Women's movement in India has not addressed the issues of women of lower social strata.' Substantiate your…

Question

Women's movement in India has not addressed the issues of women of lower social strata.' Substantiate your view.

Ghissu Editorial · Accepted Answer

The mainstream Indian women's movement, led by urban upper-caste women, largely ignored caste and class, leaving issues such as caste violence and manual scavenging to Dalit groups. The National Federation of Dalit Women was formed in 1995 because Dalit women felt unheard within it.

**Introduction**

In 1995 Gopal Guru argued that "Dalit women talk differently", and the National Federation of Dalit Women was formed that year because its members felt unheard in the women's movement. The charge holds largely, though not entirely.

**How the Movement Bypassed Lower-Strata Women**

SKETCH: venn | Intersectional Exclusion
a: Caste
b: Class
c: Gender
overlap: Dalit-Adivasi working women

1. **Elite reform agenda**: Campaigns on sati, widow remarriage and the age of consent addressed upper-caste customs, and the AIWC (1927) was led by urban, educated women.
2. **Caste blindness**: The autonomous movement after 1975 fought dowry and custodial rape, yet left caste violence such as Khairlanji (2006), devadasi dedication and manual scavenging to Dalit groups; Uma Chakravarti called this structure Brahmanical patriarchy.
3. **Representation gap**: Mainstream groups resisted an OBC sub-quota, and the 106th Amendment (2023) gives OBC women none.

**Where the Margins Did Gain**

1. **Anti-caste roots**: The Phules opened a girls' school in Pune in 1848, and Ambedkar addressed depressed-class women at Nagpur in 1942.
2. **Grassroots action**: SEWA (1972) organised informal workers, and poor rural women of Dubagunta in Nellore began Andhra's anti-arrack agitation of 1992.
3. **Law from the margins**: The Mathura case led to the 1983 rape-law amendment, and Bhanwari Devi's case produced the Vishaka guidelines (1997).

**Way Forward**

1. **Intersectional charter**: Put caste atrocities, sanitation work and land titles on the core agenda, with Dalit and Adivasi women in leadership and NFHS data read by caste.

**Conclusion**

The mainstream movement treated "woman" as one category, even as grassroots streams carried its gains to the margins. True empowerment must begin with the most marginalised woman.

Women's movement in India has not addressed the issues of women of lower social strata.' Substantiate your view.

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