-Mahatma Gandhi

At the time when women’s organizations were fighting for women’s political and economic rights and trying to improve their position by education and social reform, women’s struggle entered a new phase with the arrival of Mahatma Gandhi on the Indian political scene. Women had been associated with the freedom struggle before that too. They had attended sessions of the Indian National Congress and taken part in the Swadeshi movement in Bengal, 1905-11 and in the Home Rule Movement. But the involvement of really large number of women in the national movement began when Gandhiji launched the first Non Co-operation Movement and gave a special role to women. Peasant women played an important role in the rural satyagrahas of Borsad and Bardoli. Women participated in the Salt satyagraha, in the Civil Disobedience Movement, in the Quit India Movement and in all the Gandhian satyagrahas. They held meetings, organized processions, picketed shops selling foreign cloth and liquor and went to jail.

Gandhiji took interest in collective mobilization of women to fight for political freedom as well as for their social and political rights. He felt that women were most suited for Satyagraha as they have great qualities appropriate for non-violent struggle. 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. Their hatred of the British was intense and their plan was to make attempts on European lives as widely as possible. They believed in individual acts of heroism not in building a mass movement.

Women participated in the freedom movement because they were inspired by patriotism and wanted to see the end of foreign rule. It is debatable as to how far this participation liberated them. Women’s participation in the freedom movement did not lead to a separate autonomous women’s movement since it was part of the anti-colonial movement. While women who picketed shops, marched in processions or went to jail or threw bombs did not question male leadership or patriarchal values, it did generate in them a sense of self-confidence and a realization of their own strength. Many returned to their homes but others continued their activities in the public arena. It transformed the lives of many young widows such as Durgabai Deshmukh or Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya. Women won respect for their courage and the large numbers in which they participated in the freedom struggle. The first woman to participate in the nationalist movement during salt march was Sarojini Naidu who later became the first woman president of the Congress.

Women’s participation in the national movement helped in breaking several of the old barriers of tradition and custom. Women’s organization side by side raised their voices for removal of social injustice meted to them, which resulted in passing of the resolution on Fundamental Right of equal rights for both the sexes at the Karachi session of the Indian National Congress in 1930. The declaration reads as follows:

1. All citizens are equal before the law, irrespective of religion, caste, creed or sex.

2. No disability attaches to any citizen, by reason of his or her religion, caste, creed or sex, in regard to public employment, office of power or honour, and in the exercise of any trade or calling.

3. The franchise shall be on the basis of universal adult suffrage.

4. Woman shall have the right to vote, to represent and the right to hold public offices.

Agrarian Struggles and Revolts

It is often assumed that only middle class educated women participated in social movements. Part of the struggle has been to remember the forgotten history of women’s participation. Women participated along with men in struggles and revolts originating in tribal and rural areas in the colonial period. The Tebhaga movement in Bengal, the Telangana arms struggle from the erstwhile Nizam’s rule, and the Warli tribal’s revolt against bondage in Maharashtra are some examples.