ABSTRACT
The ‘People of India’ project, an anthropological study sponsored by the government and conducted over a period from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, has shown that women still do not enjoy equality with men (Patel 1996). 75 per cent of the over 4,500 communities identified and investigated in this project are classified as Hindu, and in 71 per cent of the communities surveyed women are reported to have a low status (Patel 1996: 40, 42). Whatever the shortcomings of this project both theoretically and methodologically, especially in respect of gender, it pointed, for example, to a decreasing incidence of child marriage and to a widespread acceptance of widow remarriage, although it also determined that in 99 per cent of communities dowries are provided (Patel 1996: 41–2). Clearly, therefore, the Indian women’s movement is still confronted with many obstacles to the empowerment of women in contemporary India. It is by examining the circumstances of contemporary India in more detail, both in terms of specific issues and wider trends, that tentative conclusions can be arrived at concerning the continuing debate about tradition and liberation in the Indian women’s movement. In so doing, it is possible to identify some aspects of continuity and change in the ideology and methodology of the Indian women’s movement over 150 years or so of campaigning.
