ABSTRACT
The women’s movement in India has a chequered history of over a hundred years. It went through many phases, from a united front to fragmentation, dispersal and now perhaps, a new hope of consolidation is in the offing. Critical evaluation from our present context records the diversity and complexity of how the women’s question was raised at different phases, in different regions, in the nineteenth century, and often harbouring contested relations with the left and other progressive movements. The women’s movement prepared an alternative document for the Beijing conference in 1995 to counter the government’s version. Mahatma Gandhi drew them into the national movement and legitimised their public role, but this too was mooted insofar as he extolled the essential nature of women as self-sacrificing mothers qualifying them for participation in the national movement. The then Prime Minister promptly enacted a law upholding the Muslim clerics’ view. This was a major setback for the women’s movement.
