Feminism in Present Day India
Feminism in Present Day India
by Manali Sethi
Feminism is a range of political movements, ideologies, and social movements that share a common goal: to define, establish, and achieve political, economic, personal, and social equality of sexes. This includes seeking to establish educational and professional opportunities for women that are equal to those for men.
Feminism is a range of political movements, ideologies, and social movements that share a common goal: to define, establish, and achieve political, economic, personal, and social equality of sexes. This includes seeking to establish educational and professional opportunities for women that are equal to those for men.
Feminist movements have campaigned and continue to campaign for women's rights, including the right to vote, to hold public office, to work, to earn fair wages or equal pay, to own property, to receive education, to enter contracts, to have equal rights within marriage, and to have maternity leave. Feminists have also worked to ensure access to legal abortions and social integration, and to protect women and girls from rape, sexual harassment, and domestic violence.
Coming to the different people responsible for bringing equality to India, a special mention must be made of the inspiring woman who is often described as one of the first modern Indian feminists. At a time when people hardly acknowledged the grievances of women in India, Savitribai Phule, along with her husband Jyotirao Phule, fought injustices against women with all they had.
In those days, widows used to shave their heads, wear a simple white sari and live a life of austerity. It was Savitribai who decided to stand up against this practice and organized a strike against the barbers in order to persuade them to stop shaving the heads of the widows, most of whom were still children.
She also noticed the plight of sexually exploited women who, after becoming pregnant, either committed suicide or killed the newborn due to fear of banishment by society. To cater to such women, she opened a care centre (called Balhatya Pratibandhak Griha or Infanticide Prohibition House) for pregnant rape victims and helped deliver their children. She also founded the first school for women at Bhide Wada in Pune in 1848.
The early 20th century too saw the rise of many courageous and strong-willed women who were instrumental in India’s freedom struggle. The stories of these women revolutionaries, trade union activists, and nationalists have long been an unsung part of the historical legacy that independent India inherited.
A little known story is that of Rabindranath Tagore’s sister, Swarnakumari Devi. A committed social worker, Swarnakumari started an initiative, Sakhi Samiti, in 1896, to help widows, orphan girls and poverty stricken women of Bengal. She also played an active role in the Indian nationalist movement. Her daughter, Sarala Devi, also grew up to be an independent and confident woman who believed in following her convictions.
An accomplished musician and poetess, Sarala Devi completed her education at Calcutta University and challenged the social conventions of her time by taking up a job in a school in Mysore at the age of 23. After she returned to Bengal, she actively participated in the militant nationalist movement of the state. She also attended meetings of societies that had all male members and presided over boxing, judo, swordplay and wrestling matches organised by her.
The era also saw the rise of many women’s organizations like the All India Women’s Conference (AIWC). Women within the national movement had begun insisting on greater political and economic participation. These pioneering organizations included the Bharat Stri Mandal in Calcutta, formed in 1910 by Sarala Devi, and the Women’s India Association founded in 1917 by Annie Besant, Dorothy Jinarajadasa, Malati Patwardhan, Ammu Swaminathan, Mrs Dadabhoy, and Mrs Ambujammal.
Annie Besant also led the Home Rule League and was elected President of the Calcutta Congress session in 1917. The year 1917 was also significant as Sarojini Naidu led a delegation of women to meet the Montagu-Chelmsford Committee to demand a series of reforms in the condition of Indian women. In 1925, Sarojini Naidu was elected President of Indian National Congress, the first Indian woman to hold that post.
It is easy to dismiss some of these achievements by pointing out that most of these women came from affluent, educated and urban households. But even within their spheres, they all fought uphill battles to establish themselves as different and to speak out against the norm.
Post Independence, the question of women’s rights appeared to retreat from public discourse for a few years. The second wave of the women’s rights movement began in the mid 1970s. The issues raised this time were wide ranging – from land rights and political representation to divorce laws and child custody to sexual harassment at work, dowry and rape. The women’s movement interrogated the existing laws, with their questions becoming central in public discourse.
Indian feminist writings, especially those by Toru Dutt, Lalithambika Antharajanam, Ismat Chugtai, and Mahashweta Devi, also made their presence felt globally.
In 1974, the Committee on Status of Women presented its findings in the form of a watershed report Towards Equality that laid the foundation of women’s movement in independent India, highlighting discriminatory socio-cultural practices, political and economic processes. Its authors included Vina Mazumdar and Lotika Sarkar, the duo who later founded the Centre for Women’s Development Studies in Delhi.
In 1980, an anti-rape campaign was launched that led to emergence of autonomous women’s organisation in several cities of India. There was Saheli in Delhi, Vimochana in Bengaluru, and Forum Against Oppression of Women in Mumbai among others. Special Interest Groups that focused on legal aid for women also came into existence and several legal reforms took place. A great example is that of the landmark Vishaka Guidelines that came into being in 1997, outlining the process for dealing with sexual harassment at the workplace (later superseded by the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace Act of 2013).
Entering the 21st century, Indian feminism engaged with a whole host of issues – from domestic violence and rape to victim shaming and consent. Indira Jaisingh’s tireless work was instrumental in the framing of the Domestic Violence Act (2005). Jaisingh was also the first woman to be appointed as an Additional Solicitor General of India in 2009. Senior advocate at the Supreme Court of India, Meenakshi Arora’s persistent efforts led to the framing of the Vishakha Guidelines, which later culminated in the legislation of the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace Act (2013).
Activist Kavita Krishnan set in motion a series of protests and uproar after the 2012 Nirbhaya rape case, which eventually led to the legislation of the Criminal Law Amendment 2013 that made changes in the existing rape laws in the nation. Identified by TIME magazine as one of the 100 most influential women in 2013, lawyer Vrinda Grover was also influential in the drafting of the Criminal Law Amendment of 2013.
Indira Jaising is an Indian lawyer and human rights activist. In addition to forging an unprecedentedly successful and distinguished career, she has often been at the forefront of many pioneering cases and landmark judgements. Furthermore, her work and achievements in the field of social justice and equality for women have won her world renown.
In those days, widows used to shave their heads, wear a simple white sari and live a life of austerity. It was Savitribai who decided to stand up against this practice and organized a strike against the barbers in order to persuade them to stop shaving the heads of the widows, most of whom were still children.
She also noticed the plight of sexually exploited women who, after becoming pregnant, either committed suicide or killed the newborn due to fear of banishment by society. To cater to such women, she opened a care centre (called Balhatya Pratibandhak Griha or Infanticide Prohibition House) for pregnant rape victims and helped deliver their children. She also founded the first school for women at Bhide Wada in Pune in 1848.
The early 20th century too saw the rise of many courageous and strong-willed women who were instrumental in India’s freedom struggle. The stories of these women revolutionaries, trade union activists, and nationalists have long been an unsung part of the historical legacy that independent India inherited.
A little known story is that of Rabindranath Tagore’s sister, Swarnakumari Devi. A committed social worker, Swarnakumari started an initiative, Sakhi Samiti, in 1896, to help widows, orphan girls and poverty stricken women of Bengal. She also played an active role in the Indian nationalist movement. Her daughter, Sarala Devi, also grew up to be an independent and confident woman who believed in following her convictions.
An accomplished musician and poetess, Sarala Devi completed her education at Calcutta University and challenged the social conventions of her time by taking up a job in a school in Mysore at the age of 23. After she returned to Bengal, she actively participated in the militant nationalist movement of the state. She also attended meetings of societies that had all male members and presided over boxing, judo, swordplay and wrestling matches organised by her.
The era also saw the rise of many women’s organizations like the All India Women’s Conference (AIWC). Women within the national movement had begun insisting on greater political and economic participation. These pioneering organizations included the Bharat Stri Mandal in Calcutta, formed in 1910 by Sarala Devi, and the Women’s India Association founded in 1917 by Annie Besant, Dorothy Jinarajadasa, Malati Patwardhan, Ammu Swaminathan, Mrs Dadabhoy, and Mrs Ambujammal.
Annie Besant also led the Home Rule League and was elected President of the Calcutta Congress session in 1917. The year 1917 was also significant as Sarojini Naidu led a delegation of women to meet the Montagu-Chelmsford Committee to demand a series of reforms in the condition of Indian women. In 1925, Sarojini Naidu was elected President of Indian National Congress, the first Indian woman to hold that post.
It is easy to dismiss some of these achievements by pointing out that most of these women came from affluent, educated and urban households. But even within their spheres, they all fought uphill battles to establish themselves as different and to speak out against the norm.
Post Independence, the question of women’s rights appeared to retreat from public discourse for a few years. The second wave of the women’s rights movement began in the mid 1970s. The issues raised this time were wide ranging – from land rights and political representation to divorce laws and child custody to sexual harassment at work, dowry and rape. The women’s movement interrogated the existing laws, with their questions becoming central in public discourse.
Indian feminist writings, especially those by Toru Dutt, Lalithambika Antharajanam, Ismat Chugtai, and Mahashweta Devi, also made their presence felt globally.
In 1974, the Committee on Status of Women presented its findings in the form of a watershed report Towards Equality that laid the foundation of women’s movement in independent India, highlighting discriminatory socio-cultural practices, political and economic processes. Its authors included Vina Mazumdar and Lotika Sarkar, the duo who later founded the Centre for Women’s Development Studies in Delhi.
In 1980, an anti-rape campaign was launched that led to emergence of autonomous women’s organisation in several cities of India. There was Saheli in Delhi, Vimochana in Bengaluru, and Forum Against Oppression of Women in Mumbai among others. Special Interest Groups that focused on legal aid for women also came into existence and several legal reforms took place. A great example is that of the landmark Vishaka Guidelines that came into being in 1997, outlining the process for dealing with sexual harassment at the workplace (later superseded by the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace Act of 2013).
Entering the 21st century, Indian feminism engaged with a whole host of issues – from domestic violence and rape to victim shaming and consent. Indira Jaisingh’s tireless work was instrumental in the framing of the Domestic Violence Act (2005). Jaisingh was also the first woman to be appointed as an Additional Solicitor General of India in 2009. Senior advocate at the Supreme Court of India, Meenakshi Arora’s persistent efforts led to the framing of the Vishakha Guidelines, which later culminated in the legislation of the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace Act (2013).
Activist Kavita Krishnan set in motion a series of protests and uproar after the 2012 Nirbhaya rape case, which eventually led to the legislation of the Criminal Law Amendment 2013 that made changes in the existing rape laws in the nation. Identified by TIME magazine as one of the 100 most influential women in 2013, lawyer Vrinda Grover was also influential in the drafting of the Criminal Law Amendment of 2013.
Indira Jaising is an Indian lawyer and human rights activist. In addition to forging an unprecedentedly successful and distinguished career, she has often been at the forefront of many pioneering cases and landmark judgements. Furthermore, her work and achievements in the field of social justice and equality for women have won her world renown.
Much of her work has focused on championing the rights, safety and equality of women. In 1986, she fought and won the famous Mary Roy case which led to Syrian Christian women being granted equal inheritance rights with their male siblings. She successfully challenged the discriminatory provisions of the Indian Divorce Act, thus enabling Christian women to get a divorce on the grounds of cruelty or desertion, a right previously denied to them. In the ground-breaking Githa Hariharan case of the late 1990s, Jaising was instrumental in winning the right of Hindu mothers to be the natural guardians of their minor children, so the children could take their mother’s name – a hugely important ruling for the rights and status of women in the family.
In a very high-profile sexual harassment case, Jaising represented Rupan Deol Bajaj, an officer of the Indian Administrative Service who had accused the then Director General of Police, of outraging her modesty when he drunkenly molested her at a party. The case dragged on and remained in the media spotlight for several years but the defendant was eventually found guilty.
Jaising’s advocacy for feminist causes is not limited to the courtroom. She had a central role in drafting India’s 2005 Domestic Violence Act and, the first Indian woman to be appointed, she was a member of the United Nations Committee for the Elimination of Discrimination against women. She is also the director of the Lawyers Collective Women’s Rights Initiative which focuses on the elimination of violence against women and she campaigns vociferously to highlight and eradicate the the sexual harassment of women in the workplace.
In a very high-profile sexual harassment case, Jaising represented Rupan Deol Bajaj, an officer of the Indian Administrative Service who had accused the then Director General of Police, of outraging her modesty when he drunkenly molested her at a party. The case dragged on and remained in the media spotlight for several years but the defendant was eventually found guilty.
Jaising’s advocacy for feminist causes is not limited to the courtroom. She had a central role in drafting India’s 2005 Domestic Violence Act and, the first Indian woman to be appointed, she was a member of the United Nations Committee for the Elimination of Discrimination against women. She is also the director of the Lawyers Collective Women’s Rights Initiative which focuses on the elimination of violence against women and she campaigns vociferously to highlight and eradicate the the sexual harassment of women in the workplace.
In the early 21st century, millennial Indian women launched a radically new kind of feminist politics that had not been seen before. Inspired by a vocabulary of rights and modes of protest used by the youth across the world, such as Occupy Wall Street and the Arab Spring, they initiated a series of social media campaigns against the culture of sexual violence.
The earliest campaigns - the 2003 Blank Noise Project against eve-teasing, the 2009 Pink Chaddi (underwear) movement against moral policing and the 2011 SlutWalk protest against victim-blaming - were limited in their scope but set the tone for this new mode of protest. Campaigns such the 2011 Why Loiter project on women’s right to public spaces, the 2015 Pinjra Tod (Break the Cage) movement against sexist curfew rules in student halls and the 2017 Bekhauf Azadi (Freedom without Fear) March resonated with a much larger number of women, turning this social media-led phenomenon into a true feminist movement.
These online campaigns represented a heightened level of frustration among the youth in a country where, despite several decades of feminist activism, the deep-rooted problem of gender inequality and sexual violence persists.
The anti-colonial and reform movements of the 19th century remain foundational to feminist politics in the region, constituting, for some, the first wave of Indian feminist organising. While this was a remarkable period for women’s rights and Indian women in general—effecting far-reaching changes to women’s education, employability, political participation, development, and “modernisation”—it was also instrumental in attaching the “women’s question” to nationalism (Chatterjee 1989; Sarkar 2001). Thus, even as middle-class Indian women modernised, becoming “new women” of the nation-in-making, their primary affiliation was meant to be to the family, the private sphere, the purity of nation and “culture.” Well into the postcolonial period, feminists drew on a culturally specific and nationalist repertoire of Indian womanhood to reinforce their anti-Western and indigenous credentials.
The autonomous feminists of the 1970s and 1980s—educated, middle class (if not elite), and urban—worked solidly on recognisable constituencies of poor, grass-roots women, with the nation state as their main point of address (John 1999). They shifted the left-led focus on women’s “practical” gender interests around material inequality (and the subsuming of gender under class) to more “strategic” gender interests such as violence against women. The custodial rape of a 14-year-old Adivasi woman named Mathura epitomised, for these feminists, the manner in which sexual violence could not be separated from the logic and workings of the patriarchal state. The Mathura rape case was also significant for inaugurating a slew of successful legal reforms around violence against women and orienting Indian feminism itself towards legal strategies (Kapur 2005).
Even as the autonomous women’s groups of the 1970s–80s constituted a very small percentage of the Indian women’s movement (IWM), they gave it its most abiding legacy, especially in the qualities of radicalism and autonomy that have become normative to feminism as such. Even after the demise of these groups, autonomy, from both political parties and external donors, remained a cherished political ideal and goal amongst Indian feminists (Roy 2011). Beyond that, the 1970s have come to mark a point of origin for the post-independence IWM as a whole, given the public nature of feminist protest action during this period, as well as its success in effecting actual legal change. Even the 2012 anti-rape protests were compared to (and judged as falling short of) this golden age of activism (Tellis 2012).
Liberalisation and Indian Feminism in the 1990s
If the 1970s mark the beginning of the IWM, then the 1990s constitute a “turning point” (Tharu and Niranjana 1994). This was the decade of the opening up of the Indian economy and the introduction of neo-liberal economic reforms. Economic liberalisation not only had far-reaching political and social effects, but also had at least two significant consequences for the IWM. The first of these was the rise of state feminism. Feminists came to be directly implicated in the expansion of state logic and governance, through effecting legal reform, in government-initiated women’s development programmes (such as Mahila Samakhya), women’s commissions (the National Commission for Women set up in 1990), and reservations in panchayats. Yet, the mood among Indian feminists was far from congratulatory, with Menon (2009) suggesting that state feminism could domesticate gender even as it opened up unexpected possibilities for women to participate in public political life.
Concerns around the implications of state feminism were most evident in legal reforms to combat violence against women. Besides the fact that very little was achieved in the realm of law enforcement, feminists argued that such reforms inadvertently increased the power of the state, while reinforcing not just patriarchal, but also class–caste norms and normativities. Take, for example, the case of Bhanwari Devi, a poor rural development worker, who was gang-raped by five upper-caste men in a village in Rajasthan for daring to contest the practice of child marriage in 1992 (Pandey 2017). A lower court acquitted the men, citing age and caste differences between the accused and the victim. Even as this case was instrumental in formulating guidelines for sexual harassment at the workplace, Bhanwari Devi is yet to receive justice. More recent instances of legal reform, namely the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2013 that followed the 2012 gang rape, have also done little to stop the relentless war on women’s bodies. This was more than evident in the case of the eight-year-old girl in Kathua, where sexual violence was employed to terrorise an entire community of nomadic Muslims in the Kashmir valley (BBC 2018).
Together with state feminism, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and “NGOisation” emerged as a second area of concern in the 1990s. A majority of the autonomous women’s groups that were formed in the 1980s transformed into funded NGOs in this period, given the expansion of work and need for sustainability. It was, moreover, the NGOs with full-time professional or trained “staff” and not grass-roots political organisations, that were seen to be taking important decisions on behalf of the entire women’s movement. While the first national-level autonomous women’s conferences in the country were attended by autonomous feminist groups, by the time of the last conference in Kolkata in 2006, it was overrun by NGOs, suggesting that “the women’s movement is a hugely funded affair today” (Biswas 2006).
The NGOisation of feminism evoked, in the Indian context, anxieties similar to those that have been documented elsewhere (Roy 2015). While a majority of these had to do with the sacrifice of political autonomy to external and especially global funding imperatives (NGOisation and transnationalisation have been twin processes), others had to do with changes to the internal culture and functioning of feminist struggles, as moving away from mass-based ones to professionalised and bureaucratised modes of engagement. These anxieties spoke to larger concerns about the neo-liberal turn in development centred on releasing the hidden entrepreneurial capacity of poor women of the global South as the answer to systemic issues of poverty and underdevelopment.[2] The fact that women’s groups were now part and parcel of such a neo-liberal, market-oriented, and professionalised development sector led to allegations of “9–5 feminists.”
One consequence of this critique was the manner in which contemporary feminist formations like NGOs were not evaluated on their own terms, but for their failure to live up to the past, idealised standards. It is fair to say, instead, that there is great diversity in NGO practice, including their emergence as a major source of employment for lower middle-class women as well as their promotion of issues that earlier women’s groups never touched, such as female sexuality (Roy 2011; 2015).
The 1990s also saw a fracturing of the nationalist framing of the women’s question in the face of internal critiques by minority feminists. After all, this was a decade of deepening caste- and religion-based cleavages in India, especially through the rise of an aggressive Hindu nationalism as well as caste-based politics; factors that have irrevocably changed the nature of Indian politics (Ray and Katzenstein 2005). In the face of such complex identity politics, the existence of the IWM as a singular, cohesive entity was questioned, as was its claim and ability to speak on the behalf of all women (Menon 2012). This period also saw the remaking of feminist practice in concrete material terms via, for instance, the establishment of a distinctly Dalit feminist position with its own “autonomous” political platforms, such as the National Federation of Dalit Women (Rege 1998). While, for some, such internal critiques of feminism heralded its fracturing and possible death, for others it paved the way for a more intersectional and self-reflexive feminist politics and practice (Sen 2014).
The 2000s signified a new visibility and direction for Indian feminist activism, a third wave if you want. At the start of the decade, there were a number of spontaneous public protests and vigils led by middle-class youth in urban areas in response to high-profile cases of violence against elite women. An example is that of protests against the murder of model Jessica Lal (Dutta and Sircar 2013). There were also campaigns with explicit feminist agendas, like an Indian version of the international SlutWalk marches in 2011, and the 2009 Pink Chaddi campaign, which encouraged Indian women to mail underwear to members of a right-wing group that had attacked women drinking in a bar for being “un-Indian.” These two events were important forerunners of new feminist interventions into issues of public safety, street sexual harassment, and wider rape culture (epitomised by the anti-rape protests of 2012).
Rather than wait for state authorities to make Indian cities safer for women, new city-based feminist campaigns encouraged women to claim public spaces by and for themselves. They emphasised women’s desires for unconditional freedom in the public domain, including the freedom to access and occupy public spaces without fear, and even to indulge in “risky” behavior like “loitering” (Phadke et al 2011). Alongside local and national feminist campaigns like Why Loiter?, Blank Noise, Take Back the Night Kolkata, and Pinjra Tod, urban women challenged the stigma of menstruation, fought to enter Hindu temples, and broke taboos around speaking out on rape and rape culture.
The primarily middle-class and metropolitan character of these movements influenced both the kinds of issues they were taking up, as well as how they were choosing to do so (via social media). While activists in the IWM had always been middle class, the anti-colonial and socialist roots of the movement meant that class was privileged over all other social variables. By contrast, new feminists were unapologetically mobilising around issues that had particular relevance to them, but they also argued that addressing these issues would have wider implications across class. Their activism seemed to emerge out of and respond to the deficiencies of the feminism that came before them such as a legal feminism focused on women’s victimology alone (Kapur 2005).
The “third wave” also emerged in a time and place of neo-liberalism, enabled by its specific material configurations such as the growing activist use of social media, transnational links with feminist struggles elsewhere, increased education and employment options for women, and rising right-wing efforts to curtail these new freedoms, mobilities, and opportunities. Economic liberalism created, in other words, spaces for Indian women to politically intervene in ways that might not have been possible for previous generations.
For some critics, “new feminism” were problematic for these very reasons. They were seen to embody and reflect the consumer-oriented, individualistic, and entrepreneurial dispositions of metropolitan middle-class Indian women; in short, “neo-liberal feminism” (Gupta 2016; Gilbertson 2018).[4] Their mainly middle-class composition and their over-reliance on social media as an activist tool also raised concerns of exclusivity and limited reach besides inviting accusations of elitism and Westernisation.
For younger feminists who were part of the SlutWalk, such criticisms were perceived as less to do with elitism or Westernisation than with deep-seated anxieties around the public expression of sexuality (Borah and Nandi 2012). Pink Chaddi and SlutWalk campaigns, according to Borah and Nandi, centred questions of women’s sexual agency, pleasure, and desire in ways that mainstream Indian feminism never had. Generational divides thus intensified in the third wave and in ways that produced monolithic accounts of contemporary feminisms (as being elitist) as well as those preceding them (as being anti-sex).
A Hall of Shame
Towards the end of 2017, the Indian feminist community was riveted by an unexpected and ferocious controversy, following on the heels of the global #MeToo movement that brought these generational conflicts to a head. Raya Sarkar, a graduate student of Indian descent at the University of California, Davis, published (on Facebook) a “list” (hereafter the List) of sexual predators in Indian academia. The cautionary list contained, in the first instance, 60 prominent male academics, located in premier Indian institutions as well as in North America. No context, incidents, details or explanation of crimes were provided. The “public secret” (Baxi 2014) of sexual harassment in the academy exploded in the creation of this digital archive—a hall of shame.
As the List gained traction on social media, a statement was issued by 12 established Indian feminists on the popular political blog, Kafila. It expressed deep discomfort with the act of anonymously naming men as sexual aggressors “with no context or explanation,” and even argued that this could “delegitimise the long struggle against sexual harassment, and make our tasks as feminists more difficult” (Menon 2017). It asked for this initiative to be withdrawn while emphasising the importance of “due process, which is just and fair.” Many felt this was a particularly ironic call, given that an Indian court of law had only recently acquitted a well-known Indian writer and filmmaker who had been convicted of raping an American research scholar. The woman’s “no” to oral sex was converted, by the judge, into a “feeble no,” or, into consensual sex (Safi 2017).
What followed was a veritable split within the feminist community and one that appeared to be along generational lines. Younger feminists were positioned as ungrateful daughters vis-à-vis a feminist vanguard that had paved the way for them and older feminists, as naïve, if not reactionary, in their belief in due process and the law. What started as a generational debate, however, rapidly became one about caste-based differences and hierarchies. Just as it emerged that Sarkar was Dalit, the signatories of the statement on Kafila were identified as Savarna or upper-caste feminists. While the upper-caste politics of metropolitan feminists of the 1990s was called out, these internal differences reached a critical point in this controversy, with Dalit Bahujan feminists accusing upper-caste feminists of subjugating their efforts.
With the List, Dalit Bahujan Adivasi feminists decentered Savarna feminists, and disrupted, perhaps for the first time, nationalist framings of Indian feminism by revealing a vast terrain of multiple contestations and power relations. Rejecting their description as “millennial feminists,” minority activists framed the controversy around the List in terms of the power imbalances between Savarna and Dalit, Bahujan and Adivasi feminists. They made evident that contestations around caste cannot be understood in generational terms alone; they had persisted over time and within every generation of Indian feminists. By placing the voices of minority feminists, many of whom were also “younger” feminists, into the mainstream, the List also nuanced the overdominance of middle-class and upper-caste voices in Indian feminism’s “third wave.” In all these ways, Dalit Bahujan feminists disrupted conventional genealogies of Indian feminism.
The earliest campaigns - the 2003 Blank Noise Project against eve-teasing, the 2009 Pink Chaddi (underwear) movement against moral policing and the 2011 SlutWalk protest against victim-blaming - were limited in their scope but set the tone for this new mode of protest. Campaigns such the 2011 Why Loiter project on women’s right to public spaces, the 2015 Pinjra Tod (Break the Cage) movement against sexist curfew rules in student halls and the 2017 Bekhauf Azadi (Freedom without Fear) March resonated with a much larger number of women, turning this social media-led phenomenon into a true feminist movement.
These online campaigns represented a heightened level of frustration among the youth in a country where, despite several decades of feminist activism, the deep-rooted problem of gender inequality and sexual violence persists.
The anti-colonial and reform movements of the 19th century remain foundational to feminist politics in the region, constituting, for some, the first wave of Indian feminist organising. While this was a remarkable period for women’s rights and Indian women in general—effecting far-reaching changes to women’s education, employability, political participation, development, and “modernisation”—it was also instrumental in attaching the “women’s question” to nationalism (Chatterjee 1989; Sarkar 2001). Thus, even as middle-class Indian women modernised, becoming “new women” of the nation-in-making, their primary affiliation was meant to be to the family, the private sphere, the purity of nation and “culture.” Well into the postcolonial period, feminists drew on a culturally specific and nationalist repertoire of Indian womanhood to reinforce their anti-Western and indigenous credentials.
The autonomous feminists of the 1970s and 1980s—educated, middle class (if not elite), and urban—worked solidly on recognisable constituencies of poor, grass-roots women, with the nation state as their main point of address (John 1999). They shifted the left-led focus on women’s “practical” gender interests around material inequality (and the subsuming of gender under class) to more “strategic” gender interests such as violence against women. The custodial rape of a 14-year-old Adivasi woman named Mathura epitomised, for these feminists, the manner in which sexual violence could not be separated from the logic and workings of the patriarchal state. The Mathura rape case was also significant for inaugurating a slew of successful legal reforms around violence against women and orienting Indian feminism itself towards legal strategies (Kapur 2005).
Even as the autonomous women’s groups of the 1970s–80s constituted a very small percentage of the Indian women’s movement (IWM), they gave it its most abiding legacy, especially in the qualities of radicalism and autonomy that have become normative to feminism as such. Even after the demise of these groups, autonomy, from both political parties and external donors, remained a cherished political ideal and goal amongst Indian feminists (Roy 2011). Beyond that, the 1970s have come to mark a point of origin for the post-independence IWM as a whole, given the public nature of feminist protest action during this period, as well as its success in effecting actual legal change. Even the 2012 anti-rape protests were compared to (and judged as falling short of) this golden age of activism (Tellis 2012).
Liberalisation and Indian Feminism in the 1990s
If the 1970s mark the beginning of the IWM, then the 1990s constitute a “turning point” (Tharu and Niranjana 1994). This was the decade of the opening up of the Indian economy and the introduction of neo-liberal economic reforms. Economic liberalisation not only had far-reaching political and social effects, but also had at least two significant consequences for the IWM. The first of these was the rise of state feminism. Feminists came to be directly implicated in the expansion of state logic and governance, through effecting legal reform, in government-initiated women’s development programmes (such as Mahila Samakhya), women’s commissions (the National Commission for Women set up in 1990), and reservations in panchayats. Yet, the mood among Indian feminists was far from congratulatory, with Menon (2009) suggesting that state feminism could domesticate gender even as it opened up unexpected possibilities for women to participate in public political life.
Concerns around the implications of state feminism were most evident in legal reforms to combat violence against women. Besides the fact that very little was achieved in the realm of law enforcement, feminists argued that such reforms inadvertently increased the power of the state, while reinforcing not just patriarchal, but also class–caste norms and normativities. Take, for example, the case of Bhanwari Devi, a poor rural development worker, who was gang-raped by five upper-caste men in a village in Rajasthan for daring to contest the practice of child marriage in 1992 (Pandey 2017). A lower court acquitted the men, citing age and caste differences between the accused and the victim. Even as this case was instrumental in formulating guidelines for sexual harassment at the workplace, Bhanwari Devi is yet to receive justice. More recent instances of legal reform, namely the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2013 that followed the 2012 gang rape, have also done little to stop the relentless war on women’s bodies. This was more than evident in the case of the eight-year-old girl in Kathua, where sexual violence was employed to terrorise an entire community of nomadic Muslims in the Kashmir valley (BBC 2018).
Together with state feminism, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and “NGOisation” emerged as a second area of concern in the 1990s. A majority of the autonomous women’s groups that were formed in the 1980s transformed into funded NGOs in this period, given the expansion of work and need for sustainability. It was, moreover, the NGOs with full-time professional or trained “staff” and not grass-roots political organisations, that were seen to be taking important decisions on behalf of the entire women’s movement. While the first national-level autonomous women’s conferences in the country were attended by autonomous feminist groups, by the time of the last conference in Kolkata in 2006, it was overrun by NGOs, suggesting that “the women’s movement is a hugely funded affair today” (Biswas 2006).
The NGOisation of feminism evoked, in the Indian context, anxieties similar to those that have been documented elsewhere (Roy 2015). While a majority of these had to do with the sacrifice of political autonomy to external and especially global funding imperatives (NGOisation and transnationalisation have been twin processes), others had to do with changes to the internal culture and functioning of feminist struggles, as moving away from mass-based ones to professionalised and bureaucratised modes of engagement. These anxieties spoke to larger concerns about the neo-liberal turn in development centred on releasing the hidden entrepreneurial capacity of poor women of the global South as the answer to systemic issues of poverty and underdevelopment.[2] The fact that women’s groups were now part and parcel of such a neo-liberal, market-oriented, and professionalised development sector led to allegations of “9–5 feminists.”
One consequence of this critique was the manner in which contemporary feminist formations like NGOs were not evaluated on their own terms, but for their failure to live up to the past, idealised standards. It is fair to say, instead, that there is great diversity in NGO practice, including their emergence as a major source of employment for lower middle-class women as well as their promotion of issues that earlier women’s groups never touched, such as female sexuality (Roy 2011; 2015).
The 1990s also saw a fracturing of the nationalist framing of the women’s question in the face of internal critiques by minority feminists. After all, this was a decade of deepening caste- and religion-based cleavages in India, especially through the rise of an aggressive Hindu nationalism as well as caste-based politics; factors that have irrevocably changed the nature of Indian politics (Ray and Katzenstein 2005). In the face of such complex identity politics, the existence of the IWM as a singular, cohesive entity was questioned, as was its claim and ability to speak on the behalf of all women (Menon 2012). This period also saw the remaking of feminist practice in concrete material terms via, for instance, the establishment of a distinctly Dalit feminist position with its own “autonomous” political platforms, such as the National Federation of Dalit Women (Rege 1998). While, for some, such internal critiques of feminism heralded its fracturing and possible death, for others it paved the way for a more intersectional and self-reflexive feminist politics and practice (Sen 2014).
The 2000s signified a new visibility and direction for Indian feminist activism, a third wave if you want. At the start of the decade, there were a number of spontaneous public protests and vigils led by middle-class youth in urban areas in response to high-profile cases of violence against elite women. An example is that of protests against the murder of model Jessica Lal (Dutta and Sircar 2013). There were also campaigns with explicit feminist agendas, like an Indian version of the international SlutWalk marches in 2011, and the 2009 Pink Chaddi campaign, which encouraged Indian women to mail underwear to members of a right-wing group that had attacked women drinking in a bar for being “un-Indian.” These two events were important forerunners of new feminist interventions into issues of public safety, street sexual harassment, and wider rape culture (epitomised by the anti-rape protests of 2012).
Rather than wait for state authorities to make Indian cities safer for women, new city-based feminist campaigns encouraged women to claim public spaces by and for themselves. They emphasised women’s desires for unconditional freedom in the public domain, including the freedom to access and occupy public spaces without fear, and even to indulge in “risky” behavior like “loitering” (Phadke et al 2011). Alongside local and national feminist campaigns like Why Loiter?, Blank Noise, Take Back the Night Kolkata, and Pinjra Tod, urban women challenged the stigma of menstruation, fought to enter Hindu temples, and broke taboos around speaking out on rape and rape culture.
The primarily middle-class and metropolitan character of these movements influenced both the kinds of issues they were taking up, as well as how they were choosing to do so (via social media). While activists in the IWM had always been middle class, the anti-colonial and socialist roots of the movement meant that class was privileged over all other social variables. By contrast, new feminists were unapologetically mobilising around issues that had particular relevance to them, but they also argued that addressing these issues would have wider implications across class. Their activism seemed to emerge out of and respond to the deficiencies of the feminism that came before them such as a legal feminism focused on women’s victimology alone (Kapur 2005).
The “third wave” also emerged in a time and place of neo-liberalism, enabled by its specific material configurations such as the growing activist use of social media, transnational links with feminist struggles elsewhere, increased education and employment options for women, and rising right-wing efforts to curtail these new freedoms, mobilities, and opportunities. Economic liberalism created, in other words, spaces for Indian women to politically intervene in ways that might not have been possible for previous generations.
For some critics, “new feminism” were problematic for these very reasons. They were seen to embody and reflect the consumer-oriented, individualistic, and entrepreneurial dispositions of metropolitan middle-class Indian women; in short, “neo-liberal feminism” (Gupta 2016; Gilbertson 2018).[4] Their mainly middle-class composition and their over-reliance on social media as an activist tool also raised concerns of exclusivity and limited reach besides inviting accusations of elitism and Westernisation.
For younger feminists who were part of the SlutWalk, such criticisms were perceived as less to do with elitism or Westernisation than with deep-seated anxieties around the public expression of sexuality (Borah and Nandi 2012). Pink Chaddi and SlutWalk campaigns, according to Borah and Nandi, centred questions of women’s sexual agency, pleasure, and desire in ways that mainstream Indian feminism never had. Generational divides thus intensified in the third wave and in ways that produced monolithic accounts of contemporary feminisms (as being elitist) as well as those preceding them (as being anti-sex).
A Hall of Shame
Towards the end of 2017, the Indian feminist community was riveted by an unexpected and ferocious controversy, following on the heels of the global #MeToo movement that brought these generational conflicts to a head. Raya Sarkar, a graduate student of Indian descent at the University of California, Davis, published (on Facebook) a “list” (hereafter the List) of sexual predators in Indian academia. The cautionary list contained, in the first instance, 60 prominent male academics, located in premier Indian institutions as well as in North America. No context, incidents, details or explanation of crimes were provided. The “public secret” (Baxi 2014) of sexual harassment in the academy exploded in the creation of this digital archive—a hall of shame.
As the List gained traction on social media, a statement was issued by 12 established Indian feminists on the popular political blog, Kafila. It expressed deep discomfort with the act of anonymously naming men as sexual aggressors “with no context or explanation,” and even argued that this could “delegitimise the long struggle against sexual harassment, and make our tasks as feminists more difficult” (Menon 2017). It asked for this initiative to be withdrawn while emphasising the importance of “due process, which is just and fair.” Many felt this was a particularly ironic call, given that an Indian court of law had only recently acquitted a well-known Indian writer and filmmaker who had been convicted of raping an American research scholar. The woman’s “no” to oral sex was converted, by the judge, into a “feeble no,” or, into consensual sex (Safi 2017).
What followed was a veritable split within the feminist community and one that appeared to be along generational lines. Younger feminists were positioned as ungrateful daughters vis-à-vis a feminist vanguard that had paved the way for them and older feminists, as naïve, if not reactionary, in their belief in due process and the law. What started as a generational debate, however, rapidly became one about caste-based differences and hierarchies. Just as it emerged that Sarkar was Dalit, the signatories of the statement on Kafila were identified as Savarna or upper-caste feminists. While the upper-caste politics of metropolitan feminists of the 1990s was called out, these internal differences reached a critical point in this controversy, with Dalit Bahujan feminists accusing upper-caste feminists of subjugating their efforts.
With the List, Dalit Bahujan Adivasi feminists decentered Savarna feminists, and disrupted, perhaps for the first time, nationalist framings of Indian feminism by revealing a vast terrain of multiple contestations and power relations. Rejecting their description as “millennial feminists,” minority activists framed the controversy around the List in terms of the power imbalances between Savarna and Dalit, Bahujan and Adivasi feminists. They made evident that contestations around caste cannot be understood in generational terms alone; they had persisted over time and within every generation of Indian feminists. By placing the voices of minority feminists, many of whom were also “younger” feminists, into the mainstream, the List also nuanced the overdominance of middle-class and upper-caste voices in Indian feminism’s “third wave.” In all these ways, Dalit Bahujan feminists disrupted conventional genealogies of Indian feminism.
Feminism in present-day India has been showing some encouraging trends. First, increasing economic liberty is allowing women to fight stereotyping. Second, what women want is changing – from economic rights to social and sexual rights. Third, women are not vacating their spaces – they are negotiating harder to expand them. Fourth, there is genuine partnership and collaboration among men and women, particularly youngsters, to embrace meaningful gender equality. Finally, the internet and information revolution is helping women form communities and networks, giving them a bigger voice and tools to organize themselves, forge partnerships and demand their rights.
Most academics attribute the growth of feminism in India to western influence, disregarding the fact that feminism is multicultural – the needs and problems of women who live in different countries are dissimilar. However, Indians di
Most academics attribute the growth of feminism in India to western influence, disregarding the fact that feminism is multicultural – the needs and problems of women who live in different countries are dissimilar. However, Indians di
Mainstream feminism in India
Mainstream Indian feminism has tended to focus on issues such as child marriage, sex-selective abortions and dowry-related violence. It saw sexuality only in terms of extraordinary forms of sexual violence against marginal women, such as rape of Dalit (formerly “untouchable”), tribal, or Muslim women, or those living in the country’s military zones such as Kashmir or the North East.
But it did little to address the question of eve-teasing – the everyday, supposedly harmless and largely sanctioned practice of sexual harassment and molestation that affects women on the streets and in workplaces, across class, caste and religion. For it, this problem could easily be solved by protecting and restricting women.
Things changed when India’s 1990’s economic liberalization triggered an unintended and unexpected cultural shift in the country. It brought questions of women’s freedom, choice and desire to the forefront.
On the one hand, Western multinational companies that began investing in the country in a big way, opened up massive job opportunities for women in urban India. On the other, the arrival from the West of sexually explicit images - through film and cable TV - into Indian homes changed the meaning of sexuality and sexual desire for young women. Print and visual media, for example, began to show a new kind of Indian femininity that was comfortable with her modernity and sexuality.
These transformations unleashed a major backlash from conservative Indians who felt threatened by the changing lifestyle of a growing number of educated, professionally skilled and financially independent women questioning traditional gender roles and expectations.
Faced with the resultant rise of sexual violence in the society, rather than tackling the root cause of misogyny and sexism or ensuring women’s safety in public places, the state and society responded by being patronizing and policing young women’s behavior. They sought to keeping women safe by restricting their movement.
The 2012 fatal gang rape of a 23-year-old student in Delhi became a tipping point. An unprecedented number of millennial youth launched a rallying cry for women’s unconditional freedom. They asserted that women have absolute right to their choices, their bodies and to their movement in public spaces at any time of day or night. They challenged outmoded cultural beliefs that women invite sexual violence through their clothes and behavior.
Mainstream Indian feminism has tended to focus on issues such as child marriage, sex-selective abortions and dowry-related violence. It saw sexuality only in terms of extraordinary forms of sexual violence against marginal women, such as rape of Dalit (formerly “untouchable”), tribal, or Muslim women, or those living in the country’s military zones such as Kashmir or the North East.
But it did little to address the question of eve-teasing – the everyday, supposedly harmless and largely sanctioned practice of sexual harassment and molestation that affects women on the streets and in workplaces, across class, caste and religion. For it, this problem could easily be solved by protecting and restricting women.
Things changed when India’s 1990’s economic liberalization triggered an unintended and unexpected cultural shift in the country. It brought questions of women’s freedom, choice and desire to the forefront.
On the one hand, Western multinational companies that began investing in the country in a big way, opened up massive job opportunities for women in urban India. On the other, the arrival from the West of sexually explicit images - through film and cable TV - into Indian homes changed the meaning of sexuality and sexual desire for young women. Print and visual media, for example, began to show a new kind of Indian femininity that was comfortable with her modernity and sexuality.
These transformations unleashed a major backlash from conservative Indians who felt threatened by the changing lifestyle of a growing number of educated, professionally skilled and financially independent women questioning traditional gender roles and expectations.
Faced with the resultant rise of sexual violence in the society, rather than tackling the root cause of misogyny and sexism or ensuring women’s safety in public places, the state and society responded by being patronizing and policing young women’s behavior. They sought to keeping women safe by restricting their movement.
The 2012 fatal gang rape of a 23-year-old student in Delhi became a tipping point. An unprecedented number of millennial youth launched a rallying cry for women’s unconditional freedom. They asserted that women have absolute right to their choices, their bodies and to their movement in public spaces at any time of day or night. They challenged outmoded cultural beliefs that women invite sexual violence through their clothes and behavior.
Conclusion
Feminism in India has emerged as a subject of contestation, with many asking at several junctures: What is feminism? Who gets to define it, speak on its behalf? Who does it belong to? What is its proper place? Contestations about sexual violence, for example, have invariably become contestations about feminism. These moments are deeply pedagogical in the sense that they teach us how feminism is thought and made sense of, and how there are multiple, competing and even conflictual stories about feminism, and that too, from within its own fold. Such forms of internal critique and contestation are often concealed, if not flattened out, in generational narratives that tend to fix our gaze on differences across time, but not on the problematics of our present. Framed in generational terms, the present is marked by feminist loss, even failure, such as the failures of legal feminisms to provide gender-based justice and the failure of upper-caste Indian feminists to centre the politics of caste (thereby reproducing Brahminical supremacy). Framed in other ways, we could see such moments of feminist failing as pregnant with several possibilities, including greater self-reflexivity, appreciation of hybrid legacies, and the propelling of “Indian feminism” into new directions.
The #MeToo movement be brought up from the circle of false allegations, and naming and shaming. In my opinion, naming and shaming is not the right approach. There are laws and legal routes. If those don’t work, then social media can be a last resort, yes. But remember, without actually knowing what exactly happened, the entire nation started shaming a guy, and neglected his appeal for fair trial. The media too was quick to make judgements and tag a man as a “pervert” or “harasser”. As a result, many careers and families are being destroyed by a publicity-hungry few. People are losing jobs, livelihoods, and dignity. Those in power are taking decisions in haste without probing. And yes, I do agree there are genuine cases. If someone has harassed or raped a person, an FIR should be filed with the police. Let there be a fair investigation, trial, and judgement.
The MeToo movement has brought about a tectonic shift in a deep-rooted patriarchal mindset. It's impact is so deep that it won't be long before we witness our politics, our economy and justice system being readjusted to accommodate 50% of the population of the world, which has since forever been isolated from the mainstream for no rhyme or reason
By bringing the discourse of freedom, sexuality, choice and desire into the public realm – in the streets and through social media – this agitation forced the government to expand its legal definition of rape, introducing harsher punishment for rapists and criminalizing stalking and voyeurism.
Even though there still remains a lot of work to be done, the movement to secure rights for women in India has come a long way thanks to these inspiring and fierce personalities who made it possible by relentlessly fighting the forces of patriarchy. There were and still are many other individuals and organizations who are also working for gender equality and justice in India and their efforts are paying off.
The #MeToo movement which began in the United States more than a year ago—in response to accusations of sexual harassment and abuse by powerful men in the entertainment industry—entered India this September. The movement basically aims to speak out against the harassment at the workplace by giving strength to survivors to stand up against injustice. The core theme of this movement is that the time has come out to speak out. Presently, this campaign is trending in India with some women revealing their personal experiences. Many politicians, journalists, actors and singers’ names have come out in the open.
The movement started on social media with the hashtag #MeToo, where a survivor tells their story of sexual assault by writing posts. By putting these stories in the public domain, it aims to get support from people. This has also some advantages―it united survivors, and dispels the fear of speaking, especially after listening to others’ stories.
The #MeToo movement has brought many fearful women out of the shadows. We are letting the world know that we are no longer willing to be silent because we have each other now. The movement is very necessary and has good intentions, but in my view, it works on selective outrage. In India, the movement reaches only urban areas; only a few institutions or workplaces. The women who speak up are mostly from the ‘higher class’ of society, There are far fewer from middle class families, and the numbers from rural areas are almost equal to zero. Therefore, the core problem with this movement is that #MeToo has not reached all sections of women in society. It needs to be take some more time to become part of ‘the women’s movement’ in India. I wish it could be happen sooner.
The problem with #MeToo is the same problem any movement has. It always starts off with a good motive, but as it gets more popular, it attracts more people who want to co-opt it for personal gain. The movement has also some bad impact. In several cases, it has just become a game of naming and shaming, and false allegations. A man was defamed just because a woman ‘said’ that he harassed her! This makes the movement weaker.
Till now, there haven’t been many FIRs registered by the survivors who have spoken up. The movement must be more than sharing stories on social media.
Another problem of the movement is that the cases spoken of are so old. It can take time to prove anything, or maybe they can’t prove things because of the absence of evidence.
This movement has empowered survivors, who now know they aren’t alone. There is always someone supporting them in their endeavor. So many people coming together in a digital platform to share their stories or even share the fact that they too have undergone harassment is definitely a big change! Opening up about these things is a very challenging mental task especially when well-known people are involved. Things will take time to change but this small movement is definitely a good step.
The movement started on social media with the hashtag #MeToo, where a survivor tells their story of sexual assault by writing posts. By putting these stories in the public domain, it aims to get support from people. This has also some advantages―it united survivors, and dispels the fear of speaking, especially after listening to others’ stories.
The #MeToo movement has brought many fearful women out of the shadows. We are letting the world know that we are no longer willing to be silent because we have each other now. The movement is very necessary and has good intentions, but in my view, it works on selective outrage. In India, the movement reaches only urban areas; only a few institutions or workplaces. The women who speak up are mostly from the ‘higher class’ of society, There are far fewer from middle class families, and the numbers from rural areas are almost equal to zero. Therefore, the core problem with this movement is that #MeToo has not reached all sections of women in society. It needs to be take some more time to become part of ‘the women’s movement’ in India. I wish it could be happen sooner.
The problem with #MeToo is the same problem any movement has. It always starts off with a good motive, but as it gets more popular, it attracts more people who want to co-opt it for personal gain. The movement has also some bad impact. In several cases, it has just become a game of naming and shaming, and false allegations. A man was defamed just because a woman ‘said’ that he harassed her! This makes the movement weaker.
Till now, there haven’t been many FIRs registered by the survivors who have spoken up. The movement must be more than sharing stories on social media.
Another problem of the movement is that the cases spoken of are so old. It can take time to prove anything, or maybe they can’t prove things because of the absence of evidence.
This movement has empowered survivors, who now know they aren’t alone. There is always someone supporting them in their endeavor. So many people coming together in a digital platform to share their stories or even share the fact that they too have undergone harassment is definitely a big change! Opening up about these things is a very challenging mental task especially when well-known people are involved. Things will take time to change but this small movement is definitely a good step.
In the end, I would like to say that a change in mindset is happening, old stereotypes are being questioned but it is still limited to a certain level of society. But, till the time there is not a proper shift, male entrepreneurs would prefer to hire male employees for the sake of being “safe”. Men will question every step they take, rapes and sexual harrasment will become common usage words. We can start by making sure the next generation is aware, they consider the other gender equal, they see the difference and acknowledge it but don’t consider it to be inferior. Instead of just women taking self defence classes and being hushed throughout puberty about periods and their bra straps showing, boys are taught to respect girls, taught to know the basic biological process, taught about toxic masculinity and all the way they are being harmed. Affirmative action be taken in courts for female lawyers. We really need a strong judicial system for all the people coming out regarding their abuse right now and we need to bring a positive change. Slowly and gradually.
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