ABSTRACT
When an overview on women’s activism in India is to be written, one of the fi rst things that comes to mind is what happens in the course of any usual activist meeting or demonstration – slogans, speeches, pamphleteering, songs, theatre, making banners and posters. The above three quotes are some of the common slogans used by women’s groups in Delhi and Kolkata. The attempt is to reach out to the people in the street while more broadly talking to or protesting against the patriarchal authority of the home and the state. A lot of changes have taken place in the way movement politics has evolved over the years in India. Most signifi cantly, new actors have entered, languages of activism have changed, issues to rally around have become more complex; also new sites of activism have come into sight. There is no more a women’s movement; what we have is women’s movements in the plural. The category woman itself has become a contested one over the years and the movement has become more intersectional in an attempt to be inclusive. Given the diversity of women’s activisms in India, this chapter will focus on three critical dimensions. First, a brief narration of the diversity of the issues women’s groups have brought out of the closet between the 1980s and 2000s. Second, the interconnection between demands made by women’s groups and state responses through laws on and for women.Third, describing the articulation of resistance in the form of cultural production as an essential component of collective activism. The chapter will conclude by arguing that women’s movements can benefi t from teaching activism in women’s studies programmes.
