Women and Left Movements in India

Despite all the international conferences and universal declarations in favor of female equality, the lives of most women around the world remain confined by pre judice and social oppression. According to the United Nations, women perform two -thirds of the worlds work, and produce about 45%of the worlds food, yet they rece ive merely ten percent of income and own only one percent of the property Marxists assert that womens liberation is bound up with the struggle against capi talism because in the final analysis, sexual oppression serves the material inte rests of the ruling class. Female oppression is a Trans class phenomenon that affects all women, not merely those who are poor or working class, the degree of oppression and its consequen ces are qualitatively different for members of different social classes. Marxists have traditionally favored the creation of socialist womens organization s, linked to the working class and other movements of the oppressed through the agency of a revolutionary party comprised of the most dedicated and conscious mi litants from every sector. Such a womens movement would be autonomous from the re formists, the capitalists and the trade union misleaders but it would be organiz ationally and politically linked to the communist vanguard. As Karl Marx remarked in a December 1868 letter to Ludwig Kugelmann: Everyone who knows anything of history also knows that great social revolutions are impossib le without the feminist ferment.Revolutionaries must actively participate in soci al struggles to defend and advance female equality. It is also necessary to prom ote the development of female leaders within the socialist movement. For it is o nly through participation in a struggle to the world upside down that women can open the road to their own emancipation and create the material circumstances fo r eradicating hunger, exploitation, poverty and the effects of thousands of year s of male supremacy. It goes without saying that the struggle for the rights of women includes all wo men proletarians, including housewives, female unemployed, school students, etc The mere achievement for formal equal rights without transforming social relatio ns is extremely limited and leaves untouched the fundamental roots of the oppres

sion of women in capitalist society. It shows that along with class society, property, and the state, the bourgeois f amily has not always existed, and that the oppression of women is only as old as the division of society into classes. Its abolition is therefore dependent on t he abolition of classes. Womens Liberation and Socialism Engels argued, the legal inequality of men and women is not the cause but the ef fect of the economic oppression of women. Engels argues, The necessity of creating real social equality between women and men Winning legal equality for women can help to make it clearer that womens oppressi on can only be ended when the relations of production on which it is based are o ver thrown. Many feminist writers accuse Marx and Engels of economic reductionism- of reducing all social equations, including womens oppression, to class relations Womens oppression- Not in Genes Female oppression, the most universal and deeply rooted form of social oppressio n is characteristic of capitalist society, Womens unique capacity for childbearing and nursing gave rise to a natural divisi on of labor along sex lines in primitive society but this distinction did not au tomatically translate into lesser status. Only with the advent of class society were women gradually excluded from full participation in larger/political / econ omic activity and relegated to the household. The intensity of womens oppression varied in different societies in different historical periods. The subjugation of women under capitalist free market is rooted in their central r ole in family as unpaid providers of the domestic services necessary for the mai ntenance of society. The need to maintain family as the basic unit of class divi ded societies thus constitutes the material basis for the subordination of women . Womens oppression is a social creation. 29th March 1994 New York Times, which ran a short piece, entitled Sexes Equal on South Sea Isle, discussing the work of Dr. Maria Lepowsky an anthropology profess or at the University of Wisconsin. IN her book Fruit of the Motherland, she desc ribed Vanatinai: There is a large amount of overlap between the roles and activi ties of women and men, with women occupying public, prestige generating roles. W omen share control of the production and the distribution of valued goods, and t hey inherit property. Women as well as men participate in the exchange of valuab les, they organize feasts, they officiate at important rituals such as those for yam planting or healing, they counsel their kinfolk, they speak out and are lis tened to in public meetings , they posses valuable magical knowledge and they wo rk side by side in most subsistence activities. The prominent role played by women on this island is said to be taubwaragha, which translates as the way of the ancestors. On Vanatinai males are expected to help with child care and even the language is gender-neutral- there are pronouns like he or she The example of Vanatinai shows that the subjugation of women by, men is not a hu man universal and it is not inevitable. Marx and Engels on Gender Marx and Engels continued the tradition of the saint Simon and equality and the

subversion of the bourgeois family. Marxism started from the fundamental presupp osition that womens oppression is not a permanent feature in history but the resu lt of a certain social formation and that relationship between sexes are not a n atural but a social construct. Only Engels last book- 40 years after Flora Tristans Death! offered a systematic approach to the question .the Origins of Family distinguished three main periods in womens history : classless society in which women held leading positions, non -capitalist class society in which women are devoted to domestic reproduction as a slaves, capitalism which reintroduced women into the productive sphere thereby providing an objective basis for their emancipation. I believe there is no natural and universal division of labour. Men did what wom en did women did and vice versa, depending on the society they belonged to. Even such archetypically female activities as spinning and weaving are carried out b y men in some North African tribes. It is not the nature of the work that matter s but the social relations. If all women are to be liberated, capitalism must be replaced with socialism. Ma rxist feminists believe that private property leads to economic inequality and n egative social relation between men and women. According to Marxist feminism the ory capitalism should be replaces with socialism in order to achieve equality an d positive social relation between men and women. In capitalist societies, women become segregated into the domestic sphere and me n into outer world of paid work. Economic and social inequalities between the se xes are increased and womens subordination in marriage, the family and in society in general is intensified. Engels assumed that socialist revolution through which the means of production w ould become common property would result in the development of equal access to p aid work for both men and women and the consequent disappearance of gendered ine quality between the sexes. Marxist Feminism Marxist Feminism is a sub type of feminist theory which focuses on the dismantli ng of capitalism as a way to liberate women. Marxist feminism states that privat e property which gives rise to economic inequality, dependence, political confus ion, and ultimately unhealthy social relations between men and women, is the roo t cause of womens oppression in the current social context. Marxist feminists see contemporary gender inequality a determined ultimately by the capitalist mode of production. Gender oppression is class oppression and the relationship between men and women in society is similar to the relations betwe en proletariat and the bourgeoise. Womens subordination is seen as a form of clas s oppression which is maintained because it serves the interests of capital and the ruling class. Marxist feminists have extended traditional Marxist analysis b y looking at domestic labour as wage work. Leftist Movements in India Origin and Ideology In politics left, left wing and leftist are generally used to describe support fo r social change to create a more egalitarian society. The terms left and right w ere coined during the French Revolution, referring to the seating arrangement in parliament those who sat on the left generally supported radical changes of the revolution including creation of republic and secularization. According to Barry Clark, Leftists.. Claim that human development flourishes when individuals engage in co operative, mutually respectful relations that can thrive only when excessive di

fferences in status, power and wealth are eliminated. The revolutionary ideas of Marx and Lenin were extremely alluring to the Indian intellectuals and political leaders. The leftist tendency began to guide the nat ional political movement. Even the peasants and the workers were drawn to the ma instream of national life. Hence the emerging ideas of the new socialist ideolog ies guided by the leftist philosophy influenced this group of educated middle cl ass.

QThe Leftist Party in India The appropriation of control over womens bodies has been one of the significant f orms of our oppression under capitalism. As Marx concisely put it: You cannot giv e equal rights to unequal people. One of the first dualisms in human history was the sexual division of labour due to womens reproductive ability. The large peri ods for which women were engaged child bearing and child care and therefore less mobile led to growth of domestication as societies first grew from agricultural , then mercantile and industrial, to the privatization of womens work. Where the pre capitalist societies also felt the need to regulate their population, capita lism has found that the need for regulation the labour force and for maintaining a balance between production and consumption requires a more systematic control over womens reproductive capacities. Stree Shakti Sanghtana In Karimnagar district where women had been especially active in the landless la bourers movement from the sixties on the new wave of agitation began with the ca mpaign against the kidnapping of a woman called Devamma and the murder of her hu sband by a local landlord. The Stree Shakti Sanghtana was formed in the late 70s in Hyderabad by women from the erstwhile POW. By 1979 the first Mahila Sangam wa s formed in Kodurupaka with about 150 members. According to the Stree Shakti Sanghtana the demand for independent womens organiz ation came from the women themselves who raised the issues of wife beating and l andlord rape through Mahila Sanghms. Telangana Movement The 1948-50 Telangana Movement in Andhra Pradesh. Under the leadership of Maoist influenced members of CPI some 2,500 villlages in Telangana district were liber ated, sharecroppers debts were cancelled, rent payments were suspended and land land redistributed. In Sept, 1948 Indian troops took over the state, arresting p easant leaders and firing upon demonstrations. The CPI was outlawed and the move ment forced underground, where it took to guerilla tactics. Though 1000 of women had been active in the strikes and rallies, the movement went underground, wome n were not allowed to join the guerillas but were expected to perform the ancill ary task of providing shelter, acting as messengers,etc. The exceptional women w ho did manage to pust themselves into guerilla movement later confessed how lone ly they had felt, for while they were treated as having shed their womanliness t hey were never accepted as being par with the men. Tebhaga Movement The Tebhaga Movement owed a lot to the efforts of various woman leaders especial ly Bimala Maji who organized and mobilized women to demand and collect harvest. The legacy of female nationalists, taking part in the Quit India Movement and ac cepting prison sentence for the nation had ignited the flamed of protest in the

hearts of women.

Role of Women in Tebhaga Movement Rani Mitra Dasgupta, Manikuntala Sen, Renu Chakravartty and other women who had worked as active volunteers of the Mahila Atmaraksha Samiti during the famine ye ars wanted to bring rural women into this movement. Although the party was lukew arm in its support for this idea and the male peasants suspicious, they found fo und rural women ready to work with them. At first women played subsidiary role, helping harvest the crops, cooking food for the leaders, acting as look outs and sounding the alarm to alert their colleagues to danger. As police repression be came more brutal and the communist party, unprepared for armed struggle, withdre w from active leadership, women formed their own militia, the nanbabini. These womens committees to obtained paddy on trust, from landlords, husked, sold it and kept the profits after repaying the landlords. During the Tebhaga campaig n the Communist Party sent Bimala to Nandigram to recruit women for the movement . These were many women like Bimala Maji and the history of the Tebhaga movement is especially important for a history of women in India. The Tebhaga Movement w as an important phenomenon in the pages of history because it was the women gave the movement is momentum. It proved beyond doubt the efficacy of a group of uni ted women fighting for a just cause. Leftist Movement and Organization First womens group of the contemporary feminist movement was formed in Hyderabad, the Progressive Organization of Women. Comprising women from the maoist movemen t, the group was another examplar of the process of rethinking within the moveme nt after its savage repression. The two primary structures of womens oppression were thus, according to the POW, the sexual division of labour and the culture which rationalized it. However womens oppression could be brought to an end. This was firstly through at tack through attack on the base of economic dependence and private work at home and secondly through spreading an ideology of equality which could be found in s ocialism. In 1975, influenced by the POW, Maoist women in Pune formed the Progami Stree Sa nghtana and Maoist women in Bombay formed the Stree Mukti Sanghtana. In October a number of organizations which had developed out of the Maoist movement such as the Lal Nishan Party, the Shramik Sanghtana and Magowa organized a United Womens Liberation Struggle conference in Pune. Formation of IPF Again special attention was paid to organizing women about 50,000 women took par t in their campaigns and links were forged with the autonomous feminist groups r esulting in the IPFs getting involved in jointly organizing the national level fe minist conference in Patna in April 1988. Formation of Autonomous Women Groups and Movements The lack of ideological homogeneity which was a source of distress to so many wa s also a source of comfort to some who saw it in examples of the potential plura lism of feminism and its ability toprovide grounds for women with different idea s to work together. Many groups opted for autonomy which was defined as consisting of separate women s only group without any party-political affiliation or conventional organizatio

nal structure for these were hierachial created self interest and competitivenes s were fairly loose without formal structures or funds and reproduced the divisi on. The only party based womens organization to be formed in the late 70s was in f act, the mahila dakshata samiti which was formed in 1977 by socialist women. The re could be no real democracy in any country without women having economic, poli tical, social and cultural rights. Bibliography Agarwal, Bina. 1994a. A Field of Ones Own: Gender and Land Rights in South Asia, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. AIWC (All-India Womens Conference), Annual Reports and Other Papers, 1927-1939, N ehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi. Ansari, Iqbal A. 1991. Muslim Womens Rights; Goals and Strategy of Reform, Economic and Political Weekly, 26, 17, 27 April. Badopadhyay, Bela. 1989. Interviews by Samita Sen. Unpublished. Banerjee, Nirmala. 1989. Working Women in Colonial Bengal: Modernization and Marg inalization in Kumkum Sangari and and Sudesh Vaid, Recasting Women: Essays in Col onial History, Kali for Women, New Delhi. Basu, Srimati. 1999. She Came to Take Her Rights. Indian Women, Property and Pro priety, State University of New York Press. Bhatt, Ela. 1997. Abstract of presentation in The Eighty-First Amendment Bill 199 6: A Report, IAWS, School of Womens Studies, Jadavpur University, Calcutta. Borthwick, Meredith. 1984. The Chaging Role of Women in Bengal, 1849-1905, Princ eton University Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 1994. The Difference-Deferral of a Colonial Modernity: Publi c Debates on Domesticity in British India, David Arnold and David Hardiman, Suba ltern Studies VIII, Essays in Honour of Ranajit Guha, Oxford University Press, N ew Delhi. Chakrabarty, Renu. 1980. Communists in Indian Womens Movement, 1940-50 , Peoples P ublishing House, New Delhi. Chakravarti, Uma. 1998. Rewriting History. The Life and Times of Pandita Ramabai , Kali for Women, New Delhi. Chatterjee, Partha. 1989. The Nationalist Resolution of the Womens Question in Kumk um Sangari and Sudesh Vaid (ed.), Recasting Women. Essays in Colonial History, Kali for Women, New Delhi, 1989, pp. 233-253. Chatterjee, Ratnabali. 1992. The Queens Daughters: Prostitutes as an Outcast Group in Colonial India, Katzenstein, Mary F. 1978. Towards Equality? Cause and Consequence of the Politic

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