ABSTRACT
Numerous support systems for survivors and victims of domestic violence have been created by women’s groups in India. Shelters, crisis centres, legal interventions and counselling services as well as sit-outs, protests and legal reform are some interventions that the presence of the Indian women’s movement has prompted. Issues of class, caste and patriarchy were not considered to be independent of each other; the difference was in the relative importance that each of us gave to addressing these structures of oppression and exploitation. Since feminism is all about challenging power, people cannot ignore the fact that power relations infiltrate feminism as well. Dispossession of women is effectively achieved through the institution of marriage that dislocates a woman in terms of her home and even her name. Violence may occur when a person or a party within a relationship is economically, physically or emotionally vulnerable or dependent on the other.
