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Ferninism incorporates a doctrine of equal rights for women, an organized movement to attain these rights, and an ideology of social transformation aimed at creating a world for women beyond simple social
equality. It is broadly the ideology of women's liberation, since intrinsic to
it is the belief that women suffer injustice because of their gender. In recent
years the definition of feminism has gone beyond simply meaning movements for equality and emancipation which agitate for equal rights and
legal reforms to redress the prevailing discrimination against women. The
word has now been expanded to mean an awareness of women's oppression and exploitation within the family, at work, and in society, and
conscious action by women to change this. However, in the first phase of
feminism in India (1917-1947) with which this essay deals, the women's
movement was primarily concerned with demanding equal political,
social, and economic rights and for the removal of all forms of discrimina-
state. This claim did not negate the fact that there were indigenous differences of class, caste, and gender; but people were able to launch struggles
which blurred these divisions and stressed the commonality of a national
identity against the foreign enemy.
A national movement in India can be said to have begun with the
foundation of the Indian National Congress in 1885. The process of nationbuilding and the creation of a national identity was paralleled, in fact,
preceded by the growth of social reform movements focusing on women's
issues. Since the status of women in society was the popular barometer of
"civilization," many reformers had agitated for legislation that would
improve their situation.
By the second decade of the nineteenth century, social reformers
began deploring the condition of women. Under British rule, with its new
agrarian and commercial relations and the introduction of English education, law courts, and an expanding administrative structure, an urban
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liam Ward and Alexander Duff, East India Company's officers such as
Charles Grant and James Mill, and travelers such as Tavernier, Barbosa,
and Cranford, who were all critical of the position of women in Indian
society. The Indian intelligentsia, therefore, focused its attention on
women's issues. Inspired by Western Orientalists like Sir William Jones, H.
T. Colebrook, H. H. Wilson, Max Mller, and others, they created the
notion of a golden age in ancient India where women held a high position
which subsequently declined. From a sense of humiliation as a subject
people, they tended to glorify the past. Every measure of reform
demanded for women was justified on the ground that it was sanctioned
by religious texts.
There was a link between these reformers and British officials and
non-officials, because the former depended on the latter for enacting laws
prohibiting sati, raising the age of marriage, or permitting widow remarriage. Thus, the colonial government was perceived by the reformers as an
ally in its fight against tradition.
By the end of the nineteenth century a few women emerged in the
reform movement to form their own organizations. Swamakumari Devi
of the Tagore family in Calcutta founded a Ladies Theosophical Society in
1882 and four years later the Sakhi Samiti, "so that women of respectable
families should have the opportunity of mixing with each other and
devoting themselves to the cause of social welfare___"l At the same time,
Pandita Ramabai Saraswati formed the Arva Mahila Soma) in Poona, and
were drawn from among a small group of urban educated families. These
associations aimed at bringing women out of their homes and encouraging them to take interest in public affairs. Some of these were practical
social reform organizations, while others were discussion platforms for
women.
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From the very beginning membership of the Indian National Congress was open to women. At its first session, Allan Octavian Hume asked
political reformers of all shades of opinion never to forget that "unless the
elevation of the female element of the nation proceeds pari passu (with an
equal pace) with their work, all their labor for the political enfranchise-
ment of the country will prove vain."2 The report of the 1889 session of the
Indian National Congress in Bombay notes "that no less than ten lady
delegates graced the assembly." Among them were Europeans, Christians,
one Parsi, one orthodox Hindu, and three Brahmins. Panita Ramabai
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it. This argument was taken up in India in the 1870s, but it was only one
of the arguments against the Act. It was also argued by the nationalists that
this gave the police the power to harass all classes of Indian women
mdiscriminately. In 1895, a government bill to expand the scope of police
surveillance over prostitutes was opposed by Surendranath Banerjee, a
nationalist leader, on the grounds that it threatened individual liberty by
observed by women on this day was arandhan or not lighting the stove for
cooking. Protest meetings were held by women and about 500 of them
watched the laying of the foundation stone of the Federation Hall at
Calcutta on October 16, 1905"Partition Day." Women organized
swadeshi melas and opened shops which sold only indigenous goods. We
read of women giving up use of foreign cloth and smashing their foreign
bangles.12
Various revolutionary societies such as the Swadesh Bandhab, Anustlan,
Dawn, and others, sprang up during these years in Bengal and women
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presented to him and his mother, and contributions were made for his
invoked to liberate Mother India and become a beacon for her nationalist
India. In 1907 she attended the International Socialist Congress in Stuttgart, where she unfurled the Indian National flag and persuaded the
Congress to support Indian independence. In 1909, her group started a
monthly journal, Bande Mataram, published from Geneva. She believed
that nationalist movements all over the world were linked by their antiimperialism. A staunch supporter of women's education, Madame Cama
held that Indian liberation movements would fail without the support of
Indian women. Statements to this effect were made by nationalists
throughout India. Women's education was necessary, it was argued, for
them to fulfill their roles as wives and mothers. "India needs nobly trained
wives and mothers, wise and tender rulers of the household, educated
teachers of the young___13 The power and strength of Indian mothers was
asserted, rather than their weaknesses. Education was a birthright and
those who denied it to women robbed themselves and the nation, for
Indian women were mothers of the nation. Education was not only a
birthright, it was what sons inherited from their mothers. The place of
Indian women in national life was as mothers"the hand that rocks the
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cradle rules the world." As Sarojini Naidu said, women all over the world
were united by "the common divine quality of motherhood."14 Surendranath Banerjee echoed this sentiment when he appealed to all Indians
"to sink their differences and unite under the banner of (the) religion of
motherhood."15
women of all castes and creeds on the basis of their common interests in
the moral and material progress of India.16 Between 1910 and 1920 the
number of women's organizations grew rapidly. Called by various
namesMahila Samitis, Women's Clubs, Ladies' Societiesthey emerged
in the cities and towns of British India and native states. In 1917 the
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Ravana, so the Indians must not cooperate with the British.18 He told the
women of India that he expected great things from them and that he had
enormous faith in their capacity to sacrifice and endure suffering. Sushila
Nayar, a close disciple of Gandhi, recalls a meeting at Rohtak where the
hall was filled to capacity with women in lehanqas and rustic clothes
and Gandhi, with outstretched hands, received money and jewelry for
the Tilak fund.19 Women in different parts of the country were drawn
to him by his magnetic personality, his unique naturalness, and transparent sincerity.
During the noncooperation movement (1920-22) Basanti Devi accompanied her husband, Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das, on his tours of Bengal
and asked women to boycott foreign goods. Women volunteers sol khadi
(homespun cloth) on the streets of Calcutta. Kasturba Gandhi, wife of
Mahatma Gandhi, presided over the Gujarat Provincial Conference and
appealed to women to take up spinning and weaving khadi. In Allahabad,
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In February 1930, Gandhi announced that he would launch a satyagraha by marching from Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad to Dandina
Women all over the country broke the salt law, organized processions
and meetings, and picketed shops selling foreign cloth and liquor. This
agitation marked a new level of participation by women in the nationalist
movement. "Women, young and old, rich and poor, came tumbling out in
their hundreds and thousands, shaking off the traditional shackles that
Thousands of women actively participated in the Quit India movement of 1942. As the news of the arrest of Gandhi and other Congress
leaders spread, women spontaneously came out to hold demonstrations,
organize strikes, and court imprisonment. Many went "underground,"
helping parallel governments and leading illegal activities in the course of
which a few were even killed.
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of nonviolence, preferring to join revolutionary or terrorist groups. Idealistic and highly emotional and impulsive, these young girls' hatred for the
British was intense; their plan was to make attempts on European lives as
widely as possible. They believed in individual acts of heroism, not in
building up a mass movement. They were inspired by patriotism, not
feminist ideas.
Most women joined the freedom movement because, like men, they
were inspired by nationalism and wanted to see the end of foreign rule.
An important factor was family influence. Women from families such as
those of Gandhi, Nehru, C. R. Das, Jamnalal Bajaj, and Lajpat Rai naturally
wanted to participate. Where the atmosphere at home was nationalistic
and fathers, husbands, or brothers were active, so usually were the
women.
linked.25 The merging of the women's movement with the Indian National
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ization to other spheres. Gandhi and Congress are condemned for manipulating women for political ends. These scholars ask whether the lack of
founding member of WIA and AIWC and also a frequent member of the
Congress Working Committee and its president in 1925. She urged women
to petition on issues which affected women's status but remain apolitical
in terms of party allegiance. The concern of women like her for women's
status manifested itself in petitioning, urging more educational facilities,
demanding legal changes in marriage laws, property rights, the franchise,
and so on. They represented urban, upper-class English-speaking women.
The nationalist movement also brought into its fold poor, illiterate rural
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before the committee, whereas others argued that social equality was as
important as political freedom. The former argued that the nation's freedom could never oppose women's freedom.
Women's active role in the freedom struggle together with their courage and organizing ability led the nationalist leaders to grant women
political equality. At its session in Karachi in 1931, the Indian National
Congress declared that in independent India women would have complete political freedom and equality. The National Planning Committee
appointed by the Congress in 1937 had a subcommittee on women
which made radical recommendations regarding women's equal status
which were accepted by the Congress. Yet the majority of men in the
Congress and others involved in the freedom struggle subscribed to
patriarchal values and resented any challenge to male authority within
or outside the family.
Fighting for the country's freedom brought women out of their homes
and made them politically conscious but it did not emancipate or improve
the position or status of the vast majority. How else do we explain the fact
that despite this long history of women's struggle, Indian women today
are one of the most backward in the world with regard to literacy, female
work participation, and sex ratios. Changing societal attitudes towards
women and women's own self-perception which are deeply rooted in our
psyche and social structure is not an easy task. The Indian women's
movement thus has a long way to go in its struggle for bringing about new
values, a new morality, and a new egalitarian relationship.
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Notes
1 Usha Chakraborti, Condition of Bengali Women Around the Second Half of the
WS-48.
4 Sita Ram Singh, Nationalism and Social Reform in India: 1805-1920 (Delhi,
1967), 206.
s Ibid.
9 Kenneth Balihatchet, Race, Sex and Class under the Raj (Delhi, n.d.), 12-39.
io Ibid., 123-143.
Nationalism and a Script for the Past," in Recasting Women, ed. Kumkum Sangari
and Sudesh Vaid (Delhi, 1989), 62.
18 Apama Basu, "The Role of Women in the Indian Struggle for Freedom,"
in Indian Women from Purdah to Modernity, ed. B. R. Nanda (New Delhi, 1976), 20-21.
19 Ibid.
2 Ibid.
72-73.
72-73.
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Section.