Book Review: Gargi Chakravartty and Supriya Chotani,Charting a New Path: Early Years of National Federation of Indian Women

Charting a New Path details the history of the National Federation of Indian Women (NFIW), thereby filling what the authors term a lacuna in the literature on women’s activism in the period from 1947 to the 1970s. The book engages with the NFIW’s activism, and its detailed appendices include its constitution, a list of the organisation’s publications, profiles of leaders and information on the NFIW’s constituent organisations in various parts of the country. Charting a New Path is an important book, both for its extensive documentation of NFIW’s activities and its examination of organisation formation. It provides fresh materials with which students of women’s activism and the women’s movement in India may engage. It would be of interest to students of women’s activism in India, and also students of communist history, and social movements in general. However, as the book is more descriptive than analytical, it leaves certain important questions on the NFIW’s history, unanswered.

By delving into the history of the NFIW and its constituent organisations Chakravartty and Chotani challenge the idea that there was a lull in women’s activism in the 1950s and 1960s. They state that the issues raised by the women’s movement in the 1970s were not ‘without a precedent (p. xvi)’. This point is substantiated through an extensive documentation of the NFIW’s activities regarding violence against women, employment, education, health care and so on, particularly from the 1950s to the 1980s. Thus, it provides a strong counter to the prevalent argument that constitutional guarantees made activists feel complacent about women’s chances in a newly independent India, resulting in diminished levels of activism.

The introduction includes a brief discussion on how women’s issues were understood by the NFIW. As a mass organisation, it linked women’s struggles to the socio-e^{conomic struggles of peasants and workers. Women’s oppression, the authors write, was largely seen ‘in relation to feudal and capitalist structures’ (p. ix), and the NFIW stressed women’s employment and economic independence as necessary conditions for their emancipation. It recognised women’s inequality within the family and community, campaigning on issues such as the Hindu Code Bill and dowry.}

Initially, due to the popular perception of feminists as anti-men, the NFIW was reluctant to call itself a feminist organisation. Rather, it prioritised class as the lens through which to view women. However, the authors write, the emergence of other women’s organisations has resulted in new debates on patriarchy, caste, violence and several other issues. The NFIW therefore has ‘discarded’ the ‘suspicion of the term feminism’. It adheres to a form of feminism that ‘addresses gender in its multifaceted intersections with other structural formations and inequalities, whether of class, caste, race, sexuality, religion or state’ (p. xiii).

The first three chapters of the book examine the historical context of the NFIW’s emergence. Beginning with the period of social reform in the 19th century, the first chapter traces the emergence of all-India women’s organisations, particularly the All India Women’s Conference (AIWC). The second chapter details the challenges mounted to the AIWC by women in the communist movement, and also the emergence of various regional women’s organisations. Regional women’s organisations came into existence in the 1940s in various part of the country, including Punjab, Bengal, Andhra, Delhi and Manipur. Members of such organisations, while working with the AIWC on various campaigns, had ideological differences with it regarding the role of women’s organisations and the activities they should undertake. For instance, one major debate within the AIWC involved the reduction of membership fees from 3 rupees to 4 annas, to enable poor women to join. The proposed reduction was rejected (p. 42). Such events, along with the experience of associating with the Women’s International Democratic Federation and participating in the World Congress of Women in 1953, prompted a section of women activists to form a new national body—the NFIW—in 1954. This is described in detail in the third chapter, providing valuable insights into the processes involved and the formation of networks from regional to national and international levels.

Nonetheless, there is little discussion of the relationship of the local organisations to the NFIW, of how each has influenced the other over time. It is interesting to note that the authors ascribe the shifts in the NFIWs position on feminism and issues like caste, violence, patriarchy, etc. to the emergence and influence of other women’s groups. As a mass organisation, one would imagine that the issues, debates and dilemmas of work at the local level would manifest at the level of the national body and influence its perspectives and positions. The documentation of such processes would be a valuable contribution to the study of women’s activism in India. Yet the book only mentions the influence of feminist groups in changing the national organisation’s perspectives on feminism.

It would be very significant to understand how the organisation’s changing notions of feminism, as detailed in the introduction (and described previously), have shaped their work on the ground. For instance, the book mentions a resolution against communalism, passed at the 1987 National Council meeting in Sangli. This highlighted the need to ‘struggle with redoubled efforts against socio-economic system (sic) that preserves casteism and communalism’ (p. 226). The 1987 resolution also clarified the organisation’s position on religion: that ‘in a secular country, everyone has the freedom to practice the religion of their own choosing … but the NFIW is determined to oppose religion being used for oppressing and exploiting women and murdering people’ (p. 226). A pamphlet published on the occasion of the march to Ayodhya in 1989, following the demolition of the Babri Masjid, stated that ‘we maintain that religion is a matter of personal faith. It should make people nobler and merciful. It should not be used to incite hatred against others or disrupt the unity of the people’ (p. 232). Incidentally, in their introduction, Chakravartty and Chotani write that the NFIW’s current position on religion is that it is one of the ‘structural formations and inequalities’ (p. xiii) present in Indian society.

These are important shifts in conceptualisations on religion and it would have been interesting to know how today the NFIW and its constituent organisations raise specific issues, or decide which issues to raise. Do such shifts impact how the NFIW allies with and extends solidarity to other organisations and movements raising demands around these issues?

Similarly, links between the NFIW and external organisations could also have been examined in more depth. For instance, the links between the NFIW and the Communist Party of India (CPI) could have been explored further. In the introduction, Chakravartty and Chotani write that ‘the CPI’s stance towards NFIW has always been of support, but with non-interference’ (p. vii). Yet they link the split within the NFIW and the emergence of the All India Democratic Women’s Association to the split within the CPI, as against to ideological differences within the NFIW. This hints at a deeper relationship between the two bodies: in the absence of a more detailed explanation, the reader is left to speculate as to the precise nature of that relationship and the reasons for the subsequent split.

Given that there are very few histories of Indian women’s organisations, Charting a New Path is a significant contribution. One hopes that there will be further work on the NFIW and other organisations, that will add to our knowledge of women’s activism in India.