The First National Conference had “Perspectives for the Women’s Liberation Movement in India” as its theme and was held in Mumbai, November 1-3, 1980.  It was in response to the nationwide anti-rape movement. The initiative in organising the Conference was taken up largely by the Forum against Rape (later Forum against Oppression of Women). Nearly 200 activists from various states discussed the rape law, domestic violence, dowry murder, portrayal of women in the media, health issues of women.(2)

“Perspectives for the Autonomous Women’s Movement in India” was the theme of the Second Conference held in  Bombay in December 1985. Over 85 groups and several individual women from around the world attended with, the number put at approximately 300.

The women’s groups found the need for introspection. Hence the problematic areas such as growth of individual women and the growth of  groups, methods of functioning of feminist groups, women’s groups relationship with the state apparatus and the issues that the groups take up, were all discussed.

The Third Conference was organised in Patna in February 1988. Here issues of rural concern received special attention. This conference was also remarkable in that hundreds of rural women participated for the first time.(3)

The Fourth Conference was titled “Reaching For Half The Sky” and was held in Calicut, December 1990. The conference was divided into nine sub-themes including single women, women’s experience in political parties, communalism, work and media. Over 2,500 delegates attended this conference.

Tirupati was the venue of The Fifth National Conference (1993), with several sub-themes like the New Economic Policy, identity questions and  the anti-arrack movement being taken up. The participation at these meetings has grown steadily and at this conference the number was put at 3000.

At Ranchi where the Sixth National Conference in 1997 was held, there were three main themes. These were, the increasing violence against women, the anti-women character of the state, displacement and women. Many sub-themes and parallel sessions were held on issues related to women’s struggles in everyday life.(4)

Identifying Challenges
As the issues emerging out of the past few conferences show, women’s groups continue to be occupied with new challenges in the various fields they are working specifically in, ranging from violence against women, to health, environment to politics and human rights.(5)

The politics of identity today particularly in terms of caste, class, religion, region, sexuality and ability have fundamentally questioned the universal notions of gender and patriarchy.
The challenge is for the women’s movement to acknowledge these differences and resist from turning them into “other” women but rather accommodate this specificity, diversity and heterogeneity.
Three primary issues seem to dominate as major challenges that could have telling effects on the tenor and texture of the Movement. These are the politics of communalism and fundamentalism, the politics of globalisation and the politics of cooption.

Challenges of Communalism and Fundamentalism
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, founded in 1925, has steadfastly remained an all-male organisation down to this day. The women’s wing, the Rashtrasevika Samiti, was founded in 1936, but it had no real political role. It did not participate in any mass struggle be they the anti colonial struggle or the struggle for women’s rights.

From 1989 onwards however, there was an expansion of women’s organisations within the Sangh Parivar - the BJP Mahila Morcha, the VHP Matri Mandal and Durga Vahini and many different regional organisations. “These drew its membership from the educated middle-class and upper caste. The organisations took up several issues that promoted hatred or targeted the minorities. They rarely raised issues of gender justice very openly or fully and never participated in any struggles against gender oppression.”(6)

Most women were stunned into disbelief when they were witness to a sizeable number of women actively conniving with the communal forces, during the post Babri-Masjid riots that tore the country.(7) This was the first time that the Sangh women were seen actively translating their politics of hatred into action. It had been equally disconcerting to see some time earlier Muslim women taking to the streets to protest against the Shah Bano judgement that had been welcomed by most women’s groups(8) and thousands of women thronging to worship Sati Mata soon after the murder of Roop Kanwar. This not only challenged the notion that “sisterhood is global” among women across other social divisions, but also perhaps the relatively naive and counterproductive negotiation of the women’s movement with culture and religion. Both had been dismissed perhaps rather hastily  as only instruments of patriarchal control. Therefore this realm of faith as a transformative force had been abandoned to the communal and right-wing-elements to exploit and violate.

Feminists and the women’s movement as a whole took up the issue of communalism in right earnest. The issue was also raised and discussed fully at the National Conference. Women from different walks of life including academics, activists and slum-women took up series of activities to resist all shades (majority and minority) of communalism, including joining Mohalla Committees, working with school children, anti-communal awareness raising including publishing of newsletters, working to bring the perpetrators of communal crimes to justice.

Achin Vanaik in his book  concludes that from among the “new” social movements, “the single most important one, especially with reference to the struggle against communalism, has been the autonomous Indian women’s movement”.(9)
Women have not only been victims of communal riots, or abettors in communal violence, they have also actively countered communal politics.

Challenges of Globalisation
Globalisation and development have deepened and made more grotesque the different forms of violence- both personal and structural- against women. The increasing devaluation and destruction of women in the relatively “modern” phenomena of dowry murders, and female infanticide and the increased trafficking of women and children in the global sex trade as mentioned in the preceding chapters are some of the violent manifestations of the consumer culture spawned by globalisation. The absolute fragmentation and impoverishment of communities under the onslaught of structural adjustment policies and New Economic Programmes have made women within these communities totally vulnerable to all forms of exploitation and harassment.(10) Besides drawing attention to this scenario (something which is often glossed over by the worshippers of globalisation) women are working in a variety of ways to resist the onslaught – be it in making the Panchayati Raj Institutions vibrant, revitalising traditional health practices, promoting community newsletters, encouraging women’s cooperatives.(11)

The Internet is also seen as a fallout of globalisation and presents itself as rather a peculiar challenge for the women’s movement with its inherent dangers as well as possibilities. The main users of the Internet either use it as a vehicle of globalisation and target the “women” segment of the market or for putting out their propaganda and seeking to define all issues by their standards -including “development” and “women’s liberation”. (12) But cyberfeminism is also growing. Many feminists are using the Internet to network and exchange information and to take up campaigns. They are working to ensure that the information content of the Internet is not entirely with the MNCs, multilateral agencies and governments.

There are however growing apprehensions that the Internet will create yet another space for the privileged few. Further, will we be able to use the Internet to network, retain our diversity and plurality, or will it be another vehicle for faster globalisation? The question therefore is: can any number of gender-just “safety nets” and development programmes designed to integrate women into the New Economic World Order really prevent the increasing violence and marginalisation of a majority of women.(13)

Challenges of Co-option
This brings us to the final challenge of co-option that is confronting the women’s movement today. For over two decades the government has accepted some of the demands of the movement, and has incorporated programmes for women’s empowerment in their development agenda. Consequently, several groups within the movement are working on government or quasi-government programmes. The fear is that uncritical co-operation may lead to being co-opted by State, and in some cases agencies like the World Bank. And worse still, a corruption of ideology and people. (14)

The appropriation of language too is startling. Terms that feminists coined or brought into circulation are being bandied around or twisted in its usage. The documents that the State and the World Bank produce resemble NGO or radical literature. There is little doubt that all these attempts to create a ‘civil society” in which NGOs, the State and the Corporates work together for ‘progress” whether at the national, regional or international levels, are basic attempts to co-opt and domesticate dissent. The challenge remains for the women’s movement to ensure that all attempts to work with or within the State using tools of lobbying and advocacy to achieve gains, like legal provisions or gender-sensitive State programmes, remains a strategy for limited ends and does not become an end in itself.

Blurring of Lines
Feminists, at times, find they receive support from the strangest of quarters. Issues which feminists have fought hard to bring to the centre stage are at times hijacked, side-tracked and even subverted. While looking deeper into the ideology that motivates such support, the movement has had to take very definitive stands on basic issues, in order to clarify the apparent blur between the lines. This, sometimes at the cost of wider support and at other times brings out differences among women’s organisations.

For example the demand to move towards a Uniform Civil Code was vociferously endorsed by some Right wing parties. On closer scrutiny of this proposal, it was seen that their version of a Uniform Civil Code was not a gender-just one, but a Hindu one – for all women.(15)(16)

The case of the Beauty Pageant in Bangalore (1996) is also worth noting. While feminists groups objected to the objectification of women and the politics of the Beauty Industry, the revivalists who also disapproved of the contest spoke of women’s “izzat” and said that wearing revealing clothes was against the culture of this country. Similarly many support stringent punishment for rapists out of moral compulsions. They are more concerned with issues like the value of virginity, or sex outside marriage. Marital rape, rape of sex workers and other such instances of violence do not figure in their thesis.(17)

Many who oppose the process of globalisation and neo-imperialism hark back to the golden age of Indian civilisation during the pre-colonial days, sweeping under the carpet the injustices of the rigidly hierarchical society that it was. Often they fall into the trap of essentialism, where women are seen as bringing into all spheres ‘female’ values of caring, mothering and peacefulness.

The women’s movement has to take on these stiff challenges headlong. For only then can the women’s movement retain its critical edge in terms of challenging and changing dominant political paradigms. Only then can it be relevant to, and draw upon the rich reservoir of, life visions and knowledges of those communities and women who are under threat of its homogenising and hegemonising trajectory.

The progress of the movement has indeed been arduous, due to reasons internal as well as external. Primary among these is the backlash against the movement in general, and activists in particular (such as Bhanwari Devi)

According to Amnesty International, “If doing nothing can put a woman in danger, then becoming actively involved in fighting repression can seal their fate.”  So often women then take up the gauntlet at tremendous personal or professional risk.(18)

In lieu of a conclusion
The debate on women’s issues and the discussions on gender concerns will never really end. Coupled with the diversity of issues, is the diversity of opinions, contexts, complexities and solutions. Further, new challenges arise every day, be it the increased polarisation of society, issues of bio-piracy or the Bretton Woods formulae. The movement has engaged itself with these issues and worked hard to find creative responses.

Besides these pressures and quick changes, the movement has also to deal with internal contradictions, disagreements and the need to infuse new blood into the maturing movement.(19) Each generation’s experience of feminism, and the ideas that spring from it, is distinct and unique and therefore feminism must lend itself to being continually renewed.

Feminism has changed from being largely a movement of criticism and opposition to a movement engaged in creating structures for social change. Feminists are now developing skills and capabilities needed in existing areas as well as learning new alternative ones. “There is a need for developing economic literacy, learning the language used in the political arena as well as those skills that reflect the needs and interests of the excluded, learning to establish new alliances, mergers and networks among women’s organisations and with other institutions of civil society”(20)

There is a move today to go beyond the politics of recognition and inclusion to a politics of intersection. One that is based on an understanding of the differences based on class, caste, ethnicity, ability, age, and sexual orientation and also how these variables act together.  The move is to build links and solidarity in new ways, to make alliances and forge bonds.(21)

Finally though it may seem that “the utopia is very distant, and almost certainly impossible, but unless we push our consciousness and practice to our personal and social limits, we will allow existing oppression and alienation to engender themselves and reproduce the past.” (22)

Urvashi Butalia’s (The Search for Akasha. The Hindu (Foilo), Madras, Jan. 23, 2000. [C.A71.230100H] recounts one more story from long ago, and the inference she draws from it is perhaps a fitting way to end.