ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the core ideas of the book, defining how women and gender relationships become the sites on which larger concerns of the nation are inscribed. It further foregrounds the status of women in colonial and post-independence India and how the institutions of nation and its structures of authority subsequently betrayed them. For this, a thorough analysis of the Towards Equality (1974) report, which was prepared by the Committee on the Status of Women in India under the aegis of the Government of India, is presented. This analysis traces the evolution of the woman question in independent India, exposing how the Indian Constitution, despite its pronouncements of equality between the sexes, had fallen short of offering women even a respectable status within the nation. The statistical data and figures outlined in the report showed how the condition of the vast majority of Indian women had been deteriorating since the 1950s, with the exception of upper middle class women’s entry into the academic and service sectors. Moreover, the institutional structures of the nation-state systematically sidelined women from their policymaking and governance. However, the report also had its limitations in terms of its inability to address the caste and religious divide among women in India. It was prepared from a clearly upper caste middle class perspective by women who had been the first-generation beneficiaries of independence.
