25 Contemporary Women’s Movement: Campaigns, Organizations, Issues

Manisha Rao

INTRODUCTION

The Women’s Movement in India has an important legacy in the social reform movement of the nineteenth and twentieth century’s. With an emphasis on education for women, a number of evil practices were banned and women became self reliant and empowered. Women made significant contributions to the nationalist movement especially as seen in the Swadeshi & Satyagraha movements (Forbes 1996). Women who participated in the nationalist struggles formed women’s organizations at the national level. Like for example the Indian Women’s Association in 1917, the All India Women’s Conference (AIWC) in 1924. Women participated in the Left groups, worker’s movements, Ambedkarite and Self- Respect movements. However the emphasis was on women’s participation in the freedom movement alongside the men while at the same time living within the confines of the family and limited social sphere. Thus without radically challenging the patriarchal social order, women could access the public world.

In the post –Independence era, the optimism that Independence would mean an end to gender inequalities led women’s groups to more welfare oriented work. Welfare oriented and reformist programmes were also encouraged by the State.

One of the most significant achievements for the rights of women, were the guarantees provided by the constitution as to equal rights with men as well as universal adult suffrage and in doing so raised the standards with which we assess the all-round situation of Indian women. It must be said however, that these changes did not bring about any tangible changes in their social and material lives. While the constitution assured rights, women beginning to search for economic and political mobility in the post-independence period, met with obstacles. New rights conflicted with the patriarchal mindset that pervaded social life in India for generations.With the national movement coming to an end in the 50s and 60s the most important reasons for involving and organizing women disappeared with it. The government itself supported the development of ‘mahila mandals’ and reformist programs to address women’s issues. The AIWC, for example, transformed itself from a women’s organization to mainly a social organization running schools and hostels rather than organizing women’s struggle. The decade of the 1950s was marked by a lull in the women’s movement.The focus at this time was primarily on nation-building and together with social disabilities that the women of that time had to face resulted in the movement becoming fragmented. The women’s question no longer held great importance in the public arena.

The module follows a timeline format to chart the progress of the women’s movement. It has two main sections – The 70s and The 80s followed by a summarizing Conclusion. Each of the 2 main sections are interspersed with campaigns, organizations and issues central to the movement.

THE 70’S

This period of calm did not last too long. 15 years on, beset by myriad problems the new democratic government refused to tackle, people began to organize politically with women occupying central roles in these struggles. The 60s and the early 70s were peppered with radical social movements – student uprisings, worker and peasant protests and also tribal and anti-caste movements. These movements covered a vast range – from Gandhian-socialist non-violent protests to far left Maoist insurgencies. Many of the first women’s movements in post-independence India were initiated by the Gandhian-socialists – anti-alcohol agitations in north India and anti-corruption agitations among others.The new women’s groups that emerged after the lull clearly understood women’s issues and analysed them differently from those before them. Their emphasis was no longer on charity and social work – a common characteristic in women’s groups in the post-independence era.

According to Indu Agnihotri and Vina Mazumdar in their article titled ‘Changing Terms of Political Discourse – Women’s Movement in India, 1970’s -1990’s’ , the resurgence of the women’s movement in the contemporary India has been impacted by “ (1) The crisis of state and government in the 70s going into the emergency; (2) the post-emergency upsurge in favour of civil rights; (3) the mushrooming of women’s organizations in the early 1980s and the arrival of women’s issue on the agenda; (4) the mid-1980’s, marked by a fundamentalist advance; and the 1990s, when the crisis has deepened with regard to the state, government and society.” (Agnihotri & Mazumdar, (1995), pp 1869)

The women’s movement in India only gained any real traction post 1970. Protests in Maharashtra at this time as well as anti-price rise and anti-alcohol activisms contributed to its development. Two women’s groups that emerged at this time took it upon themselves to study the causes of women’s oppression. Both grew out of the Maoist far left – The Progressive Organization of Women and the League of Women Soldiers for Equality. The women’s movement was beginning to question the state on issues from land rights to legal issues concerning rape, dowry and personal law. The movements were also questioning the government’s path of development, accusing it of being gender blind. Even though these protests and agitations could not boast of women leaders as they were organized mainly by males and political parties, women became aware of their collectively held strength. Radha Kumar (1990) argues that the most significant movements at this time were the Shahada1 and anti-price rise movements in Maharashtra and SEWA2 and Nav Nirman in Gujarat. The anti-price rise agitation was started in 1973 by 2 socialist and a communist party coming together to mobilize city women. The Nav Nirman movement in Gujarat, started by students to protest rapidly rising prices was also joined by middle class women in large numbers in 1974. This movement was not specifically anti-patriarchal, on the contrary it saw domestic expenditure and by extension, the family and the household as a woman’s sphere. In Hyderabad, women students who were part of the organization called Progressive Organization of Women (POW) started campaigning against dowry and sexual harassment. The fact however, that women joined public protests in large numbers was itself a threat to patriarchy and Radha Kumar believes that it laid the foundations of anti-patriarchal sentiments that would follow in the feminist movements of the late 70s.

In the mid-70s the UN declared 1975 as the International Women’s Year and 1975-1985 as the international decade for women. It had given a mandate to governments of member countries that required them to conduct research into the status of women so that they could critically assess it. A special committee called the Committee on the Status of Women in India (CSWI) was appointed for this purpose and it included activists, academics and members of parliament.

‘Towards Equality’, the report by the Committee on the Status of Women in India which was completed in 1974 just before the national emergency, and is considered the foundation of the women’s movement in India as it reinvented the discussion regarding the ‘women’s question’ and what it meant to policy makers and the state as well as activists and researchers. The report brought to the fore issues like gender inequality made obvious through imbalance in sex ratios, mortality rates and the trials faced by women on a social and cultural level like dowry, child marriage etc. It flagged legal practices that were discriminatory, economic practices that failed to give women’s contribution its due as well as disadvantages to girls and women in the education system and the political system. The report acted as an eye opener and spurred many groups to take action. It effectively unearthed and put on display the disastrous ground realities for women in India. The reality was in fact, a far cry from the constitutional mandate This report led to parliamentary debates in which it came to be recognized that women were not only beneficiaries of policy but could also contribute critically to the policy making process, as policymakers. The press, through their coverage of dowry deaths and rapes like the Mathura rape case, created awareness among civil society to these issues. In fact, as far as generation and dissemination of information is concerned the women’s movement and the media played a significant role, working in tandem.

As far as the State is concerned, the 70s was a time of “‘deepening crises’ within society and the state”, more so when the Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi declared emergency in 1975. Democratic rights and civil liberties were trampled upon by the government which led to citizens movements all over the country to reassert democracy. The women’s movement was one among many that asserted the participative role that citizens must be allowed to play in the political and development processes in the country.Therefore while the emergency led to a forced lull in protests and agitations, theoretical discussions continued and by the time the emergency was lifted in 1977 several women’s organizations had already begun taking shape. Most of these groups were based in larger cities Bombay, Delhi, Aurangabad and Madras among others.

After 1975, the women’s movement saw the need to organize themselves effectively and also began taking its cue from mass interests and popular politics. The mid-70s saw many middle class educated women attempting to analyze women’s oppression as well as resorting to radical politics. Many political parties started Women’s Wings – the Congress had the Mahila Congress and the Janata Party started the Mahila Dakshata Samiti which led protests on various issues concerning women. Gail Omvedt calls these ‘pre-movements’ because while they show the power that women have in society and eventually lead to the development of women’s movements, they raise issues of class and society as a whole, rather than only women’s issues. By acting as a starting point i.e. bringing women into mass movements in great numbers, the 70’s were a watershed in the history of the Indian women’s movement.

THE 80’S

The careful analysis of women’s issues and oppression and the steps taken to improve their condition crystallized into the ‘autonomous women’s movement’. By the 1980’s, women’s organizations were not only developing but also creating alliances and defining their identity, purpose and strategies. However, emphasizing that all women suffered a common oppression wasn’t enough because in reality intersecting systems of class, ethnicity, caste and power relations created differences. It was for this reason that the women’s movement was seen as a middle class phenomenon. To compound these issues, by the mid-1980s even the rights that women had were being attacked using tradition and culture to emphasize that a women’s natural historical role lay in reproduction.

The Autonomous Women’s Groups were different from the older women’s organizations in that they were analyzing the root of women’s oppression and fighting for the rights of women and for the issues they considered important, from a new perspective and by employing militant means.‘Autonomous’, in this context does not mean that the women’s question was depoliticized but that the groups did not have affiliations with any political parties, the government or any political connections. Their members were far from apolitical and their leaders tended to be young, dedicated to the cause, educated middle class women who moved out of mass organizations. While the mass based movements focused on the problems of the poor and highlighted issues like caste and communalism, they failed to recognize the oppression of women and the fact that they were perpetuating patriarchal norms in both the political and personal sphere.

One of the most important issues the women’s movement began to address in the late 70s and 80s and continues to address today is that of violence against women – in the family, community, society and within the state. This was done through campaigns against rape, dowry and newer social evils like amniocentesis3 and sex selection as well as more general issues like population control and political violence.The women’s movement in general has taken recourse to the law when required in order to effect social change. Women’s organizations in the 80s took action not only to demand legislative change but also to challenge existing archaic and inequitable laws. The Mathura rape4 and its aftermath – the acquittal of the policemen rapists led to the agitation across the country to reopen the case in the Supreme Court as well as to review the pro-rapist rape laws that existed at this time. This case became the spark which caused women’s groups in the 80s to organize against sexual oppression especially of women from the lower classes who were especially prone to custodial rape, sexual harassment and gang rape. In Mumbai, the organization Forum Against Rape was started.They protested publicly and asked for legal action to be taken. Their work bore fruit – rape laws were modified thanks to the anti-rape campaigns of the late 70s and early 80s. The first women-specific report that the Government requested from the Law Commission was one concerning rape. The Commission took into consideration the arguments and points brought up by the various women’s organizations and activists and finally recommended not only changing the substantive law but also making changes in procedure and evidence part of the law. In 1983, Criminal Law Amendment act was passed in which revealing the rape victim’s identity was made an offence and made ‘custodial rape’ a new category of offence that places the burden of proof on the rape accused. The anti-dowry campaigns taken up by the media in the 80s also helped spread awareness about this social problem. Organizations like the ‘Dahej Virodhi Chetna Manch’ in Delhi composed of women’s rights organizations and other civil rights groups campaigned through street theatre, posters and demonstrations to focus on one of the most extreme forms of domestic violence manifested in dowry deaths. The violence that women experience in the private sphere of the home is often the most difficult to reach and prevent. Joint Select Committee of Parliament appointed in 1981 looked into this issue. The Law Commission was also conducting an enquiry at the same time into this issue and submitted a report of its recommendations in 1983 to make changes to both the substantive law as well as the Evidence Act in connection with dowry deaths. Acts of violence against women like the rape of Mathura or Rameezabee5 as well incidents of Sati in the case of Roop Kanwar6acted as a rallying point for women’s groups and a starting point for ordinary women to join the women’s movement.

Some women who were a part of the leftist movement in the late 70s and early 80s felt alienated and began to separate and start autonomous feminist groups which took up the causes of other social movements regarding poverty, class and caste issues at that time. POW in Hyderabad was replaced by The Stree Shakti Sanghatana which in turn influenced the Purogami Sanghatana’s formation in Pune. Stree Sangarsh and Mahila Dakshata in Delhi and Vimochana in Bangalore are among the other prominent organizations started at this time. Magazines and Journals were also developing and spreading the message of women’s equality in English as well as regional languages. The Feminist Network in English from Bombay, Ahalya and Pratibadi Chetna in Bengali from Calcutta, Baiza in Marathi from Pune are only a few. The well-known feminist journal, Manushi was started in Delhi by a group of women in 1977. The 80s saw an increase in feminist literature because the feminist literary critics felt that women needed a literature to call their own – a space in which they could fully express their experiences and consider their feminine issues. This writing expressed feelings of anger, oppression, exploitation and hatred. A feminist consciousness was emerging through the participation of women in various mass movements Attempts were also made in the 80s to organize workers unions for women workers. In Bombay in particular they were against the retrenchment of women mine workers and textile laborers. At a time when work was hard to come by and unemployment was rife, these attempts were not quite as successful as was expected. Women stood in support of their men demanding at least one wage per family even if that wage was earned by the male. The feminists attempting to organize these workers realized that women were more likely to be militant if the cause was one that affected their family rather than those that specifically affected them as women. Some women’s organizations also emerged from women’s participation in broader peasant struggles during which they began to recognize their own oppression. However, as we have seen in the case of women workers, their development was far from smooth. While women were a central part of militant struggles they did not manage to change the patriarchal basis of these organizations. For example the position of women in the Mahila Mukti Morcha in Madhya Pradesh always had a greater focus on class rather than sex. The issues that they focused on were mostly class and situation specific except in a few cases where discussions about the lack of women trade union leaders would put the gender discussion in the forefront. Patriarchy however, was never a bone of contention in the Mahila Mukti Morcha because they believed that by highlighting the inequality in power relations between male and female would result in the overall weakening rather than strengthening of the movement.The Chhattisgarh Mine Workers Shramik Sangh are also good example of this as their women members were more likely to organize successfully when the union was mindful of issues like housing and schooling and health services for the workers families. City based feminists doing the job of organizing in these cases were learning valuable lessons. They were moving into unfamiliar territory and coordinating activities sometimes with groups that had never been exposed to feminist ideas or activities. The women’s movement in the 80s therefore can count among its successes the understanding attitude it developed towards the issues of rural women even through constantly facing criticism that it was largely and urban movement.

An important question arises here. Will issue based agitations ever help to create a broad based women’s movement? Do we rely too much on legislative measures and militant activism that are only short term solutions rather than destroying larger structures of oppression? Will people eventually lose their enthusiasm in the movement? In this regard Kishwar argues that selecting only women’s issues only narrows down the scope of politics. Instead she suggests organizing as women but joining hands with other groups as well because women are almost always at least half of all oppressed groups. We must be present in movements in general while we struggle for our own rights.

The 80’s was also a time when the state began using the language of the women’s movement – saying that women’s groups need to organize themselves and that women need to fight for their own rights. In the beginning of 1987 the Government of India set up a commission – ‘The National Commission on Self-Employed Women and Women in the Informal Sector’ on the with Magsaysay award winner Ela Bhatt who was also a member of the Rajya Sabha at the time, at the helm. The ‘Shram Shakti Report’ submitted by the five member commission describes the ‘self-employed’ and un-organized women workers they were meant to study, in great depth. It details the resilience of these women amidst government insensitivity and lack of infrastructure. The report was vast in its scope and proved to be of good use to both bureaucrats/planners and women activists, alike. Women working as fisherfolk, rag-pickers, in tea gardens, as construction workers or those selling small goods on the pavements have always been marginalized – shunted aside by the development process. Women in the informal sector often take up ‘male’ activities like transplanting, harvesting, threshing and stone breaking yet the census recognizes them as housewives and nothing more. 60% of women, according to the commission’s findings were the only breadwinners for the family but survived on only half of a man’s wage. Ela Bhatt, Chairperson of the Commission says in the reports preface, “I learnt that these women are better fighters against poverty than their men, have more calculative, stable, forward looking strategies to deal with their own environment, yet the women remain poorer…” (Sharma, (n.d.), pp 7) Failure to implement already existing laws only worsens the situation. The Shram Shakti report therefore includes recommendations made by the committee to among other things maintain and promote grassroot level organizations in order to improve the circumstances of women in informal employment in India.The National Perspective Plan was also formulated in 1988 for the betterment of women with the cooperation of the state, which made plans to improve the lives of women in the spheres of education, health and participation in politics. The All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA), Center for Women’s Development Studies (CWDS), National Federation for Working Women (NFWW), All India Coordination Committee for Working Women (AICCWW), Joint Women’s Program and the YWCA of India all formulated a document in 1988 criticizing the NPP on the grounds that it was superficial and did not go to the root of women’s oppression.

The celebrations marking the end of the decade for women in 1985 included a conference in Pune and a theoretically focused one in Trivandrum organized by the All India Democratic Women’s Association, marking the range of ideologies that composed the Indian Women’s Movement by that time. The third wave of the movement tried to understand the oppressive and hierarchically structured relationship between women and men and social systems so that changes could be introduced into Indian society. There was an attempt to reformulate the women’s question.

Another challenge faced by the movement was that of fragmentation within autonomous groups – a divide between the activists and non-activists, urban based groups with a focus on issues like domestic violence and understanding oppression and the grassroots programmes among the poor in both urban and rural areas coping for their survival in which gender issues form a part. Landlessness, poverty, bondage etc. are not only class issues but also gender issues because in these cases women suffer double the oppression men do. To compound the problem of class and culture between the activists and the non-activists there is also the problem of communication. There exists a lack of communication between the English upper and middle class English speaking women and the majority which happens to be poor and Hindi speaking. This barrier extends from language, dress and lifestyle to perceptions, perspectives and the kind of politics they employ for their struggle and what its focus will be. This makes it difficult for one camp to relate to the other. Besides the worry of fragmentation of autonomous women’s groups are the tensions that exist between those groups that are associated or connected with political groups and those solely concerned with feminist politics.Will it ever be possible to overcome the divide and be allies in spite of caste, class and other divides and develop a political perspective that benefits all?

Women’s studies and the women’s movement have had an important association. Women’s studies exposed women to scholarship and widened the scope of the struggle. Its attempt at understanding women’s issues using economics, politics and the understanding of knowledge and power better equipped women by transforming their consciousness and giving them a sense of identity and purpose. Women’s studies are not ‘value neutral’ as other social sciences are. It is knowledge as intervention in order to bring about social change by making gender disparities clear and tracing the roots of the oppression of women. The Third National Conference of Women’s Studies in 1986 addressed the burning issues of the time – religion, secularism and women’s rights. There was a need to appreciate the close relationship that religion and patriarchy had. “The two critical issues raised during the discussions were at what point religious identity becomes a communal identity and when communal identity becomes important how gender identity get subsumed within it.” (Sharma, (n.d.), pp 18)

As mentioned earlier the 80’s were a time when women’s traditional roles were emphasized. Revivalist forces were gaining power and secularism was under fire. Women turned out to be the biggest losers when religion, which was gaining importance at such a time began to take precedence over their rights, resulting in further inequality. Fundamentalism in the 80’s in some ways caused the fight for women’s equality to regress. It was in 1975 itself that the Report of the Committee on the Status of Women in India demanded a Uniform Civil Code among its recommendations. Its exact words were “the absence of the Uniform Civil Code in the last quarter of the 20th century, 27 years after Independence, is an incongruity that cannot be justified with all the emphasis that is placed on secularism, science and modernization. The continuance of various personal laws which accept discrimination between men and women, violate the Fundamental Rights and the Preamble of the Constitution which promises to secure to all citizens “equality of status” and is against the spirit of national integration and secularism.” (Sharma, (n.d.), pp 18)

An oft-cited case of a Muslim woman, Shah Bano is the perfect example to illustrate the relationship between communalism, fundamentalism and women’s rights. Before the Shah Bano case came to the fore, Muslim women, like all others were receiving lifelong maintenance from the courts in cases of divorce under Sec. 125 of the Criminal Code. It is important to historicize the Shah Bano controversy in order to understand the implications that the political, social and religious climate had on the issue. In the 1950’s and 60’s, India was riding high on the ideals of secularism but by the 80’s this optimism had given way to communal conflicts, regional separatism, caste wars and fundamentalism. In such a time of ‘civil war’, communalidentity became very important as political mobilization is done on the basis of identity. In such a climate, the court, by upholding Shah Bano’s right to maintenance as a divorced woman and playing social reformer, became the savior of the oppressed Muslim woman-oppressed clearly by her own personal law. Shah Bano was not only a woman, however, as far as identity goes. She was also a Muslim. When the judgment was pronounced in her favor, what the Indian judiciary was really saying is that Muslim personal law is oppressive to women. Further, mentioning the need to introduce the UCC in the same breath was threatening to the minority in such a fractured socio-political climate. At this time the right wing fundamentalist Hindus with their own agenda were also voicing their support against Muslim personal law and for Muslim women’s rights. They were also pushing for the UCC. This became a rallying point for some Muslims to claim that their personal law was violated by this judgment and by extension their identity and their right as citizens of the country was violated. Within Muslim society itself, there existed many liberals who were demanding reform in personal law. The spread of the Supreme Court verdict and their comments on Muslim personal law irked the fundamentalists who used this as an opportunity to assert themselves. But for Shah Bano her religious identity and minority identity on one hand and her gender identity on the other were at cross-purposes with each other. One identity was dissolved by the others. Shah Bano had to make a choice: Religious, minority, community identity or gender identity. She rescinded her right to maintenance and remained loyal to the Muslim fold. For fear of alienating a large and faithful Muslim votebank, the new legislation introduced in the wake of this controversy was the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act (1986) took away the right of maintenance for Muslim women beyond the iddat period.

The women’s movement that had now begun to recognize differences between women based on caste, class, region and culture was now also forced to recognize religious distinction. The category of ‘Indian woman’ now included the important constituent of communal identity. Any attempts made to better the condition of women within a religious community was labelled as an ‘interference’ and as going against the principle of secularism.

Conclusion

With the dawn of independence came the promise of equality of all Indian women with men backed by a progressive and through constitution. By the 1970s it was beginning to become clear that the reality of the situation would not be quite so reassuring. Joining mass movements which emerged as a result of dissatisfaction with issues in the 70s coupled with the blatant civil rights violations during the emergency, made women from upper, middle and lower classes in India aware of their power as a demographic. Anti-alcohol and anti-price rise movements may not have been inherently anti-patriarchy but all the same they were helping women to realize that they could, in fact have a hand in a better life for themselves. The late 70s and early 80s marked the rise of the ‘autonomous women’s group’ – those that did not have any political connections or affiliations. The ‘women’s question’ came back into focus with a serious attempt at analyzing and studying women’s oppression and the role played by patriarchy. Violence against women in its various forms rape, sati, dowry death, female infanticide etc. were all protested through various ways and through varied media. Several violent incidents against women, which lead to cases reaching the highest levels of the judicial system and their judgments mobilised women and further unified their objective of fighting the unequal system. Part of these protests also included demands to revamp archaic laws and to introduce new legislations in the interest of women. Another notable feature of the women’s movement in the 80s is the rise of fundamentalism and communalism and the price that women were being forced to pay at the expense of religious fundamentalism.

References

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• Gull, R., & Shafi, A. (2014). Indian women’s movement after independence. International Research Journal of Social Sciences, 3(5), 46-54.
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• Sharma, K. (n.d.). Shared aspirations, fragmented realities: contemporary women’s movement in India: Its dialectics and dilemmas. Retrieved from http://www.cwds.ac.in/ocpaper/sharedaspirationsks.pdf