, under the leadership of the Gandhian leader, Jay Prakash Narayan. In Delhi, a significant group of women leadership evolved in the radical students’ movement and the democratic rights movement. Women in different political parties, all over India, were gradually questioning the patriarchal predispositions of their organisations. In 1973 Mrinal Gore from the Socialist Party along with other women from the Communist Party of India (Marxist) came to form the United Women’s Anti-Price Rise Front (which turned into a women’s mass movement seeking consumer protection). In 1973-74 the Maoist women established the Progressive Organisation of Women, instigating a feminist critique of the radical leftist politics (Kumar 1995, Sen 2000). On the other corner of the country, the Chipko movement, initiated in 1973 and joined by women in 1974, laid a milestone for the women’s movement in India. The Chipko (embrace the tree) movement, a non-violent environmental protest against commercial logging in the Himalayas, holds a deeper meaning for the eco-feminists (Shiva 1986, Mellor 2008, Kumar 1995). It is considered as the first political-environmental movement led by the women representing their ‘deep connection’ with nature (shaped by their gendered role of nurturing).

Series of such responses, covertly or overtly anti-patriarchal, gradually paved the way for the autonomous women’s movement surfacing by the late seventies. These independent women’s groups could come out only after the emergency rule got over by 1977 (Patel 2002). Yet neither the gravity of these movements nor the plight of women throughout the country could formally be conceded before the publication of the Towards Equality Report (1974): a signpost for the women’s movement in India

4.  The Second Phase

i) The Towards Equality Report

The United Nations organised the World Conference on Women in Mexico (1975) and acknowledged 1975–1985 as the International Decade of the Woman. As a part of the ‘World Plan of Action’ the National Committee on the Status of Women was set up in India to look at the ‘status of women’ in the country. The Committee published and presented the Towards Equality Report (1974) in the parliament. The report, prepared by the scholars with an interdisciplinary outlook, exposed the abysmal state of women in contemporary India manifested in: the declining sex ratio, the increasing rate of female mortality and morbidity, economic marginalisation of women and the evils of discriminatory personal laws. It made several recommendations vindicating the role of the government in achieving ‘gender equality’ in the demographic legal, economic, educational, political, and media spheres (through the: eradication of dowry, polygamy, bigamy, child marriage – provisions for crèches, better working conditions, equal pay for equal work – legal reforms on divorce, maintenance, inheritance, adoption, guardianship, maternity benefits – establishment of the Uniform Civil Code – universalization of education and so on). But the report did not comment on violence against women in the civil society and by the custodians of law and order (Patel 1985). However it got a remarkable response from the state and media. Research bodies like the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) came up with financial support for women related research. Yet even after a quarter century, as per the report of the National Commission for Women entitled Towards Equality: The Unfinished Agenda, the Status of Women in India 2001, much of these recommendations remain unfulfilled. The publication of the Towards Equality Report (1974) and The Convention on the Abolition of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (1979 CEDAW) offered the moral and rational basis of a new wave of autonomous women’s movement manifested both in the activist and the academic spheres. This almost overlapped with the declaration of the ‘emergency rule’, (1975-77) by the then prime minister Ms. Indira Gandhi, suspending the civil liberties of the citizens. By the time the ‘emergency’ was withdrawn in 1977, a number of women’s groups grew up paving the way for the autonomous women’s movement. Breaking the forced inaction, of the emergency years, Indian media now came to report the violence committed against women during all this time (Patel 1985).

The whole process was taken to its heights when the feminists all over the country, belonging primarily to the upper/middle caste/class, could carry the cause of the women across the streets-railway stations-universities-parliament achieving a platform-identity-language they never had before. The autonomous women’s movement emphasizes – in contrast to the women’s organizations affiliated to the political parties, government or NGOs – the ‘women’s only’ issues. The affiliated organizations render women’s issues subservient to the wider programmes of the parental body. Though the leaders of autonomous women’s movements did not forget the multiple axes of discriminations (class, caste, race) affecting women, by no means did they conceptually subordinate women’s concerns to other causes. The autonomous women’s movements, largely spearheaded by the educated middle class, took up several women’s issues committed to the cause of ‘shared sisterhood’: ‘facilitating’ the ‘other’ woman and often speaking on their behalf. This has far reaching consequences for the course of feminist politics in India. The hegemonic impulses of the ‘Indian’ feminism both in the first and the second phase, as rightly been marked out in the dalit feminist movements of the 1990s, to represent the ‘Indian’ women have made it parochial. Gail Omvedt (1980), while talking about the role of middle-class feminist organisations, observed that though they were not grass root mass organisations, they had a momentous role to play.

4.1 Affiliated Women’s Organizations

While some women’s movements in India have purposively refrained from allying with political parties, others have worked closely with them. Some have feared that a close relationship with political parties might lead to their cooptation and de-radicalization, while others have seen parties as vital for advancing women’s political interests. Earlier on the All-India Women’s Conference, in a “harmonious alliance” with the male National Congress leadership, approved the independent Indian state as an ally (Sen 2000). Later, the National Federation of Indian Women (NFIW 1954) affiliated to the CPI (after the split), came to play a significant role. It was as late in 1981 that the CPI (M) formed the All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA). Throughout the 1970s, the CPI (M) did not have an organized women’s wing. Although officially formed in 1981, AIDWA considers its existence from the formation of the Mahila Atmaraksha Samity (MARS) in 1943 (dominated by women from the still underground Communist Party) and celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 1993. Unlike its predecessors, AIDWA accepted members who were not affiliated to the CPI (M). Initiated with the slogan of “Equality, Democracy, and Women’s Liberation”, it collaborated actively with the autonomous women’s groups and took up the question of violence against women. The Regional affiliates of All India Democratic Women’s Association include Paschimbangla Ganatantrik Mahila Samiti (PBGMS West Bengal), Ganatantrik Nari Samiti (Tripura), Janwadi Mahila Sanghatan (Maharashtra), etc. However these organizational movements did not coalesce into any significant mass mobilization of women on gender issues. Agitation over women’s issues remained limited to the urban elite women, while poor women were mobilized for class or nationalist causes. The questioning (though within limits) of gender roles that persisted in early communist groups later dissipated. In its “mass face”, the Communist Party thus began to be questioned on account of its “patriarchal leanings” (Sen 2000). ‘Feminism’ often remained a controversial word in the women’s movement in India, as well as in the party allied organizations. Avowedly, AIDWA was not a feminist organisation though an instrument forged to struggle for the emancipation of women. The question remains how successful have women’s movements been in strengthening  the parties’ commitments to gender equality when they have tried to do so? The biggest obstacle that confronts any serious attempt to challenge gender inequality through the party system is that parties draw on women’s participation as individuals, not as members of a group that has suffered discrimination. If women’s participation in party based politics undermines women’s sense of collective identity (Basu 2005), how would the autonomous organizations strive against this trend (Sen Chaudhuri 2007)?

4.2  The Autonomous Women’s Movement

Contrary to the formal structural mandate of the affiliated organizations – the autonomous groups, representing women across classes-castes-communities, were coupled together through ‘informal networking’ and a rising ‘feminist press’. Their mode of communication and commitment had a leftist charge. Oriented towards pan-Indian protests, throughout the 1970-80s, the autonomous groups primarily addressed: violence against women (Sen 2000) and the overtly patriarchal nature of the society. They addressed the questions of sexual oppression and violence against women in the form of dowry killings/deaths, bride burning, rape, sati, honour killing and so on. It is interesting to note that, in the 1980s, almost all campaigns against violence on women resulted in pro-women legislations (Agnes 1992). The second phase of women’s movement is significant for its ‘real’ achievements both in the form of consciousness raising and legal enactments. In the next section, we would discuss about some of the protest movements resulting in the major legal enactments of the 1980s (following Agnes 1992, Desai and Patel 1985, Patel 1985, 2002, Sharma 1989, Lerner 1981, Forbes 1998).

4.3  1980s: the Decade of Pro-Woman Enactments

The country wide anti-rape movement was inflicted by the Supreme Court judgment acquitting two policemen accused of raping a minor tribal girl, Mathura, despite the fact that the High Court had indicted them. Four eminent lawyers addressed an open letter to the Chief Justice of India protesting the unjust decision. This flared-up a series of country-wide demonstrations by the autonomous women’s organisations like Nari Niryatana Pratirodh Mancha (Kolkata), Progressive Organization of Women (Hyderabad), Forum Against Oppression of Women (Mumbai), Stree Sangharsh, Samata and Saheli (Delhi), Stree Shakti Sangathana (Hyderabad), Vimochana (Banglore). Several other rape cases became parts of this campaign where redefining ‘consent’ in a rape trial was one of the key issues. After long discussions with women’s groups, the rape law was amended in 1983 by the government of India. The late 1970s saw the growth of a movement against dowry and the violence against women in the marital home. POW, Stree Sangharsh, Mahila Dakshita Samiti, Dahej Virodhi Chetna Mandal organized public protests against dowry deaths which received wide media coverage. In the Dowry Prohibition Act of 1961, the definition of ‘dowry’ was too narrow and vague. Continued movement of the women’s organizations succeeded in getting the dowry law amended in 1984 and then again in 1986. Madhushree Dutta, a women’s movement activist was assaulted by few men, late in the night, in a railway station. Without supporting her, the police labelled her as a ‘prostitute’ soliciting in a public place. This was followed by a series of demonstrations against the Suppression of Immoral Traffic in Women and Girls (SIT) Act, 1956 which penalises the victim on the grounds of her immoral nature. Eventually the act was amended and given a new name: The Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, 1988. 

Responding to the protests of the women’s movement against deprecating portrayal of women in the media, the Act against Indecent Representation of Women came into effect in 1987. An extensive protest against the public murder of Roop Kanwar, an 18-year old Rajasthani girl, was followed by the1988 Sati (Prevention) Act. The 1971 Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) Act provided women the right to safe, scientific and legal abortions. However, this right got associated to female foeticide. Campaigns against this resulted in a central legislation banning pre-natal sex selection techniques facilitating female foeticide. While addressing the problems pertaining to marriage, divorce, maintenance, alimony, property rights, custody and guardianship rights, the misogynist nature of the existing personal and customary laws came into open. All personal laws help persisting patriarchy, patriliny and patrilocality. This culminated to a nation-wide, still on-going, debate on the Uniform Civil Code. For years together the women’s organizations fought to see the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act getting passed in 1986 overriding the Supreme Court decision in the Shah Bano case. Flavia Agnes (1992: WS 19)) has rightly observed: “[i]f oppression could be tackled by passing laws, then this decade would be adjudged a golden period for Indian women, when protective laws were offered on a platter”. The enactment or amendments of laws, always retaining the basic patriarchal structure, fail to address the problems of the women. The onus of this failure rests largely on the flawed laws: emerging as a ‘token’ rather as a ‘true’ concern for women. The activists, often without considering the causes and consequences of these enactments, had to accept them as a way in to ‘empowerment’ (Agnes 1992).

4.4  The rise of Women’s Studies as an Academic Discipline

Over the years, it gradually came to be realised that mere enactments of laws, without proper consciousness and education among women, does not make much sense. On the one hand, this showed women’s movement the way to take up a more resolute stance towards legal literacy and education, gender sensitization of textbooks and media. While on the other, perhaps the significance of academic interventions was also felt. This along with the governmental support for women related research paved the way for the discipline of women’s studies to flourish. Following the ‘Towards Equality’ report, several micro-studies were carried out all over the country which led to the growth of this new area of study. The United Nation Mid Decade Conference in Copenhagen in 1980 also vindicated the need for the discipline of women’s studies. The first National Conference of the Association of Women’s Studies, an institution of women academics and activists involved in research and teaching, was held in 1981 underscoring the necessity of offering of Women’s Studies courses at the universities. At that time, there were only a few Women’s Studies centres at universities like the Research Centre for Women’s Studies at the SNDT Women’s University, Mumbai and the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, also in Mumbai. Gradually quite a few universities and colleges opened up women’s study centres. During the last four decades a substantive number of women related research projects, conferences, seminars were organized and books, journals, teaching materials were published. Unlike other social sciences women’s studies is an avowedly value loaded discipline committed to the cause of women (Sharma 1989, Basu 2003). Vina Mazumdar considered women’s studies, the academic arms of the women’s movement, as a tool to transform the women’s perceptions about themselves and people’s perception about women (1985).

By the end of 1980s there has been a wider recognition of the issue of women’s rights and equality among genders. The women’s movements comprising of autonomous women’s organisations, affiliated women’s groups and women’s studies centres have played no small role in bringing about this change. The second phase, marked by the autonomous women’s movement, primarily had an urban middle/ upper class/caste leadership- appeal. Yet, it had invoked a strong sense of ‘shared sisterhood’ (although burdened with its own problems). Conceivably this underlying concord, among disparate groups, emanated from the issue of ‘violence against women’: an experience shared by the women across stratifications. Post 1990s – in the face of the dalit feminist and LGBT movements, rise of the right wing women’s associations and NGOs, and continued debates around Uniform Civil Code and Reservations – witnessed a collapse of this ‘unity’. Yet women’s movement continued – addressing wide ranging issues and representing disparate groups – it marked out a new phase.

5. The Third Phase

The 1990s happen to be a breaking point in the politico-economy of India: the decade of economic liberalisation, the anti-Mandal agitation, the rise to power of the Bharatiya Janata Party, emergence of the caste based parties like the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Samajwadi Party, demolition of the Babri Masjid and communal riots. Mary John (2000: 3829) observes that “[t]he growing economic and social disparities that are a hallmark of liberalisation” points at “… the reality that patriarchy in contemporary society is neither a single monolith nor a set of discrete unconnected enclaves, but rather, a complex articulation of unequal patriarchies”. Amidst this, the women in India, although no longer tied together by a purported unity, have made persistent protests against specific issues affecting their lives.

5.1  The Continued Legal Battle

The issues raised by the women’s movement in the 1970s and 1980s could not still be resolved. They remain, even confounded by the trends of globalization and communalism, as some of the major concerns of the 1990s. Pro-woman legislations still remain a major concern for the activists throughout the country. Since the All India Women’s Conference in 1937, there have been disparate responses of the women’s movement to the Uniform Civil Code for all religious communities. This demand is sustained by the women’s movement in the late 1980s until the 1990s when it acquired a different shape. Conceding the existence of the homosexual couples, the heterosexual couples outside marriage and multiple other modes of living, the expression ‘uniform’ has been rejected from the debate in the 1990s. Saheli, People’s Union for Democratic Rights (Delhi), Forum Against Oppression of Women (Bombay), Working Group on Women’s Rights (Delhi) now demand for a negotiable/common/gender-just/egalitarian code rather than ‘uniform’ code (Menon 1998). On the other hand, a long thirty years of movement demanding Protection of Women from Domestic Violence resulted in an Act in 2005. Continued protests against female foeticide resulted in the Pre Conception and Pre Natal Diagnostic Technique Act (2002). The Public Interest Litigations to address sexual harassment at work place registered by the NGOs resulted to the 1997 Supreme Court directives for the Prevention of Sexual Harassment at Workplace. The Vishakha guideline, as it was popularly known, later took the shape of a law: The Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act 2013.

The 73rd and the 74th amendments to the Constitution (assuring local self-governance) provided a 33 per cent reservation of seats for women in the Panchayat and Nagarpalika bodies. Women at the ‘grass roots’ of the society were provided with the opportunity to be a part of formal decision making and governance. Yet, Women’s Reservation Bill or the 81st Constitutional Amendment Bill 1996, seeking to reserve one-third seats for women in Parliament, has been resisted from various sections of the society. The matter was soon caught up within the caste politics demanding special quotas for the women of the other backward classes and minorities. Once again, it came into open that the homogenous category “Indian women” does not carry any meaning. Different women with oppositional interests, representing different caste-community-class-religion-party, inhabit the sub-continent. For the women’s movement, as Mary John observes (2000: 3829) “[t]his is nothing less than an opportunity to link – rather than oppose – women’s rights to rights based on caste, class or minority status in the broader context of a common democratic struggle”.

5.2  The Dalit Feminist Movement

This realization could be conceived as a consequence of the rise of the dalit feminists calling attention to the caste-blind, dominant Hindu predispositions of the women’s movement in India. The agenda of the women’s movement at the national level has always been framed by the upper-caste, middle/upper class women’s perspectives effacing the identity of the dalit women and identifying the lower caste as the ‘rapacious’ male who becomes the legitimate object of feminist rage (Tharu and Niranjana 1996). The National Federation of Dalit Women (NFDW), established in 1995, has compelled the activists to attend to the question of caste. Dalit feminists articulated the three-fold nature oppression of Dalit women by: 1) upper castes, 2) upper class, and 3) men of their own castes. Dalit Mahila Samiti (DMS) organizes a movement of the Dalit women of Uttar Pradesh. It is supported by Vanangana, a feminist NGO that has its roots in the Mahila Samakhya (MS) programme, which was launched by the Government of India in the late 1980’s to empower women through the popular education (Chaudhury 2004). Reprimanding the elitist accent of the contemporary feminists’ eminent social scientists like Gopal Guru (1995) and Sharmila Rege (1998) offered significant insights for a dalit standpoint approach. Representing the voice of the ‘differently talking’ dalit women, the dalit standpoint articulates against the hegemonic middle caste-class women and the patriarchal upper-caste/dalit men.

5.3  Rightist Women’s Organizations

Since the decade of the 1990s there has been a significant rise of a kind of militant ‘feminism’ steered by the women’s wings of some Hindu fundamentalist groups (Rashtrasevika Samity of RSS, Durga Vahini  of  Vishwa  Hindu  Parishad  and  Mohila  Aghadi  of  Shiv  Sena).  Based  on  the  religious fundamentalist claims, these women’s groups have deeply strained the women’s movement of the country. They call for an inversion of the time-honoured ‘self-abnegation’ of the upper caste Hindu women. Assuming a new authority to awaken ‘Hindutva’ and salvage the birth place of Rama, they step out of their conventional image as the ‘victimized Hindu woman’ (Roy 2001). The acclamation of the self is grounded on the revival of the Hindu nationalist icon of Bharatmata – the reincarnation of the devi: (the abode of shakti) strong, courageous, and conscientious. Their assertions, in strange ways, cart off the prospects of problematizing gender-based inequalities and limit the scope of women’s movement (Kumar 1994, Setalvad, 1996, Tharu and Niranjana 1996, Ghosal Guha 2005). According to Tanika Sarkar (2002: 193), the thrust of these rightist women’s organizations “… is too be literate the notion of selfhood, to erase concern with social and gender justice and to situate the public, political, extra-domestic identity on authoritarian community commands and a totalitarian model of individual existence, every particle of which is derived from an all-male organization which not only teaches her about politics but also about religion, human relationships and child rearing”.

5.4  Protesting Globalization

The women’s movement countered the open economic policy 1990s with widespread agitation focusing largely on the withdrawal of the state from the social sector, erosion of food security and the adverse effects of globalization and Structural Adjustment Policies (SAP) on the women in India. In March 2000, through the initiatives of the six national level women’s organisations including the CWDS, some ninety women’s groups and organisations were signatory to a document prepared for the Global March 2000. Again the 2004 Forum provided a meeting ground for peasant, workers, women’s, dalit and environmental movements to come together against the “capitalist led globalization”. During 1970s and 1980s the women’s movement highlighted the economic marginalisation of the women. In the 1990, the women’s movement started demanding its legitimate place within the mainstream with its own agenda of empowerment. Since the 1990s several women’s organisations in the form of foreign aided Non Government Organizations (NGO) came up. The funding agencies by and large come to determine their course of actions. The earlier generation of activists abhor ‘NGOisation’, largely regulated by the foreign capital, for dissipating the force of women’s movement (Mehrotra 2002).

5.5  The LGBT Movement

Increasing AIDS consciousness in the late 1980s necessitates the widening of the discourse on sexuality beyond violence against women and population control. Internationally funded HIV/AIDS projects were taken up by many NGOs. In Kolkata, the Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee (DMSC), emanated from a Government of India STD-HIV intervention project, now works as a women sex workers’ union demanding the right to sex work. In the 1990s, the LGBT (Lesbian-gay-bisexual-transsexual) movement was gradually put in order, providing spaces for the political expression of the ‘non-normative sexualities’: around the rights of same-sex people, the hijras and the kothis. The movement has induced the “counter-heteronormative” arguments claiming to revoke the Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which penalizes homosexual sexual acts (Menon 2009: 98). In 2009, the Delhi High Court had decriminalised homosexuality between two consenting adults in private. In December 2013, however, setting aside the 2009 judgement, the Supreme Court endorses the constitutional validity of the penal provision against same-sex practices. Questioning heteronormativity is now an inalienable part of the agenda of the different strands of women’s movement in the country. Underlying this broad agreement there are internal strains and discrepancies. The interfaces of the women’s movement with the struggles of queer and the LGBT are often fraught with tension. If the issue of sexuality is not denigrated as an ‘elitist concern’, the impulse of integrating diverse sexual proclivities and practices tend to efface their specific identities and politics.

6.  Summary

Parallel to the practices of exclusion and violence against women, India evokes an animated history of movements and protest. Women’s resistance, assimilating formal and informal mechanisms, acquires manifold forms: writing, public march, non-cooperation, prolonged political and legal battles, hugging trees, excessive salting of meals, singing songs of celebration or remembering injustices (Jeffrey & Basu 1998). They defy the ostensibly resolute structures and norms concerning women’s work, education, sexuality, family roles, and motherhood. Multiple contexts and issues, across caste-class-region-language-sexual orientation, have raised multiple and contending voices. The gradual weakening of the supposed unity, which used to be the hallmark of the first and to some extent the second phase of women’s movement in India, is not always a matter of apprehension. The fading of the purported solidarity could be considered as a mark of increasing consciousness at multiple levels. For a nuanced politics of women’s movement internal differences are often constitutive.