QUES . The image of the women changed from a recipient of justice in the nineteenth century to an ardent supporter of nationalists in the twentieth century. Discuss.
RELEVANCE – GS MAINS PAPER I ; TOPIC – Role of women and women’s organization ; Modern Indian history from about the middle of the eighteenth century until the present significant events, personalities, issues .
HINTS :
• Women had participated in all streams of the national movement-from Gandhian to Socialist to Communist to revolutionary terrorism. After independence, when the time came to consolidate the gains of the hard fought struggle, the attention naturally turned to securing legal and constitutional rights. The constitution promised complete equality to women. In the early 1950s, Nehru initiated the process of the enactment of the Hindu Code Bill, a measure demanded by women since the 1930s.
• Perhaps inevitably, there was not much evidence of women’s struggles’ in the 1950s and 1960s, which led to a view that there was no women’s movement after independence till the new initiative in the 1970s. The Indian women’s movement went through precisely such a phase after independence.
• Tebhaga peasant movement in Bengal in 1946-47, women had organized themselves on a separate platform of the Nari Bahini and they ran shelters and maintained lines of communication. In another major Communist peasant struggle of that time in the Telangana area of Hyderabad state from 1947 to 1950, women’s participation was also quite significant.
• The anti-price rise movement, of 1973-75, was organized by Communist and Socialist women in the urban areas of Maharashtra. Thousands of housewives joined in public rallies. The movement further spread to other parts of the country gaining influence from Total Revolution.
• In Andhra Pradesh by Mid-1990s a powerful wave of anti-liquor protest by poor rural women led to a
policy of prohibition and later restriction of liquor sales. From 1974, women in Uttarakhand were again
very active in the Chipko movement which got its name from the actions of women who hugged trees in
order to prevent them from being cut down by timber contractors.
• The declaration by the UN of 1975 as the International Women’s Year probably contributed to a flurry of activities in Maharashtra. Various women organizations actively raised their voice against the social evil of dowry. Their protest gained result when the amendments strengthening the law against perpetrators of dowry-related crimes were passed in 1984.
• The amendment of the law on rape was possible because of the serious interventions made by various
women organization.
• The educational divide between rural and urban women was also a major hindrance. Their interventions
were successful and the Government policy was certainly affected, and it came up with a National
Perspective Plan for Women in 1988, which detailed plans for women’s health, education and political
participation. In 1989, the Panchayati Raj bill was introduced which instituted one-third of the seats in the
panchayats to be reserved for women.
• Another factor that is very important in improving gender justice is the provision of free primary health
facilities at the grassroots level. As in the case of education, if health facilities are not easily accessible or
are expensive, the loss is unequally that of women and female children.
• But the legal and the political rights granted to women in the constitution, which are theirs by virtue of their own efforts as well as by all norms of social justice have to be realized and democratized by millions of women to become capable of understanding and exercising them.
