Contemporary Indian Feminism

Author(s): Radha Kumar

Source: Feminist Review , Autumn, 1989, No. 33 (Autumn, 1989), pp. 20-29
Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd.

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CONTEMPORARY INDIAN FEMINISM

Radha Kumar

The Women's Liberation movement in India today is so div

cannot be properly described in a brief article, so the focus h
on its main currents and the course they have taken over
years, with occasional digressions into their history.
In many ways the development of feminism in India is
that in Western Europe or the United States: like them, India
feminist movement in the early twentieth century; like them
movement gradually died away after the winning of certain
until, recently, a new feminist movement developed out
porary radical movements.
The sixties and early seventies saw the development of
spate of radical movements in India, from student uprisings,
agitations and peasant insurgencies to tribal, anticaste and
action movements. These spanned a political spectrum from G
socialist (that is, nonviolent protest, based on explicitly m
over specific working or living conditions) to the far left, in
the Maoists. The Gandhian-socialists initiated several of the first
women's movements in post-Independence India (e.g. an antialco
agitation in north India, a consumer action and anticorruption agita
in western India, and a women's trade union, also in western Ind
Interestingly, however, neither they, nor others, looked upon
movements as feminist, nor did they advance any theories of wome
oppression. These were advanced first by two women's groups w
were formed in 1975, both of which grew out of the Maoist far left
Progressive Organization of Women in Hyderabad offered an Eng
analysis of women's subordination, and the League of Women So
for Equality, in Aurangabad linked feminism and anticasteism, s
that religious texts were used to subordinate both women and the l
castes. Although the imposition of a State of Emergency on India in
led to a break in most agitational activities, there was, in many way
intensification of theoretical discussion. In 1977, when the Emergen

Feminist Review No 33, Autumn 1989

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 Feminism in India 21

was lifted, several women's groups had developed out of these

discussions which were able to come 'overground', and several new
groups were also formed. Most of these groups were based in the major
cities, such as Bombay, Delhi, Madras, Pune, Patna and Ahmedabad.
Though there was no particular uniformity between them, their
members were largely drawn from the urban educated middle class, and
this was an important reason for their feeling that their own needs were
minor, and different from the needs of the large, and poor, majority of
Indian women.
These women's groups comprised women from different sections of
the far left, and there was, at this time, considerable debate on the class
basis of women's oppression, the road to women's liberation, and the role
that they themselves could play in this. Historically, the experience of
the Maoist insurgency of the late sixties and its repression and
disintegration in the early seventies, had led many to believe that a
revolutionary transformation of society could only come into being if
different oppressed groups, such as tribals, subordinate castes and
women, first organized and represented themselves, and then coalesced
to fight their common enemies. The question facing the women's groups,
therefore, was of how women could organize and represent themselves.
The general feeling was that the primary role of middle-class groups
such as their own was to generate a consciousness of women's
oppression not only among women but among workers, tribals and
others.
Broadly speaking, two different views were expressed right from
the beginning and continue to be representative even now: one, that
socialist feminists should join trade unions and revolutionary mass
organizations, while continuing to be members of autonomous women's
groups. The former were seen as activist forums and the latter as forums
for the development of socialist-feminist theory. The second view was a
sort of spontanist argument, namely that once a feminist movement
began, it would naturally spread and grow in multiple ways. The two
positions were neither as abstract nor as crude as they sound. By and
large, those holding the first had been, or were, active in radical and far
left, organizations. They felt that these organizations contained space
for the raising of feminist demands. The others had not been, or were not
then, involved in such organizations. They felt that negotiating within
them would yield small gains compared to those won by an independent
women's movement which, through its very existence, would force
political organizations to take note of it.
In the event, most of the women's groups were sufficiently open to
allow both views to coexist within them. They developed links with far
left, working-class, tribal and anticaste organizations, campaigned
around specific issues, and debated and disseminated theories of
women's oppression. In the early years, however, campaigns were
relatively sporadic, and minor compared to the pace of theoretical
activity. Most of the groups remained fairly loose until the beginning of
the eighties - so few even named themselves that at the first

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22 Feminist Review

socialist-feminist conference in Bombay in 1978, their main i

tion was regional - as the 'Bombay group', the 'Delhi group', a
By 1979-80, women's groups and campaigns had starte
India, and ranged from protesting dowry murders and pol
unionizing women workers, domestics and slum-dwellers.
paigns against dowry murders and police rape were in fa
'launched' the women's movement, for it was these that c
attention of the press and became public issues. The campa
dowry murders started in Delhi in 1979, and was the first
dowry deaths, hitherto regarded as suicide, were called m
(Dowry deaths refer to the deaths of young brides who
harassed by their in-laws for more dowry, perhaps better
'bride-burning'.) It was also the first time that the private sp
family was invaded, and held to be a major site for the op
women.

The public/private dichotomy was broken by

demonstrating outside the houses and offices o
responsible for dowry deaths within their families
intervention of both state and civil society. Interes
joined by local residents from their first demo
some months of the campaign groups of residents
began, independently, to make similar protests
rarily boosted the morale of the spontanists, vi
movement were first disturbed by the discovery th
groups came from the right-wing Hindu chauvinis
reform movement, (who opposed dowry murder b
institution of dowry itself, and none of whom
marriages or advocated divorce for the unhappily
independence for women); and then shattered by t
of ensuring that dowry murders were punished. A
or ostracising culprits never became powerful enou
any significant way; attempts to secure conviction
inefficiency combined with a certain degree of corr
of procuring evidence, pressure on the courts whic
very slow, all conspired to this end. They conti
campaigns to improve the administration of the la
In 1980 an open letter by four senior lawyers ag
a case of rape by the police (who constitute a large
in India), sparked off a campaign by feminist g
centred on this particular incident, but in its c
similar incidents. In fact, most feminist campa
develop this way, around a series of individual peo
though the campaign was, lasting only the cour
new developments in the women's movement, w
fundamentally. First of all, it raised the question o
different - and, for many, more painful way: who
against this incident until we had met the wom
found out whether she wanted a protest or not? Su

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 Feminism in India 23

brought upon her, again, the stigma of being a 'dishonoured' w

Shamingly, this question was asked only after the campaign had b
though fortunately, it was found that no damage had been done.
Secondly, feminists had by this time gained considerable confi
and in the campaign against rape they attempted, for the first tim
co-ordinate activities and demands across the left and between several
cities. First in Bombay, and then elsewhere, they formed issue-based
joint action committees, which were coalitions of leftist women's and
student groups. In most places however these represented a formal and
limited kind of joint action, which was rarely maintained throughout a
campaign.
Within a couple of months of the campaign the issue of police rape
was taken up by the major national parties, in an attempt to cash in on
what was becoming a very visible movement, and simultaneously to
outdo one another. Working with the entrenched and hierarchical
organizations of the orthodox left, and finding their own voices
increasingly drowned by the cacophony of competing centre and right
parties, Indian feminists discovered the ironic process whereby an
agitation gained numerical strength by being joined by political blocs,
but at the same time found itself constrained, intellectually, morally
and strategically, by them.
By the early eighties, therefore, the women's movement had grown
in such a way that autonomous feminist groups were only one of its
several currents. Though the centre and right parties soon dropped off,
the socialist and communist parties were becoming increasingly active,
as were the older, hitherto quiescent, women's organizations. At the
same time an interest in women began to be shown by diverse radical
movements.
The socialists had actually formed a women's organization in 1977,
which was affiliated to the newly formed and elected Janata Party, b
between 1978 and 1980 their activities were fairly low-key and th
were for that period marginalized by the feminists. The Commun
Party of India had had a women's front from the late fifties, which h
dwindled into inactivity. It was galvanized only in 1980-81, when t
Party saw that women could again become an important constituency.
The Communist Party of India-Marxist also noted the potential of the
women's movement at this juncture, and formed two women's organiz
ations in 1981, one of which was affiliated to their trade union. Some
their rank-and-file members, however, had been active in a women's
anti-price-rise agitation in Bombay in the mid seventies.
The first attempt to organize women's trade unions had been made
in 1972, when the Self-Employed Women's Association, a kind of
Gandhian socialist union of women vendors, was formed in Ahmedaba
By the late seventies SEWA had expanded, and to the union were added
several craft co-operatives in and around Ahmedabad. In the eight
they had branches all over the country. Partly because the femini
movement was dominated by the far left, which characterized SEWA
reformist, and partly because SEWA itself had reservations about t

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24 Feminist Review

feminists, it was not a part of the feminist movement of

seventies or early eighties.
Working-class women's organizations which were set up in
seventies or early eighties tended to be different from SEWA.
not formed of women engaged in any one particular kind of
grew out of campaigns for an improvement in the conditions
whereas SEWA started with a campaign for an improvement i
conditions. Yet they, too, maintained a distance from the
partly because they felt class issues were not adequately ad
the latter, and partly because most of their leaders were memb
or another communist current. They did not wish to expo
constituencies to the struggle for power which was being wag
feminist movement.
Perhaps it was for these reasons that the efforts to reach out made
by feminist groups in the eighties took the form of neighbourhood rath
than workplace politics, with groups of women working in urban slum
areas and mobilizing women in campaigns for better water facilitie
drainage, and so on.
Interest in feminist ideas was meanwhile growing in the radica
socialist student movement, which had spearheaded a consumer cum
antistate agitation in Gujarat in the mid seventies, and had waged
campaign for land redistribution in one district of Bihar in the lat
seventies. Though their mentor, Jai Prakash Marayan, had discusse
the need to change gender-relations in the mid seventies, it was on
several years later that this question began to be raised within th
movement, and that too largely in Bihar. From 1979-80, they began to
organize women's shibirs (camps) in Bodhgaya district, a method
consciousness-raising which had earlier been used by the Maoists, an
which grew in the eighties to be widely used by various rural women's
organizations.
At around the same time as feminist issues and campaigns began to
be more widely taken up in these ways, the feminists began to mov
away from their earlier methods of agitation, such as demonstrations,
public campaigns, street theatre, etc. These had limited meaning unless
they were accompanied by attempts to develop their own structures to
aid and support individual women. Women's centres were formed i
several cities, which provided a mixture of legal aid, health care an
counselling. One or two of them also tried to provide employment but,
lacking sufficient resources, these foundered. The attempts to set u
new structures of support eventually degenerated into 'case-work' - du
to the enormous problems women face in this country. These centr
initially represented an effort to put feminist concepts of sisterhood in
practice, as well as to redefine these concepts through basing them on
traditionally accepted structures of friendship between women. Of the
first three women's centres to be set up, for example, two used the Hin
terms for 'girlfriend' or 'playmate': Salehi and Saheli. Thus a whole new
set of personal relationships developed in the feminist movement,
friendships which cut across class and cultural barriers. To some extent

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 Feminism in India 25

these friendships remained unequal, for the middle-class women

more dutiful, and the poor women more grateful. Even so, this sign
the growth of a new sense of individuality within the movem
qualifying stereotypes of the battered wife, the rape or dowry victi
woman worker, the student, housewife or professional woman.
The attempt to reappropriate traditionally accepted and restric
women's spaces grew in the eighties, through attempts to reint
myths, epics and folktales; to critique mainstream religious a
cultural texts or practices and search for alternative texts or pract
and to discover historical or particular methods of women's resista
India. At its inception the feminist movement had detailed the
tional forms of women's subordination in India, from birth to pub
marriage, maternity and work, and had searched for traditio
comments on women's suffering, placing these in an orthodox soci
feminist framework. Now, however, the emphasis changed to
tional sources of women's strength rather than their suffering. For
this consisted of identifying images of women warriors, to be use
battle cry for latter-day women; for others, of defining the ways in
ordinary, or unexceptional, women used the spaces that were t
tionally accorded them to negotiate with their husbands, fam
communities, and so on. Within this a third tendency develope
celebrating courage, gaeity, inventiveness or strength in Indian wo
The shibir or camp was, in certain areas, transformed in to the me
festival and to discussions of rape, wife-beating or unequal wages w
added sessions of singing, dancing and making merry.
The search for historical examples of women's resistance l
feminists to scrutinize the distant and immediate past, to look
role women played in general movements for social transformation
to reclaim some of the women's movements which predated t
contemporary feminist one. Two movements were of especial im
tance in this context: the landless labourers' movement in Telengan
Andhra Pradesh), which had undergone several phases from th
forties on; and the forest protection movement of the seventies, i
north-Indian hill areas of Garhwal, popularly known as the C
movement. The Telengana movement had been unusual in its tim
the attention it paid to such 'women's problems' as wife-beati
remained paternalist in its refusal to allow any but the most excep
women to join in the underground guerrilla movement led by com
nists in the late forties and early fifties, and by Maoists in the late
and early seventies. It was the Maoist women who, in the late seven
began to study the part played by women in the Telengana movem
The relationships which developed through their forays into th
history of the movement eventually led to the creation of organiz
of women landless labourers all over Telengana. As they have devel
these organizations, they have fused far-left and reformist views.
participate in struggles against landlords and the state, but the
form co-operative societies through which they get certain benefits
the state.

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26 Feminist Review

The Chipko movement was initiated by a couple of Gandhian

but it was carried forward largely by women, whose economic ro
very important in North Indian hill areas. Large numbers of
migrated to the plains in search of wage-work, and women's ho
work was more dependent on the forest as a resource for dome
gathering food, etc. Despite this, there was no discussion at the
Chipko as a women's movement. It was only in the eightie
through the feminists, it began to be celebrated as a mass w
movement, and theories of women's special relation to their
ment were advanced. With the introduction of feminist ideas into the
Chipko movement, an antialcohol agitation began. This followed t
pattern of the Shahada movement in Western India during the ear
1970s. (The Shahada movement was a tribal landless labourers'
movement against the outrageous practices of local landlords, m
whom were non-tribal and treated the tribals as subhuman. Here to
the development of a 'women's consciousness' had led to an antia
agitation.)
By this stage then, the Indian feminist movement was a
multiplicity of organizations and activities. In spreading it had
undergone a process of fragmentation which is common enough to all
movements but which affected the feminists in a particular way. As a
credo, most of us believed that feminism was based on the need for
personal solidarity. Its fragmentation as a movement thus symbolized
to many the breakdown of sisterhood. This led many feminists to
question the very basis of feminism. Whereas earlier a certain
commonality of women's experience was stressed, as a point at which
political differences could be transcended, it was now felt that
differences could not be subsumed in this way, and that the quest for
unity was not only futile but also counterproductive, for it allowed all
sorts of evils to be glossed over.
This affected the movement in various ways. It paved the way for an
open display of sectarianship, which was initiated largely by the
party-political women's organizations, who took to print in order to
express their differences from each other. While the left concentrated on
attacking autonomous feminist groups through their papers, pamphlets
and other publications, the socialists concentrated on battling the left
for representation as the 'leaders' of the women's movement, through
leaflets, press conferences, and the like. More subtle and more
scrupulous than them, autonomous feminist groups did not attack other
women's organizations in public, but most of them began to devote
considerable energy to establishing separate identities from each other.
Specific organizations were now held to represent different strands of
feminism. Unfortunately, the outcome of this development was such
that organizational needs began to be privileged over the needs of the
movement, and the identity of an organization was judged as much in
terms of its clout as its ideas. Both cynicism and bureaucratism entered
the movement. It began to be assumed that self-interest was the order of
the day, and the only difference was between those who operated on

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 Feminism in India 27

individual self-interest and those who were concerned with

ational self-interest. An ugly divide now developed within the f
movement, with one side feeling that the emphasis on organ
identity reflected a growth of Stalinism posing as collectivity,
other side feeling that individualism was merely a mask for
This was further compounded by a problem which is common t
developing countries, of aid for 'developmental activities' being
into social movements, creating competition, schisms and bitter
The bureaucratism which generally complements the develop
of organizational identities was seen at its worst in joint-action
Struggles over analyses, demands and strategies were relinqu
the assumption that the 'others' were closed to all argument
attempting any would be a waste of time. Yet there were re
struggles over the division of spoils, such as alloting areas o
paigning, time and space for speeches, over which banners w
carried, and in what order organizations would march. Even
kind of division of labour now developed in these forums, in whi
of interest were distributed between organizations without any
to achieve, or even discuss, commonality of interests.
As a result of this, autonomous feminist groups lost much
space which they had previously occupied on the premise that t
different from party-political women's organizations. Moreover
shift away from agitational activities in the early eighties not o
an empty space for party-political women's organizations to mo
but also led to a significant loss of presence through the media.
At the same time, the kind of individual support work that w
centres did involved them with people's lives in a way that w
intimate, and therefore more threatening than their earlier agi
Unsurprisingly, this provoked a considerable degree of both pub
private hostility, and feminists began to face attacks from irate
in person and through the police and the courts. Instead of lead
wave of sympathy for the feminists, these attacks were accomp
a public, and increasingly sophisticated, critique of feminism
arguments against feminism were remarkably similar to those
advanced against social reformers in the nineteenth century: that they
were westernized, upper class and urbanized, and therefore ignorant of,
and unsympathetic to, traditional 'Indian' society. A small fringe took
this argument further, saying that the crass 'modern' views of the
feminists were drawn from capitalist society and were thus incapable of
appreciating the nobility of traditional philosophies, especially Hindu.
Ironically, these views were expressed at the same time as feminists
were exploring traditional contexts in search of an 'Indian' feminism;
and at the same time as episodes of child sacrifice, witch-hunting and
forcible widow immolation were being brought to public view.
Meanwhile, women's issues had become so widely recognized that
the centre and right parties also formed women's fronts, and special
attention began to be paid to women in most general movements of the
eighties, though this was more noticeable in peasant movements than in

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28 Feminist Review

workers' ones. Perhaps in reaction to this, counter movements

feminist or women's rights ideas began to be initiated by se
traditionalist society, and after the mid eighties feminists h
defeats such as they had not previously encountered.
Among the most formidable onslaughts on feminism has be
launched by Indian communalists. Communalism (that is, ten
violence between communities based on religion) has long ex
India, but most observers believe that it has considerably
since the 1960s. In the worsening communal situation of th
women's rights have begun to be placed in the context of c
identity, as they were under British rule, and attempts to b
conditions of any one community are being treated as atte
impose alien norms and interfere with communal autonomy. Fr
days of the British secularism was interpreted in India as t
recognition and codification of different religion-based persona
but these had not, by and large, been used to take away rights c
under other laws. This, however, did happen in the mid eightie
under pressure from Muslim religious leaders, the government
law which deprived divorced - and destitute - Muslim wome
right to maintenance by their husbands. The campaign against
showed how much the women's movement had internalized
notions of secularism, as well as how much the feminist movem
been marginalized by party-political women's organization
spearheaded by the CPI-M who organized a'left and democratic'
opposition to the Bill, instead of allying with the feminists, wh
rather weakly to raise the demand for a uniform civil code. The
feminists themselves were uncertain of how to proceed, for the occasion
was used by Hindu communalists to attack the Muslims for being
backward and barbaric, and they were afraid that on the one hand they
would be seen as playing the communalist game, and on the other, for
the majority of them were Hindu by birth, that their few Muslim
members would be singled out for recrimination. The socialist women
were utterly confounded by the fact that one of the main organizers of
support for the Bill was a member of their party, whom they could not
muffle, let alone get expelled. This was to happen again, in the campaign
against widow immolation.
A few years later, the conflict between communalism and feminism
has again cropped up, but this time as a problem of the majority rather
than minority community. Though incidents of widow immolation
popularly known as sati, have occurred periodically since Indepen-
dence, the death of a young woman in Rajasthan in 1987 sparked off a
furore across the country, with raging arguments over whether sati was
suicide or murder, whether it should be punished and if so who should be
punished, whether it was a 'Hindu' practice and if so was it intrinsic or
extrinsic, ad infinitum. That the problem was one of the majority
community's had an important influence on the campaign, for feminists
did not hold back for fear of being used by communalists.
In the event, feminists were successful in getting a Bill passed

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 Feminism in India 29

against sati, but ineffectual in getting all their suggestions incorp

into the Bill, so that the first person punished under it was the w
victim, for she was held to be attempting suicide.
The campaign reflected in myriad ways the malaise which had
over the feminist movement, for again there was a limited and fo
kind of discussion, with little or no discussion of the issues involved
thus the campaign itself had practically no effect, and the organiz
the incident were unpunished. This was strange, for there were in
arguments being offered by women who had studied sati, and who
connected to the feminist movement. Yet their knowledge seemed
remove from the activists, and there is in fact now, paradoxica
situation in which there has been an enormous increase in women's
studies in India, much of which is conducted by feminists, but whic
seems less and less to inform feminist practice. Given the kind of
opposition that is now mounting against feminism, this situation
urgently needs changing and one can only hope that change is coming, as
it often does, in puzzling and indirect ways.
Given the kind of opposition which is now mounting against
feminism, this situation seems incredibly depressing, but it may be tha
we are now in a moment of transition, when disintegration appears more
evident than new developments. Some kind of 'women's consciousnes
has clearly spread enormously over the last ten years in India, especially
in rural areas. The women's liberation conference in Patna in early 1988
was attended by over a thousand women, and several thousand wome
from surrounding villages were at the rally which closed the conference.
The attendance of these women reflected the growing strength of the
Indian People's Front and the Chhatra Yuva Sangharsh Vahini in
Eastern India. The former is a relatively new organization, a kind o
coalition of different Maoist tendencies which have come together on a
broad and democratic platform, and who have shown considerable
interest in women. The latter has been described above.
Moreover, the links between feminism and environmental, ecologi-
cal, health, radical science, anticommunal and anticaste movements
appear to be multiplying and strengthening all over the country, and
perhaps in the next few years we will see new theoretical developments
within the movement, as well as new forms of action.

Notes

Radha Kumar lives in New Delhi, India. This article is an extract from a b
is writing about the history of movements for women's rights and femin
India from the early nineteenth century until today. It will be published

A shorter version of this article has also been published in Seminar, Marc

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