From the "Indian Women's Movement" to "Intersectional Feminists": Humanities categories in Indian Feminism (original) (raw)
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The paper reflects on the historiography on Indian women and gender, tracing its journey up to the present time. It discusses the turns that have characterised the field and the main authors and texts, which have made it a rich and influential branch of both South Asian and Women’s and Gender History. Moreover, the paper seeks to analyse the close relationship the field has always maintained with the Indian political context, placing scholarly trends and turns within that scenario, and showing the ‘militant’ side of this academic enterprise. The field of Women’s History gained prominence in India especially from the mid-1970s, fuelled by a wave of social protest and political ferment, which for the first time questioned optimistic views about postcolonial India, and laid bare its unfulfilled promises. The publication, in 1974, of Towards equality, a report commissioned by the Indian government on the status of women in India, was particularly significant for scholars and activists interested in women. Evidence of unaltered gender norms within postcolonial Indian society, and of women’s exclusion from the enjoyment of the rights guaranteed to them by the Constitution, helped to catalyse a new wave of research, setting the agenda for emerging Women’s Studies programs. This moment sealed the intimate relationship between feminist politics and Women’s History, an alliance that has remained the backbone of the historiography on Indian women and gender up to the present time. As members of the protest movements, women historians who first contributed to the professionalization of the field have ever since understood writing women’s history as political activism.
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The present paper maps the terrain of activism in the feminist and the Women’s Movement in India. The Indian women’s movement is extremely diverse; the cultural, historical, geographical, religious, political and regional factors specifically contribute to this diversity. Such a rich diversity makes it very difficult to comment and describe the movement in its entirety. It is possible to talk about the main issues in terms of evolution of this movement, its main currents and broad trends. The women’s movement is not a homogeneous group or federation of different groups. There is no one voice but there is a basic acceptance of women’s oppression and the belief that that it can be eliminated. Key-words:Feminism, Women´s Movement, activism
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This chapter argues that the 2012 anti-rape movement in India launched a new feminist politics that embodied a rights-based discourse of gender-in particular, against everyday, generalized misogyny, and sexual harassment and violence-in a way that had not been seriously taken up by the mainstream Indian Women's Movement. Asserting their right to be treated as equal fellow citizens, the movement saw young women challenging the subordination of their political identity to moral identity, and demanding that the state criminalize sexual harassment, something that it had ignored to do in the sixty-five years of the country's independence. Second, I claim that this feminist discourse was connected to a global vocabulary of rights facilitated, to a large extent, by means of the Internet. Third, this movement-often referred to as India's "Spring"-resonated with other forms of agitations for plurality and inclusivity within the Dalit and Muslim minority communities, educational institutions, and the country's militarized zones. It is my intention here to argue that this rights-based intersectional feminist movement, led by India's youth, created a ripple effect for other struggles to break out. Providing them with the "form, idiom, and languages of protest" (Anurima, 2017 fb post), it inspired a large number of public intellectuals and members of the civic society to lay claim to their "political citizenship" (Rahul Roy, 2017) and assert their constitutional right to shape the future of the country's secularism that they fear is currently under threat by the Hindutva forces of regressive nationalism. The promise of the 2012 feminist movement, therefore, is in this connection, and is a critical breakthrough that has the potential to lay the groundwork for, what I claim, an Indian fourth wave feminism and for wider class-based struggles. Central to this rights-bearing discourse of gender is a focus on the issues of freedom, choice, and desire i.e. elements, which in the past, were viewed with suspicion by those who were committed to the idea of developmental nationalism. The developmental state was too quick to dismiss these elements that came out of modernity because of its own postcolonial legacies marked by conservative gender binaries. The Indian Women's Movement, in its turn too, had a narrower set of restrictive and protectionist concerns by placing a limit on what women could ask for or do. Moreover, gender in the public sphere was seen by the IWM only through the lens of the
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In this paper, I will be looking at the history of the women’s movement in India, as documented by the women studies researchers, to see how oppression has received a degree of hierarchisation within the movement as well as within the public discourse in the country. Differentiating between the good violence and the bad violence, the urgent and the not-so-urgent, and the ethically more acceptable and less acceptable have led to a steady degree and form of hierarchical understanding of women’s oppression in the country within the movement itself. Through a blend of discourse analysis and interviews, I will be using the secondary literature available on the history of the women’s movement as well as semi-structural interviews conducted with student activists from leftist organisations in an Indian university. The literature will show how this hierarchy is at work in areas as varied as legal counselling for domestic violence to issues at focus in conflict areas such as Kashmir. The interviews will show this differentiation in praxis in the progressive frameworks of student organisations. By using this two prong approach, I intend to reflect on how the hierarchisation of oppression has been affecting not only adversely affecting the strategy building process of the women’s movement, but real lives and experiences that should compel us to rethink.
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The present paper looks at the historical background of the rise of feminism and women’s movement and doing gender in India. Not only in India but all over the world there has been a close link between feminism and the women’s movement, each inspiring and enriching the other. In the Indian context, while the women’s movement is a much earlier phenomenon, the term Feminism is a modern one. Feminism comprises a number of social, cultural and political movements, theories and moral philosophies concerned with gender inequalities and equal rights for women. In the pre-independence era, the women’s movement began as a social reform movement in the 19th century. At this time, the western idea of liberty, equality and fraternity was being imbibed by our educated elite through the study of English and the contact with west. This western liberalism was extended to the women’s question and was translated into a social reform movement. In the post-Independence period during the first few decades, the major concern was for overall economic growth. This was immediately followed by another decade, which witnessed an increased concern for equity and poverty alleviation. Gender issues were subsumed in poverty related concerns and there were no such specific programs, which aimed at women. In the postindependence period, the women’s movement has concerned itself with a large number of issues such as dowry, women’s work, price rise, land rights, political participation of women, Dalit women and marginalized women’s right, growing fundamentalism, women’s representation in the media etc. and a large number of Non-Government organizations have taken up this issue. Women’s studies and now Gender studies is also an off shoot of the long history of women’s movement in India. Various women’s studies Centres have been set up and today again these are at the brink of disappearing from the radar and there is a struggle which is now going on. Though a lot needs to be achieved and there are various impediments in making this reality available to a large section of women, the women’s movement has brought women’s issues center stage and made them more visible.
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