For countless centuries women in India had been subordinated to men and socially oppressed. The various religions practiced in India as well as the personal laws based on them consigned women to a status inferior to men. The condition of upper-class women was in this respect worse than that of peasant women.

Since the latter worked actively in the fields alongside men, they enjoyed relatively greater freedom of movement and in some respect a better status in the family than upper-class women.

For example, they seldom observed purdah and many of them had the right to remarry. The traditional view often praised the role of women as wives and mothers, but as individuals they were assigned a very lowly social position. They were supposed to have no personality of their own apart from their ties to their husbands.

They could not find any other expression to their inborn talents or desires except as housewives. In fact, they were seen as mere adjuncts to men. For example, while a woman could marry only once among Hindus, a man was permitted to have more than one wife.

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Among Muslims too this custom of polygamy prevailed. In large parts of the country women had to live behind the purdah. The custom of early marriage prevailed, and even children of eight or nine were married. Widows could not remarry and had to lead an ascetic and restricted life.

In many parts of the country, the horrifying custom of sati or self-immolation of widows prevailed. Hindu women had no right to inherit property, nor did they enjoy the right to terminate an undesirable marriage.

Muslim women could inherit property, but only half as much as a man could; and in the matter of divorce even theoretically there was no equality between husband and wife.

In fact, Muslim women dreaded divorce. The social positions of Hindu and Muslim women as well as their values were similar.

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Moreover, in both cases they were economically and socially totally dependent on men. Lastly, the benefit of education was denied to most of them. In addition, women were taught to accept their subjection and even to welcome it as a badge of honor.

It is true that occasionally women of the character and personality of Razia Sultana, Chand Bibi, or Ahilyabai Holkar arose in India. But they were exceptions to the general pattern, and did not in any way change the picture.

Moved by the humanitarian and egalitarian impulses of the nineteenth century, the social reformers started a powerful move­ment to improve the position of women.

While some reformers appealed to ideals of individuality and equality, others declared that true Hinduism or Islam or Zoroastrianism did not sanction the infe­rior status of women and that true religion assigned them a high social position.

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Numerous individuals, reform societies and religious organisations worked hard to spread education among women, to encourage widow remarriage, to improve the living conditions of widows, to prevent marriage of young children, to bring women out of the purdah, to enforce monogamy and to enable middle-class women to take up professions or public employment.

After the 1880s, when the Dufferin hospitals (named after Lady Duffer in, the wife of the Viceroy) were started, efforts were made to make modern medicine and child delivery techniques available to Indian women.

The movement for the liberation of women received a great stimulus from the rise of the militant national movement in the twentieth century. Women played an active and important role in the struggle for freedom.

They participated in large numbers in the agitation against the partition of Bengal and in the Home Rule movement.

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After 1918, they marched in political processions, picketed shops selling foreign cloth and liquor, spun and propagated khadi, went to jail in the non-cooperation movements, faced lathis, tear gas and bullets during public demonstrations, participated actively in the revolutionary terrorist movement, and voted in elections to legislatures and even stood as candidates themselves. Sarojini Naidu, famous poetess, became president of the National Congress.

General women became ministers or parliamentary secretaries in the popular ministries of 1937. Hundreds of them became members of municipalities and other organs of local government.

When the trade union and kisan movements arose in the 1920s, women were often found in their forefront. More than any other factor, participation in the national movement contributed to the awakening of Indian women and their emancipation.

For how could those who had braved British jails and bullets be declared inferior! And how could they any longer be confined to the home and be satisfied with the life of a doll or a slave girl’? They were bound to assert their rights as human beings.

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Another important development was the birth of a women’s movement in the country. Up to the 1920s, enlightened men had worked for the uplift of women. Now aware and self-confident women undertook that task.

They started many organisations and institutions for the purpose, the most outstanding of which was the All India Women’s Conference founded in 1927.

Women’s struggle for equality took a big step forward with the coming of independence. Articles Hand 15 of the Indian Constitution (1950) guaranteed the complete equality of men and women. The Hindu Succession Act of 1956 made the daughter an equal co-heir with the son.

The Hindu Marriage Act of 1955 permitted dissolution of marriage on specific grounds. Monogamy was also made man­datory for men as well as <omen. But the evil custom of dowry still continues even though the demanding of dowry has been banned.

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The Constitution gives women equal right to work and to get employment in state agencies. The Directive Principles of the Constitution lay down the principle of equal pay for equal work for both men and women.

Of course many visible and invisible obstacles still remain in putting the principle of the equality of sexes into practice. A proper social climate has still to be created.

But the social reform movements, the freedom struggle, the women’s movement and the Constitution of free India have made a big contribution in this direction.