Role Of Women in the Indian Independence Movement

From mourns on the battlefield to the thundering cheers of victory, from slavery and humiliation to freedom, a peroid of two hundred years, evokes  us all Indians with a feeling that remains indescribable. Where we stand today, as a free nation, is a result of two hundred years of struggle, of all the lives lost. Yes, we often study those in history books too, names ranging from Mahatma Gandhi to Pandit Jawarlal Nehru, from Rabindranath Tagore to Surendranath Bannerjee etc. But how often do we bother to look beyond those lines, to dig out the contributions made by some lesser known, the anonymous ?

Women, the community that was fighting  the prejudice against them, the humiliation, the dependence on men, abiding by rules, sulking in their anonymity, always suppressed, shut down, thrown in the backgrounds, made to live in the shadows. Are we, as a society, ever going to acknowledge this? The roots of Indian Feminism, the role of women in the struggle that is often glamorised by the men in the front lines? While the whole country was fighting for freedom, politically, economically, socially, Women were fighting within the country, for themselves and for the country, because at that point of time, we failed to rise above these antifeminist shackles built in our brains, we failed to realise that we could not , within ourselves, achieve one thing that we were fighting for, “freedom” and with it , “respect”.

In an interview with ‘The Swaddle’, Dr. Vibhu Patel (Former Professor of Womens’ studies, TISS) mentioned that “within the congress also, Gandhi himself admits that he had a certain straightjacketed understanding of women. He did not want women to attend the Dandi March, why? Because everytime women were picketing, the soldiers in the British army would humiliate them by pulling their pallu”. It is now well established that with the heavy patriarchy already prevailing in the country, in the backdrop of our revolt’s sexist origins, women were to stay silent. Yet, many women came forward and fought. 

Women’s participation in the freedom struggle began as early as 1817, thirty years before the first war of independence. Bhima Bai Holkar, Rani Channama of Kittur, Rani Begum Hazrat Mahal of Avadh fought against the East India Company, back in the nineteenth century. Bhima Bai Holkar is said to be the first woman to wield a sword at the british and is believed to have inspired Rani Laxmi Bai to do so. Do you notice a pattern here? One of the first women, honoured, at that time was someone who fit into the ‘male model’ of history. Their sacrifices and undaunted courage is what inspired other women to take a stand, but the question still stands. If all women came down on the battlefield, would they have been honoured? would they have been seen with a different pair of  eyes ?

Ofcourse, all women did not come on the battlefield, that does not mean they lacked patriotism or courage. From the  Jallianwala Bagh massacre (1919) to the Quit India Movement (1942) , women have been a part of the struggle. Sarla Devi, the founder of India’s first women’s organisation, “Bharat Stree Mahamandal”in 1910,  was a socio-political activist , who promoted education in women, stretching her organisation’s impact throughout  Lahore ,Allahabad , Delhi, Karachi, Amritsar, Hyderabad, Kanpur, Bankura, Hazaribagh, Midnapur, and Kolkata. She was also a journalist for the magazine ‘Bharti’ with the aim of evoking patriotism in the people. Muthulaxmi Reddy, a women’s activist, social reformer, medical practitioner has a plausible number of achievements, thriving through the male dominated mentality of the society. She was the first woman to get into a total men’s college, ‘Maharajas College’ where she was also the first and only woman candidate for medical studies. She was the first woman house surgeon in the government maternity and ophthalmic hospital. With that, she was also the first woman legislator in British India and the first Alderwoman of the Madras cooperation in 1937. There are not enough words to express the respect for these women, they were the backbones of our freedom struggle. Susheela Nair, a doctor, an activist and an influential feminist figure, was one of the many women who contributed highly in the Non Cooperation movement (1920) , abiding my ahimsa, she was also Mahatma Gandi’s personal doctor, who, later in the day, emerged as a strong lady striving to improve public health, prominently , leprosy . From participating in the Quit India Movement, to getting imprisoned in the Aga Khan Palace Jail for her pro-independence ideologies, she was a commendable figure. She, later, became the  first female health minister of Delhi state in Nehru’s cabinet and served until 1955.

Aruna Asaf Ali, a woman ahead of her times, popularly known as the ‘Grand Old Lady’ of the independence movement, is known for hoisting the Indian Flag at the Gowalia Tank Maidan in Mumbai during the Quit India Movement. This fearless rebel, went on a hunger strike in Tihar Jail against the mistreatment of the political prisoners, which led to an improvement in their living conditions. She was a participant of the Salt Satyagraha (1930), in 1932 she was arrested again for participating in the freedom movement. Post Independence, she worked towards the upliftment of women and their education. In 1958, she served as the first elected mayor of Delhi. She was awarded the Padma Vibhushan in 1992, one year after her death, she was honoured with Bharat Ratna in 1997.

For the first time when an Indian child is told that, India was a British colony for about two hundred years, the unmeasurable curiosity of the child is often fed by throwing names and events particularly, stating the famous Dandi March, Partition and some that light a fire in their young innocent eyes. The first time a history book is held in their hands, they see bright colourful images of Mahatma Gandhi, Subhash Chandra Bose etc. At that point they already have it on their fingertips: the names and  the pictures, because every time they strolled around parks with their parents, they were met with bold, decorated statues, and their parents would point to them and tell them, filled with pride and patriotism, a history that they all share. When an Indian child first shakes hands with history, it becomes our moral and ethical responsibility to include the stories of women who fought, to tell them of the sacrifices made, not only by men, but by women too. Of Course a child wouldnt understand the difference or the importance but   later they will grow into a respectful and aware Indian Citizen. Because none of them have lived history, and at a tender age as that, they will only believe what their parents tell them, which later will prove to be an integral part of the ‘growth mindset’ and equality, our earliest feminists were trying to achieve. So, don’t only tell them his story, tell them her story, tell them their true story.