Reclaiming the record: A review of V Gargi's 'No Women, No History'

By Harsh Thakor* 

'No Women, No History — Women in Indian Movements' by V. Gargi, published by Virasam Books, encapsulates and chronicles the participation of women in movements in India, dissecting the 19th and 20th centuries in addition to contemporary movements. The book adopts a broad-based and non-sectarian outlook, which is praiseworthy. It is in its own right a landmark work exploring the role of women in shaping struggles to transform Indian society.

Such movements can be characterized as distinct from the many regressive, religious, and chauvinistic movements. They propelled society forward and dismantled many feudal chains that had mercilessly bound Indian women for centuries. They personify the democratic awakening of the people of India and serve as a testament that direct action is the principal catalyst in liberating women, and that only the praxis of class struggle can transform the oppressive relations prevalent in society — something no amount of preaching can achieve.

The book fuses together general movements with women's struggles to explore the role of women in transforming society and its conditions. This ignites the identity of women and links the factor of women's oppression not only with what they face as women, but also as peasants, workers, artisans, and citizens. It reminds us of struggles waged on women's issues as part of general movements and makes clear that establishing women's liberation requires waging resistance against every form of exploitation.

The book explores how power is a vital tool for women's emancipation and how, for brief periods, communist-led peasant movements empowered both the masses and women. It also diagnoses the additional steps needed to advance a women's agenda within movements to orchestrate their liberation. The chapters make the statement that women can be very capable leaders — at times better than men — while showing how centuries of oppression hindered the number of women leading movements. Changes in women's lives will be radical and permanent only when they are entrusted with the task of leading movements, not merely given token participation. The book further diagnoses the necessity of women battling patriarchy within revolutionary movements to establish their rightful place in history, arguing that the anti-patriarchal struggle is inseparable from the movement for emancipation as a whole.

The chapters encompass mass rebellions waged against British rule and their socio-economic impact, Adivasi movements against displacement from their homelands, the Social Reform movement, the role of Dalit women in anti-caste movements, minority women from Christian and Muslim communities, women in the national revolutionary movement, Dalit, peasant, minority, and tribal women in Communist-led armed struggles, autonomous women's movements, ecological movements, North East movements, and contemporary women's movements. Most notably, the book traces how women engineered a rupture from past conventions that had alienated them from revolutionary struggles, and how they transitioned into securing leadership roles in historic uprisings like Telangana and Naxalbari.

Extensive coverage is given to the heroic actions of women in the Telangana Struggle of 1946–51 — playing stellar roles as couriers even while donning male attire, selling clothes to spread courage after the arrest of leaders, and sewing messages on children's undergarments. Women transported weapons and letters, travelled alone at night, and found in the revolt a genuinely liberating experience. During the Naxalbari peasant uprising, women stood at the forefront, with seven falling as martyrs, including Dhaneshwari Singh, Sanamati Singh, Pulmati Singh, and Surabala Barman. The book also recounts the pivotal role played by women in the Srikakulam armed struggle, such as Panchadi Nirmala, who with death-defying courage combated police attacks and arrests. Women sustained hunted guerrilla squads by supplying food and water while facing the harshest perils.

A compelling narrative is devoted to the resistance of the People's Organization of Women and Viplava Mahila Sangham in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, and the Nari Mukti Sangh in Bihar and Jharkhand. Instances reported include the heroic carrying of food and water to armed squads in Akbarpur in 1987, protecting peasant cadres during police firing at Arwal in 1986, thwarting landlord sabotage of a strike at Karpa with only sickles and scythes, snatching rifles at Palamau when police blocked their gathering of Mahua flowers, raiding the house of landlord Ramanand Yadav, retrieving a dead body from the police at Jehanabad, and attacking a police van with rocks to free cadres. Women participated in protest rallies, crop seizures, land occupations, and struggles for equal pay, land ownership rights, and proper construction of village wells.

The book dissects the movement organized by Nari Mukti Sangh across issues such as child marriage, dowry, sexual harassment, anti-liquor struggles, health, equal wages, superstitions, and forest conservation, praising its death-defying resistance against state repression. It also highlights the contribution of the Krantikari Mahila Adivasi Sanghatana in engaging women against oppressive customs like forced marriages, historically tracing its growth from a loose cluster of revolutionary activists into a full-fledged organization.

Brief but valuable coverage is given to the role of women in shaping cultural organizations such as Jana Natya Mandali, Chetana Natya Manch, and Krantikari Sanskritik Sangh, and to women's struggles in jail. A praiseworthy assessment is also made of women's contribution to the Chhattisgarh Mines Shramik Sangh strikes of 1977 and 1981. The book landscapes the 1928 Textile Workers strike, the Calcutta Scavengers Strike, the Bengal Jute Mill workers' strike, the Bengal pottery workers' strike, the 1920 Madurai Mill Strike, the South India Railway Workers' Strike, the Warli Revolt, and the landmark Royal Indian Navy Mutiny of 1946. Women leaders such as Ushatai Dange, Meenakshi Sane, and Shante Balerao are specifically acknowledged. The book also covers the revolutionary urban women's movement in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, which took up issues of dowry deaths, sexual harassment, rape, communalism, water scarcity, and sustained campaigns against the WTO, IMF, and World Bank.

The anti-price rise movement from 1967 to 1975, the Nav Nirman agitation, struggles in the Dhulia region of Maharashtra over land distribution and wages, and women's resistance during the Emergency are all given their due place.

In its conclusion, the book offers a critical evaluation of the Communist Party of India's role during the Tebhaga Struggle of 1946, faulting it for negating women's role in revolution, failing to formulate any concrete policy for organizing them, and discouraging women from joining the movement on the grounds that they were weak or that their integration would cause social tensions. A pointed critique is also made of Mahatma Gandhi, arguing that he analyzed the oppression of women as an abstract moral phenomenon rather than understanding its social and historical roots. While the spinning wheel gave women a means of participating in the national movement from home, it simultaneously confined them there. Gandhi, the book argues, reconstructed a model of womanhood drawn from the Hindu widow — defined by the renunciation of sex, reproduction, and family life — and ultimately channelled women's energies into a reformist programme that reproduced their role in a traditional Hindu social order.

The book's principal weakness is its failure to analyse the concrete changes in women's lives following liberalization and globalization in 1991, or to examine the new types of struggles this period has generated and the tactical adjustments these demand. Nor does it provide substantial evidence for why Maoist-led movements and organizations represent the correct path forward, or what concretely distinguishes them from other revolutionary trends. These gaps aside, 'No Women, No History' is an indispensable contribution to the study of women's history and emancipatory movements in India.

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*Freelance journalist