Gender, Feminism and Post-Colonial India

1. Gender, Feminism and Post-Colonial India International Perspectives on Gender Week 12

2. Structure of lecture • Introduction and Context • Gender and Nation-building • Why Full Equality was not Realised • Sex Ratios and the Missing Girl Child • Indian feminisms • SlutWalks and Pink Chaddis • Disowning Dependence • Conclusions

3. Introduction and Context • Nehru’s ‘tryst with destiny’ • Constitution of 1950 established a secular, democratic Republic • Feminism had been subordinated to Nationalism • Women were central to Indian independence • What was women’s destiny following independence?

4. Gender and Nation-Building • Important new legal rights for women post-independence, including to vote and to education • Reform of personal laws re marriage, divorce, adoption, inheritance, BUT resisted and Islamic Personal Law retained • First 5 Year Plans failed to recognise women as workers • Instead of economic rights women got welfarism • Content of women’s emancipation was contested • Banerjee: ‘challenging the patriarchal ethos of our society had never been on the agenda of the Indian state’ (1998, p. 4)

5. Report of National Planning Committee ignored (based on 1940 data, published 1947) • One third of Indian women did productive work, for poorer wages than men Proposed policies to treat women as economic actors in own right; improve working conditions rather than banning women; ‘wages’ for housework; husbands to share in housework • Ignored by Nehru’s government • Report resurrected in 1995 by MaitreyiKrishnaraj • Why were dreams of full equality for Indian women not realised?

6. Why full equality not realised 1. Immediate chaos of Partition 2. Dominant economic model of modernization, privileging economic growth over social justice 3. Women’s contradictory roles in nationalist project and vision - to signify both modernity and to safeguard tradition - to enter the public sphere and yet remain tied to the family ‘The discourse of equality – of women as the same as men and entitled to the same treatment – ran into a head on collision with the dominant ideological construction of women as wives and mothers…’ (Kapur, 2012, p. 5) 4. Maintenance of class privilege by elite feminists 5. Fragmentation of women’s movement

7. You peacocks of high caste preening your plumes in the Narmada Valley your call echoes and rouses each corner of the world but my sister’s struggle to dam the swollen streams of arrack* choking them their hoarse voices will lie buried in Teluga earth (Sasi Nirmala, ‘Muttugudda Kapputunna’) * Andra Pradesh women’s movement against sale of alcohol

8. Why speak of the other? Another woman wants to buy me She wants me as the gold lace to her upper caste new sari. She wants me as the crimson on her lips. (SasiNirmala, ‘Dalituralu’) Source: Rani, ChallapalliSwaroopa (1998) ‘Dalit Women’s Writing in Telugu’, Economic and Political Weekly, April 25

9. 6. Rights on paper are not the same as rights in practice: do women know they have them? do women know how to claim them? do they have legitimacy? is there redress if women are denied their rights? do women ‘choose’ not to claim? eg. poor women in Kangra district of Himachal Pradesh don’t claim their rights to inherit under the hard-won Hindu Succession Act 1956 (see Berry) • Towards Equality report in 1974 shattered myths of Indian women’s full emancipation

10. Indian Sex Ratios Year Females per 1000 males (total population) 1901 972 1951 946 1961 941 1971 930 1981 934 1991 927 2001 933 2011 940 Source: http://www.censusindia.gov.in/2011-prov-results/data_files/india/Final_PPT_2011_chapter5.pdf

11. The Missing Girl Child Year Girls per 1000 boys (under 6 years) 1961 976 1971 964 1981 962 1991 945 2001 927 2011 914 http://www.censusindia.gov.in/2011-prov-results/data_files/india/Final_PPT_2011_chapter5.pdf Poster at a Delhi Hospital

12. Action Aid Campaign http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yP22lCP3c5w • How is sex-selective abortion explained? • What policy responses are identified to combat it? • What consequences are there of so many missing women?

13. Indian Feminisms • Long and vibrant history • Communist women in 1950s and 1960s criticized welfarism • 1974 Towards Equality report galvanized autonomous women’s movement • Innumerable grassroots campaigns • Much legislative success, but ongoing problems of implementation • History of direct action and innovative tactics • Emphasis on women’s strength and agency, not just her suffering

14. 1980 National Federation of Indian Women March December 2012, Bangalore Demonstration

15. SlutWalks and Pink Chaddis Pink Chaddhi Campaign Kolkata, 2012

16. Feminism-Lite? • A bold, disruptive reclaiming by women consumer-citizens asserting their sexuality? • Or a narcissistic stunt to attract the media that reproduces, rather than challenges, a derogatory term? • Assert women’s right to a social life, to choose what to wear and to freedom from sexual violence • Vs claims that women (and their family) must police their clothing and use of public space to avoid rape • Refuse to divide women into those deserving freedom from sexual violence and those not, who ‘ask for it’ • Assert rape as a crime the rapist is responsible for • Refuse ‘dominance feminism’

17. Disowning Dependence • ENSS: new social movement of single women • Imagine new space outside patriarchal family • Create new family forms pooling labour and resources • Successfully claimed social, economic rights and legal rights • Claims to land not yet met: too threatening to heteropatriarchy • Land rights constitute and are constituted by gender, kinship and heteronormativity; socially and culturally embedded

19. Conclusions • Women gained important rights in public sphere but limited by on-going construction as dependants in family • State initially failed to recognise women as workers • Many elite women acted in own class interests • De jure rights for women have not meant de facto rights • Fragmented women’s movement resurged in 1970s • Sharp contrast between women holding highest offices and low status of women seeing millions not born • Indian women keep fighting for full equality, especially freedom from sexual violence for all women • Is this a key moment in Indian women’s assertion as independent citizens choosing how to live? • The religious right is threatened by women’s independence and the struggle is ongoing