A Profile of Women's Struggles in the Recent Past
Vibhuti Patel
This is an edited, much shortened version of an article of the same title published in Reaching for Half the Sky: a Reader in Women's Movement (Anlar Rashtriya Prakashan, Baroda, 1985). The first part of the section on the anti-rape movement is taken from an earlier paper written by Vibhuti Patel which was reproduced in the compilation Third World - Second Sex: Women's Struggles and National Liberation (Zed Press, London, 1983).
The last decade was marked by a spread of the women's liberation movement on an international scale. In India also, after 1975, a new rise in women's struggles resulted in the blossoming of women's groups and organizations adhering to the idea of women's liberation. Initially it attracted mainly educated middle-class and upper-middle class women, but later stirred radical and Left organizations as well. This new wave of activity, based on women's specific demands, was something quite new in India where earlier movements against female infanticide, sati (widow-burning) and purdah or in favor of women's education had been initiated and pursued by liberal male crusaders.
Behind the New Awakening
The crisis of the mid and late 1960s gave rise, internationally as well as in India, to a radicalization process of the masses of the struggling working class. Not only massive trade-union and anti-price-rise movements, but others such as the antiwar movement, colonial liberation struggles, student and black movements developed both inside and outside official communist and socialist parties.
Women, too, were very much part of this process of struggle and self-expression. In India, alongside campaigning against price-rise, unemployment, low wages, unjust distribution of land etc., many women activists found it necessary to take up issues related to female oppression, such as dowry, violence in the family, alcoholism and wife-beating.
This early action manifested itself in many different ways. For instance, in 1972, struggles in Dhulia against the exploitation and oppression of tribal masses by rich peasants, money-lenders and government officials attracted women's support from the very beginning. Tribal women who came out to campaign against economic exploitation realized the necessity of fighting also against alcoholism, wife-beating and sexual harassment of the tribal poor by the rural rich.
As a result, they not only launched a furious battle against bootleggers, breaking wine-pots, but any man who consumed alcohol and beat up his wife was attacked with brooms by a group of women and forced to pledge that he would not do it again. Furthermore, any man who molested a woman was made to wear a garland of foot-wears and given a donkey-ride around the village.
Quite different, being middle class in origin, were tendencies such as the Progressive Organization of Women which emerged from the radical students movement in Hyderabad around 1974. Among its demands were legislation against prostitution, child marriage and obscene art degrading to women; equal pay for equal work; provision of maternity and childcare facilities; and equal share of both earned and inherited property for daughters. Many young students were attracted by its manifesto proclaiming solidarity with all women and all "oppressed classes."
Emergence of Autonomous Women's Groups and Organizations
Against a background of widespread political activity the autonomous women's movement emerged as a distinguishing feature of the mid 1970s. It was autonomous in the sense of being independent from any political party. However, it was by no means apolitical. Members of autonomous women's organizations could adhere to various political ideologies or even belong to political parties. They were also not separatist, including sometimes the participation of men; their one insistence as feminists was that women should lead and decide the course of the movement on the understanding that fighting the specific oppression of women was its first and foremost priority.
Around 1975 and the declaration of International Women's Year by the United Nations, women's groups came together with renewed enthusiasm. One of these was Stree Mukti Sanghatana which, in spite of its largely middle-class composition, organized a conference attended by nearly 800 working-class women. The majority, belonging to a political party, formed a cultural wing and composed songs advocating women's liberation and emphasizing unity of all working women.
Also very active was the Socialist Women's Group which organized discussion and distributed many important papers by Indian feminists and feminists from abroad. Out of a workshop in 1978 came the newsletter Feminist Network, aimed at coordinating information, identifying common problems and sharing experiences between women activists and organizations around the country. Six issues were published in all until 1979 when the group decided to concentrate its energies on Manushi, a new monthly magazine in Hindi and English which remains a central mouthpiece of the autonomous feminist movement today. Circulation of Manushi in thousands indicated the new militant mood of women in India.
The Nationwide Anti-Rape Movement
Given the variety of women's issues at the time, it is interesting that the anti-rape movement gained momentum more quickly than any other issue-oriented campaign or movement.
An examination of the conditions and circumstances operative in the late 1970s throws light on this issue. For many middle-class women the Emergency and its practice and consequences was the first time they had seen the oppressive machinery of the State in action. Many began to question the powers given to the police and State authorities in the control of people's lives, heightened further by their role in the caste and communal riots and atrocities committed therein. Increasing instances of rape by the police were coming to light, assisted by press coverage (which reduced its significance to a "civil liberties" issue). In this context, it was hardly surprising that when the facts about the rape of Mathura by two policemen came to be known, there was a national outcry.
Briefly, Mathura, a young girl, was raped by two policemen behind the police station. After agitations by inhabitants of the area, a case was heard in court which found the accused guilty. However, an appeal was made which resulted in a revoking of the verdict, and the two policemen were set free. Prominent lawyers took up the case, as did the national press; women from all over the country reacted angrily, and the anti-rape movement throughout India was launched.
Women came out in large numbers in opposition to the Supreme Court judgment, staged rallies, demonstrations, submitted petitions to official bodies, including the Prime Minister, and generally alerted the public not just to Mathura's case but the incidence of rape and its treatment by the law generally.
From among the number of organizations formed to fight rape, it was the Forum Against Rape in Bombay (later to become Forum Against Oppression of Women) that sustained and expanded its activities to include investigations around specific rape cases in the area, offering support to the women although limited in its scope. The Forum began as an ad hoc body and despite its heterogenous composition in terms of economic, social and political backgrounds of its members, remained active for ten months. Like many other urban women's organizations, its membership was of women of middle class status, mostly educated and well-informed about the women's liberation movement in the West. Most of them were lawyers, doctors, social workers, researchers, journalists and teachers. There were very few students and housewives.
After taking up several more cases of rape and murder in the wake of the Mathura affair it was finally resolved that the Forum should be an overall pressure group focusing public attention on rape by writing articles and holding demonstrations, for it simply did not have the woman power to sustain every individual case over an unlimited period of time. With continuing mass support, including interest from some left-wing political parties, protest centered on a national campaign to change existing rape laws. Further action was also taken against police atrocities, the portrayal of violence against women in the cinema and dowry deaths.
An example of the Forum's success is the campaign to protect women commuters which ended up with the provision of 24-hour women-only carriages on trains. This followed the murder of three women in Bombay within the same week in January 1981, one of whom, a college professor, was killed in the first-class ladies compartment during morning office hours. Women commuters, and later women's fronts of various political parties, held demonstrations, collected signatures and submitted a memorandum to the Railways General Manager demanding more safety measures for women travelers. In addition the Forum conducted a survey among female commuters which showed that they did not trust the police and wanted second and first class women-only compartments around the clock, fitted with wire mesh on the windows and alarm bells in case of trouble. It was only after Forum members together with women commuters had kept up a long campaign involving regular night-time journeys to Virar, the furthest point where the Western suburban train terminates, to physically push men out of the women-only carriages that a joint meeting was held with railway officials and the situation improved.
General Achievements of the Autonomous Women's Movement
The main achievement of this movement was to highlight "sensational" and "personal" problems like rape, wife-beating and sexual harassment. Earlier only economic issues affecting women were taken up by political parties and women's fronts. After the anti-rape movement these problems were also treated as serious social problems.
Autonomous women's organizations have made efforts to make feminism acceptable among masses through plays, skits, songs, posters, exhibitions, newsletters and magazines. Today there are many feminist magazines besides Manushi in various regional languages.
Another important development has been the emergence of women's groups working at different levels and on specific aspects of women's oppression. In the cities of Delhi, Bombay and Kanpur many feminists felt the need for a women's center - a place for women to go for emotional, legal and medical support. Now all three places have centers providing services to individual harassed women.
A further achievement of the autonomous women's movement is its contribution in creating an atmosphere where "personal" problems of individual women could be discussed in a candid manner and challenge male chauvinism and sexism, not only at the level of physical brutality but also its subtler manifestations in all male-female relationships. This movement also gave personal courage to individual women to determine their own destiny without the guidance and patronage of their male counterparts.
The women's movement has also generated feminist cultural groups. Fine art forms are used in a new feminist perspective. And in the academic field research is being carried out with more seriousness. The National Conference on Women's Studies in April 1981 attracted attention not only from academicians but also planners and policy-makers. Representatives of more than 100 universities and 15 centers took part. Now women's studies is taken as a priority subject.
Links with the Working-Class Movement
The Left looks at the autonomous women's movement with great suspicion, alleging that middle-class feminists are dividing the working class and neglecting the dire economic issues which affect the large majority of poorer women. However (besides needing to acknowledge its own largely middle-class composition), it cannot ignore that autonomous women's organizations are attracting more and more sincere and committed women, many of whom firmly believe in the need to take up the problems of working women hitherto ignored by the trade unions. For instance, childcare and cheap eating facilities, convenient working hours, job security and the sexual division of labor were never even considered before. In fact, in the textile industry trade union leaders have actually connived with employers to retrench women workers and replace them by men in times of rationalization and mechanization.
Questions like whether women should form separate trade unions, thus endangering the unity of the working class, are seriously discussed by a number of feminist groups. Many believe that instead of confronting trade union movements they should concentrate on pressurizing trade-union leadership to take up the specific problems of working women. The formation of women's caucuses within some unions, together with increasing sensitivity towards the problems of all women at the most oppressed levels of society, is a healthy development in this respect.