5.1.2. Dimensions of Indian Women’s Movement

Unlike the women’s movement in the West, the Indian women’s movement began in the shadow of colonial rule and the commitment to attain freedom from colonial rule. Thus, the Indian women’s movement transcended the limited gender framework unlike the women’s liberation struggles in the other parts of the world, especially in the West where the principal purpose was to address the relationship between women and men in the private and public spheres. Questions of independence and freedom from the colonial power were inextricably linked with the consciousness of the Indian women’s movement, a consciousness of women in relation to the larger society, not only to men.

Since the late 19th century Indian society, witnessed an active feminist movement. The early attempts at reforming the conditions under which Indian women lived were mainly carried out by western educated middle and high-class men. Soon they were joined by the women of their families. These women along with the men began organized movements fighting against the

oppressive social practices such as female infanticide, sati, child marriage, laws prohibiting widow remarriage, etc.

The public participation of these women of middle and high caste and class background led to the birth of women’s organizations in the early 20th century. They began fighting for the status and rights of women but this task was unambiguously located within the agenda of the freedom struggle as a whole. Another strand in the women’s movement developed roughly around this time. The Left-radical tendency was shaped in women’s movement by their activities among women of the working class. Women with Left political leanings were involved in working class and revolutionary peasant struggles, such as the struggle in Telangana.

After Independence, many of the bourgeois-liberal section advocated for representation of women within the system. Late 1960s and early 1970s witnessed the resurgence of women’s movement, mainly due to the repercussion of the problems that cropped up at the national front (such as price rise) and the women’s active mobilizations at the international front. The struggle against the Emergency saw the rise of many new women’s groups, which rejected the politics of earlier women’s organizations. These groups sprang up as part of the movement for democracy and against gender discrimination and later emerged as autonomous organizations without any explicit party affiliations though many of them were drawn from political parties. They mainly intended to raise feminist issues in mass organizations such as trade unions or kisan samitis. Many autonomous groups, which were mostly women-only groups, without party affiliations and conventional hierarchical organizational structures, were also formed mainly dealing with domestic issues such as domestic violence.

Women’s movement of the late 1970s and early 1980s were dominated by such autonomous women’s groups, which were mostly city based. At the same time feminist consciousness had taken place in some of the rural movements too. Overall, Indian Women Movement witnessed three tendencies in terms of their affiliations- the bourgeoisie liberals, the left radicals and the autonomous groups.