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Unit IV – Part 1
History of Women’s Movements in India

(Compulsory Reading: Changing Terms of Political Discourse: Women’s

Movement in India, 1970s – 1990s by Indu Agnihotri, Vina Mazumdar.
PLEASE ALSO SKIM THROUGH PDFs WOMEN’S MOVEMENT I AND
II ON GOOGLE CLASSROOM AND add points)

INTRODUCTION

 End of second world war in 1945 – defeat of fascism, decolonization,

demands for rights of marginalized groups, debates on human rights,
formation of UN, the initiation of the Non-Aligned Movement.

 The revolutionary changes which followed the Second World War created
space that promoted debates on women’s rights. By the beginning of the
1990s however, the international context in which the struggle for advance
of women’s rights was being waged had been transformed.

 The defeat of fascism and the decline of colonialism around the world in the
mid-century paved the way for social advance of which gender relations
were a key component along with other broad objectives of human rights
and the iniquitous (grossly unfair and morally wrong) social arrangements.

 Confined earlier by locale or limited focus, these newfound expression

through movements against imperialism, for national liberation and social
transformation. This century promoted the cause of gender justice, therefore,
by internationalisation and struggles for equality by women and other
oppressed people.
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 Women’s struggles were found to be intertwined with other struggles like

that for self-determination, movements on ideologies, equality, democracy
and justice.

 The international women’s decade was initiated during this period of hope
which also posited a new international economic order. However, the hope
did not last long, and in the 1990s the context in which international struggle
for advance of women’s rights transformed. Terms like empowerment,
choice, reproductive freedom, spiritual autonomy, et cetera are being
appropriated by forces inimical to the movements.

 The authors assert that noting that changes internationally in the women’s
movement is important to understand the movement in India.

 Parameters that affected the women’s movement in India in the 1990s:

- The UN conference on women in Mexico (The first

world conference on the status of women was convened
in Mexico City, Mexico to coincide with the 1975 International
Women's Year, observed to remind the international community that
discrimination against women continued to be a persistent problem in
much of the world).
- Initiatives of the non-aligned movement towards securing rights and
against discrimination of women.
- The movements for freedom, equality and democracy before
independence, and the constraints in achieving these values despite
them being written in the Constitution of India (goals intertwined)
- Ideas coming in from women’s movement in the west.
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THE INDIAN MOVEMENT

 The colonial struggle in India marked the beginning of an awakening among
women. It found its first expression in the form of nationalist consensus in
the Fundamental Rights Resolution of the Indian National Congress in 1931,
it postulated freedom, justice, dignity and equality for women as essential
for nation-building.
 In the post-independence period however, women exploring avenues for
socio-economic and political mobility came up against the limitations of a
third world formerly-colonial state. There were visible conflicts between the
new sites and the values carefully promoted by a long-standing patriarchal
social hierarchy.
 Social disability and gradual isolation from the politico-ideological struggle
that was shaping the nation-building process led to fragmentation of the
women’s movement and the women’s question faded from the public. This
does not imply that no struggles were reached waged this time, but that they
were not able to capture public imagination or cut sectional demands.
 Parameters that led to the resurgence of women’s movement in India:
- The crisis of state and government in the 70s going into the
emergency
- The post-emergency upsurge in favour of civil rights
- The mushrooming of women’s organisations in the early 1980s and
the arrival of women’s issues on the agenda
- The mid-1980s marked by increase in fundamentalism, and the 1990s
when the crisis deepened with regard to the state, government and
society.
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 The women’s movement in India is one among the many efforts by citizens
to claim participation as equals in political and that element process.
Because it challenges the conservative patriarchal structure, it is in a
situation of direct confrontation with the forces of conservatism and
reaction.
 In India the mid-1980s have seen an onslaught on even existing rights of
women through a harking back to tradition and culture and positing of
images which emphasise women’s reproductive role as the only natural,
historical one.
 These decades in India have marked the end of the age of complacency,
apathy and acceptance of the status quo. There was a shift in focus, increase
in level of awareness of problems that women in different classes face, the
social construction of gender relations –there were attempts to resolve these
problems.
 The changing character in the women’s movement also demanded response
from the government in different ways. The government’s response has been
between responding to the conservative or the radical forces in dealing with
the women’s question.
 The main concerns of the movement were laid out in the issue is opened up
by the report of the Committee on the Status of Women in India (CSWI)
which drew attention to the wide diversities in culturally prescribed gender
roles in India’s plural society. The committee raised serious doubts about the
development or modernization models that ignored the real-life differences
that revolved around caste, class and ethnic history – in addition to this the
exaggerated influence of religion, culture and social attitudes on gender roles
was also highlighted.
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 The disenchantment of women with the post- independence development

scenario was because of certain demographic indicators like the accelerated
decline in the sex-ratio, increasing gender gaps in life expectancy, mortality
and economic participation, or the rising migration rate. Combined with this
what is the utter failure of state policy to live up to its constitutional mandate
in any field of national development.
 The CSWI noted linkages between existing and growing social and
economic disparities and women’s status in education, economy, society and
the polity.
 According to the authors, they see a link between marginalization of women
as economic beings and the rising trend of violence targeting women. This is
their focus in the paper.

VIOLENCE: CASE OF EXPANDING ARENAS

 Violence against women is perpetrated through the given institutions of

state, community, the family and society at large. It draws sustenance
from the prevailing ideologies which seek to propagate status-quoism
through advocacy of falling in line, be it in response to transgression of
social norms or laws, which are defended in the name of age-old customs
and tradition, religious or caste identities, or even political dissidence.

 Such status quoists perceived the movement’s adoption of violence as a

threat to basic social institutions like the family, community and
construction of gender roles developed by the elites and projected as
universal to “Indian culture”.
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(i) RAPE

The debate became a national level campaign in 1979–80 on the Mathura

case which brought women’s issues onto the public agenda. The Supreme
Court acquitted two police men accused of raping a minor tribal girl called
Mathura. This judgement brought to the fore several crucial aspects of
women’s oppression - roles of class and caste in oppression of women
- the issue of accountability of public servants
- role of the judiciary in achieving the constitutional guarantees.

The agitation after this case led to significant changes in laws however there
was still significant loopholes with regard to the law and implementation. A
step forward was that custodial rape was also introduced as a category in the
law. Marital rape however still is not a part of the law. In the 90s the
movement stressed on the urgency for a new legislation to combat child
rape. It was, however, only in 2012 that the Protection of Children Against
Sexual Offences Act was implemented. Before this there was no specific
legislation against child abuse.

(ii) Anti-Dowry Legislation

 Gained popular support internationally; headlines like ‘brides are not for
burning’ touched public imagination, got the media attention
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 Amendments made in the criminal law against domestic violence in the

wake of agitation. Section 498–A was encompassed a definition of cruelty.
Most commonly used clauses in cases filed by women is the one on
domestic violence.
 Successive campaigns brought into focus the trauma women undergo within
the confines of the ever-enduring family, glamorized by policymakers and
elite groups in general as “the basic foundation of the Indian society.”

 Organisations collected and presented data of dowry related murders which

were passed off as suicide or accident. In several cases activists themselves
recorded the dying declaration of victims and urged the courts to treat this as
evidence. Newspaper headlines reminded readers that dowry deaths were on
the increase. But the government, police and other official agencies along
with society at large slumbered in insensitivity and convenient middle-class
ploy was used to dismiss torture of a young bride as an “internal matter of
the family.”

 Individual and organizational pressure under the aegis of Dahej Virodhi

Chetna Manch (DVCM) mounted pressure on the government to act. Law
commission took suo moto notice, Parliament appointed a joint committee of
both houses to review the working of Dowry Prohibition Act.

 Came into focus in the course of the campaign was a clear link between
dowry and the urge to accumulate consumer items as well as mobilise
resources to be used as investment or capital to start petty business or
enterprise. In the light of this, women organisations condemned the High
Court for asserting that giving gifts was customary.
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 Cases of dowry have increased multifold. Activists ask whether the focus
should have been on dowry death or on ending dowry itself. They have been
rethinking if it was and is possible to cite dowry in a social context where
both caste and consumerism are deeply penetrated. Matrimonial columns of
leading dailies classify advertisements along caste lines, and consumerism
has spread its tentacles far and wide in the Indian society.

 Dowry, far from being a “deep-rooted” Indian tradition, is the fastest way to
make quick money in India while also claiming social sanction and
legitimacy, argue the authors. In fact even the problem is not just limited to
this - the preference for sons in Indian minds and sex-selection also draw
their rationale from the dowry menace.

(iii) AMINOCENTESIS AND SEX-SELECTION

A test conducted to detect foetal abnormalities. By 1975, AIIMS knew that these
tests were being followed by abortion of female foetuses. While tests in AIIMS
was stopped, reports came in from Amritsar where medical entrepreneurs openly
advertised their services referring to daughters as a liability to the family and a
threat to the nation’s population problem.

(iv) POPULATION POLICY

A strange link as united sex selection followed by female foeticide and female
infanticide. Both cite national population concerns as the instigation for these anti-
women acts. Policies of the government to curb population growth usually have
measures that target women. While vasectomy during the emergency faced stiff
resistance, the series of measures adopted feature women as the main target since
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they are the agency of reproduction. The introduction of contraceptives that are
hazardous for the body, hormonal injectables with long-term side-effects, and there
is no provision/consideration for monitoring the impact.

(v) POLITICAL VIOLENCE

In every incident of violence against women, the attempt is made to underplay the
crime itself by focusing on the identity or position of the perpetrator as well as the
victim in order to mobilise support on the basis of defined parameters of
polarization in the specific context. These can be along caste, community, regional
or even political-ideological lines. Thus, rape and other atrocities inflicted on
women and others in Nagaland, Manipur, Assam, Tripura, Punjab or Kashmir by
the armed or paramilitary forces can be condoned by the administration as well as
the government under the cover of action taken to put down subversive activities.
A more perverse definition of pro-national activity in complete violation of
constitutional guarantees, human rights as well as women’s rights would be
difficult to find. It is this ‘teaching a lesson’ to curb dissidence which is disturbing.
Given the trend of growing criminalization of politics in India this form of violence
can be crucial in keeping women away from public life.

What is important is that even as the movement for women’s rights has
strengthened, there is the phenomenon of increasing social acceptance of violence
and its use for political purposes. In the recent years there has been a spate of
incidents of stripping, rape and other forms of humiliation inflicted on women in
different parts of the country in recent years. This violence derives social sanction
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because of caste and status lines that it is divided on. The violence is limited
neither to the personal sphere more to the framework of man-woman relationships.

FUNDAMENTALISM AND COMMUNALISM

 Just like the world India also witnessed a rise in fundamentalist xenophobic
wave. All religious, ethnic or cultural fundamentalists are basically hostile to
gender equality whatever rhetoric they profess. They also challenge the
legally provided guarantees of the Constitution.
 Akali Dal and GOI pact – PAGE 1872-1873 in article.
 1985 marked a shift in the Indian politics. Pro-liberalisation statements and
measures by the government on the economic front began to be combined
with compromises and even advancing the cause of fundamentalists.
 People’s disenchantment with the nature and pace of India’s development
was sought to be offset by successive governments by playing the communal
card with each community to win their support.
 Muslim Personal Law – pg 1873
 1987, Deorala village of Rajasthan, Sati performed by Roop Kanwar –
thousands watch and chanted slogans glorifying Sati
 The state government did not take any action despite massive protests by
women groups. Sati, therefore was sought to be projected as a sort of ethnic
re– assertion of indigenous womanhood.
 Protests pressured the government of India to act belatedly within an
ineffective law with the strange feature holding the woman who committed
sati accountable (if she escaped death) for attempted suicide.
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AYODHYA: PRELUDE AND AFTERMATH

 When in 1992, Hindu fundamentalists demolished the 500-year-old Babri

mosque in Ayodhya, claiming that it was a temple which marked the
birthplace of Lord Rama. The government’s paralysis was fully exposed,
indicating the death of crisis of state and government.

 The demolition sparked off riots in several parts of the country, anybody not
adhering to the fundamentalist version of the event. Scholars were harassed
and threatened to write the fundamentalists version of history while writing
cultural or literary histories.

 Growing intolerance was not confined to a single community. In the

women’s movement, repeatedly there were discussions that countering
communal politics is the greatest challenge before the movement. It needs to
be challenged however, because any cultural fundamentalism is hostile to
gender equality.

 The movement has sought to counter communal propaganda amongst

women. Organisations have intervened according to their capacities in riot
situations to provide relief as well as to start the process of dialogue between
women of different communities. Two rallies with thousands of women
were held in Ayodhya in 1989 and Lucknow in 1992.

 Nevertheless, as had been witnessed on previous occasions, when a clash

took place between women and fundamentalism, the inaction of the
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government and its ‘neutrality’ was a stance which itself constituted its
response.

 Hindu Mahila Sammelan, Durga Vahini – aware that consciousness among

women about the oppression might lead them to question the status quo,
organisations like these have begun training them by taking advantage of
women’s deep attachment to religion. In such organisations women’s role as
mothers, progenitors and defenders of faith et cetera are highlighted along
with their role in the family. Fundamentalists of all hues have moved in this
direction.

 But what are the forces, the movement asked, behind this increased
fundamentalism and communalism and their persistent hold on many
women – it was realized that the idea of rupture with past cultural values
cuts across religions.

 How does it work? - Given the patriarchal ideology of family and

community honour, during riots women were invariably the primary targets
of attack by the other group and were subjected to rape and humiliation in
order to devalue and demoralize the members of the community.

 WOMEN AS ECONOMIC BEINGS – place of women in the economy

declined