Feminism in India is a set of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and opportunities for women in India. It is the pursuit of women's rights within the society of India. Like their feminist counterparts all over the world, feminists in India seek gender equality: the right to work for equality in wages, the right to equal access to health and education, and equal political rights.Ray, Raka. Fields of Protest: Women's Movements in India . University of Minnesota Press; Minneapolis, MN. 1999. Page 13. Indian feminists also have fought against what they claim are culture-specific fundamental issues within India's patriarchal society, such as inheritance laws.
The history of feminism in India can be divided into three phases: the first phase, beginning in the mid-19th century, initiated when reformists began to speak in favour of women rights by making reforms in education and customs involving women; the second phase, from 1915 to Indian independence, when Gandhi incorporated women's movements into the Quit India movement and independent women's organisations began to emerge; and finally, the third phase, post-independence, which has focused on fair treatment of women at home after marriage as well as the work force, and their right to political parity.
Despite the progress made by Indian feminist movements, women living in modern India still face many issues of discrimination. India's patriarchal culture has made the process of gaining land-ownership rights and access to education challenging for women. Women often opted to become commercial surrogates as a means of procuring income until 2025, when it was banned. In the past two decades, there has also emerged a trend of sex-selective abortion. To Indian feminists, these are seen as injustices worth struggling against and feminism is often misunderstood by Indians as female domination rather than equality.Gangoli (2007), page 2.
As in the West, there has been some criticism of feminist movements in India. They have especially been criticised for focusing too much on privileged women, and neglecting the needs and representation of poorer or lower caste women. This has led to the creation of caste-specific feminist organisations and movements.Gangoli, Geetanjali. Indian Feminisms – Law, Patriarchies and Violence in India . Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2007. Print; pages 10–12.
Definition in the Indian context In modern India, women's issues first began to be structurally addressed when the state commissioned a report on the status of women to a group of feminist researchers and activists. The report recognised the fact that in India, women were oppressed under a system of structural hierarchies and injustices. During this period, Indian feminists were influenced by the Western debates being conducted about violence against women. However, due to the difference in the historical and social culture of India, the debate in favour of Indian women had to be conducted creatively, and certain Western ideas had to be rejected.Gangoli (2007), page 6. These movements called for education and equal rights but also adapted their appeals to local issues and concerns, such as dowry-related violence against women, Sati, sex-selective abortion, and custodial rape. Accordingly, many Indian feminists simultaneously claim a specific "Indian" sensitivity as well as international feminist solidarity with groups and individuals worldwide.Ray (1999), page 14. Women's issues began to gain an international prominence when the decade of 1975–1985 was declared the United Nations Decade for Women.Gangoli (2007), page 16.
Indian feminists face certain obstacles in Indian society that are not present or as prevalent in Western society. While Indian feminists have the same ultimate goal as their Western counterparts, their version of feminism can differ in many ways in order to tackle the kind of issues and circumstances they face in the modern-day patriarchal society of India. In the area of religion, Indian feminists draw attention to the powerful image of female Goddesses in Hinduism. They also point out the matriarchal pre-history of Indian society and emphasise that there have been periods of Indian history that were not patriarchal, and communities existed in India that were largely female-orientated and matriarchal.
Indian women negotiate survival through an array of oppressive patriarchal family structures: age, ordinal status, relationship to men through family of origin, marriage and procreation, and patriarchal attributes. Examples of patriarchal attributes include dowry, siring sons etc., kinship, caste, community, village, market, and the state. It should, however, be noted that several communities in India, such as the Nairs of Kerala, and the Shettys of Mangalore exhibit matriarchal tendencies. In these communities, the head of the family is the oldest woman, rather than the oldest man. Sikh culture is also regarded as relatively gender-neutral.Singh, S. 2010. "Examining the Dharma Driven Identity of Women: Mahabharata's Kunti" – As part of an Anthology titled The Woman Question in the Contemporary Indian English Women Writings, Ed. Indu Swami Publishers Sarup: Delhi.The last Sikh Guru Guru Gobind Singh, gave all Sikh females regardless of their age or marital status the name of Kaur meaning that they would not have to take their husband's name if they married. In India, of communities recognised in the national Constitution as Scheduled Tribes, "some ... [are] matriarchal and matrilineal"Mukherjee, Sucharita Sinha, Women's Empowerment and Gender Bias in the Birth and Survival of Girls in Urban India, in Feminist Economics, vol. 19, no. 1 (January, 2013) (), p. 9, citing Srinivas, Mysore Narasimhachar, The Cohesive Role of Sanskritization and Other Essays (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989), & Agarwal, Bina, A Field of One's Own: Gender and Land Rights in South Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1994). "and thus have been known to be more egalitarian."Mukherjee, Sucharita Sinha, Women's Empowerment and Gender Bias in the Birth and Survival of Girls in Urban India, op. cit., p. 9.
The heterogeneity of the Indian experience reveals that there are multiple patriarchies, contributing to the existence of multiple feminism. Hence, feminism in India is not a singular theoretical orientation; it has changed over time in relation to historical and cultural realities, levels of consciousness, perceptions and actions of individual women and women as a group. The widely used definition is "An awareness of women's oppression and exploitation in society, at work and within the family, and conscious action by women and men to change this situation."Bhasin, Kamala and Khan, Nighat Said. "Some Questions on Feminism and Its Relevance in South Asia", Kali for Women, New Delhi, 1986. Acknowledging sexism in daily life and attempting to challenge and eliminate it through deconstructing mutually exclusive notions of femininity and masculinity as biologically determined categories opens the way towards an equitable society for both men and women.
History
Feminism as an initiative started independently in Maharashtra by the pioneer of women's rights and education: Savitribai Phule, who started the first school for girls in India (1848); Tarabai Shinde, who wrote India's first feminist text Stri Purush Tulana (A Comparison Between Women and Men) in 1882; and Pandita Ramabai, who criticized patriarchy and caste-system in Hinduism, married outside her caste and converted to Christianity (1880s). The efforts of Bengali reformers included abolishing sati, which was a widow's death by burning on her husband's funeral pyre, Jewels of Authority: Women and Textual Tradition in Hindu India. New York: Oxford UP, 2002. abolishing the custom of child marriage, abolishing the disfiguring of widows, introducing the marriage of upper caste Hindu widows, promoting women's education, obtaining legal rights for women to own property, and requiring the law to acknowledge women's status by granting them basic rights in matters such as adoption.
The 19th century was the period that saw a majority of women's issues which came under the spotlight and reforms began to be made. Much of the early reforms for Indian women were conducted by men. However, by the late 19th century they were joined in their efforts by their wives, sisters, daughters, protegees and other individuals directly affected by campaigns such as those carried out for women's education.
In the 1920s, Periyar E.V. Ramasamy challenged long-ingrained patriarchy by opposing marriage as an instrument of enslavement for women. He challenged gendered chastity, advocated the right to divorce without abuse, and stressed economic independence and education as prerequisites for authentic freedom.
By the late 20th century, women gained greater autonomy through the formation of independent women's own organisations. By the late thirties and forties, a new narrative began to be constructed regarding "women's activism". This was newly researched and expanded with the vision to create 'logical' and organic links between feminism and Marxism, as well as with anti-communalism and anti-casteism, etc. The Constitution of India did guarantee "equality between the sexes", which created a relative lull in women's movements until the 1970s.Kumar, Radha. The History of Doing , Kali for Women, New Delhi, 1998.
During the formative years of women's rights movements, the difference between the sexes was more or less taken for granted in that their roles, functions, aims and desires were different. As a result, they were not only to be reared differently but also treated differently. Over the course of time, this difference itself became a major reason for initiating women's movements. Early 19th century reformers argued that the difference between men and women was no reason for the subjection of women in society. However, later reformers were of the opinion that indeed it was this particular difference that subjugated women to their roles in society, for example, as mothers. Therefore, there was a need for the proper care of women's rights. With the formation of women's organisations and their own participation in campaigns, their roles as mothers were again stressed but in a different light: this time the argument was for women's rights to speech, education and emancipation. However, the image of women with the mother as a symbol underwent changes over time – from an emphasis on family to the creation of an archetypal mother figure, evoking deep, often atavistic images.
First phase: 1850–1915
The colonial venture into modernity brought concepts of democracy, equality and individual rights. The rise of the concept of nationalism and introspection of discriminatory practices brought about social reform movements related to caste and gender relations. This first phase of feminism in India was initiated by men to uproot the social evils,Napier, William. (1851) History of General Sir Charles Napier's Administration of Scinde. (P. 35). London: Chapman and Hall at books.google.com, accessed 10 July 2011 to allow remarriage of widows, to forbid child marriage, and to reduce illiteracy. It also aimed to regulate the age of consent and to ensure property rights through legal intervention. However, efforts for improving the status of women in Indian society were somewhat thwarted by the late nineteenth century, as nationalist movements emerged in India. These movements resisted 'colonial interventions in gender relations' particularly in the areas of family relations. In the mid to late nineteenth century, there was a national form of resistance to any colonial efforts made to 'modernize' the Hindu family. This included the Age of Consent controversy that erupted after the government tried to raise the age of marriage for women.Gangoli (2007), pages 88–89.