A reassuringly honest assessment of the victories and the failures of the many women's groups in India. KALPANA SHARMA
How does one write about a movement that is not just one movement but many? How does one capture its diversity and its difference? Ritu Menon has done this by getting some of the women who were involved in the second wave of the women's movement in India to write their own memoirs and record their memories of the two decades from the late 1970s to the 1990s when the movement was most vibrant and visible.
She begins by telling us what the book is not: It is not a history of the women's movement, it is not a comprehensive survey and it is not an exhaustive account. She also reminds us that that the women's movement does not have a formal structure, has no hierarchies, has no “party line”, has no high priestess and is “polyphonic”, speaking in many voices.
Having thus set the scene, you get a taste of these different voices although all with similar perspectives. What could have been a book full of nostalgia for those “good old days” has turned out to be a reassuringly honest assessment of the victories but also the failures of the struggles of the many women's groups that together formed the autonomous women's movement in India.
People familiar with the decades when the “autonomous” women's movement — so described as it was outside the formal political party structures — will quibble about the choice of the women featured in this collection. No doubt there could have been others. Inevitably, the limitations of language have dictated the choice. And one could argue that this could have been overcome through some translation, and perhaps some interviews of women who would not have been able to write on their own. In fact, the variance in the quality of the essays could perhaps, have been compensated by getting some of the women to speak to a writer rather than writing themselves. Calling the book “counter to historical forgetting”, Menon presents economists, writers, a historian, a Dalit activist, lawyers, a scientist and others who were associated in a prominent way with the movement.
Campaigns
Indira Jaising, India's first woman Additional Solicitor General, has been integral to many of the campaigns to change laws and introduce new ones over the last four decades. From fighting for the rights of pavement dwellers to drafting and pushing through a law on domestic violence, Jaising's essay reminds us of the variety of interventions made by feminists that went beyond just women's issues. In fact, through many of these essays we see that the women's movement has worked closely with other movements fighting for human rights, workers rights, environmental issues etc.
Most often, the focus of many struggles by women's groups is violence against women. We forget that women economists, such as Nirmala Banerjee, Devaki Jain and Bina Agarwal, all of whom are featured, were instrumental in getting recognition for women's work and labour. Agarwal, for instance, investigated women's role in agriculture documented in her award-winning book A Field of One's Own .
And then there are personal stories that are particularly moving, such as the essay by Ilina Sen. Through it we learn how she struggled to keep up with her academic interests even as she threw herself fully into her life with her husband Binayak Sen in Dalli Rajara in Chhattisgarh. Both worked closely with Shankar Guha Niyogi and the Chhattisgarh Mines Shramik Sangh. We learn about the remarkable women who were part of this workers' struggle. But we also hear from Ilina about her own conflicts and about the trauma of living through the years when Binayak was incarcerated on charges of sedition. It is remarkable that in the end she is still able to say that “even in my worst moments, I have never walked alone” referring to the strength she has drawn from her women friends in the movement.
Ruth Vanita, co-founder of India's first feminist journal Manushi who now teaches English at the University of Montana, documents the challenges and the pitfalls of setting up Manushi and touches on the beginning of the current focus of her writings, on lesbian and gay issues. The fact that the co-founder of Manushi , Madhu Kishwar, who prefers now not to call herself a “feminist”, is not featured in this collection points to another aspect of the women's movement; one of dissent and difference that is acknowledged by many of the writers.
Kamla Bhasin, who has been the “voice” of the movement in many respects with the many joyful songs she has written, puts it best when she writes, “Like all other movements, the women's movement has its share of ideological and personality-based divisions — sisterhood is not always global, or loving and compassionate. We, too, have passionate fights because, believe it or not, feminists are human!” This willingness to admit mistakes and shortcomings, evident in many of the essays, is what makes this collection credible.
