From student organisers to a model-turned-activist, these women are risking their reputations – and sometimes their lives – to fight against injustice. Plus, actor Imran Khan recommends a classic film
There is much to be said for the extraordinary women living ordinary lives, who nonetheless shaped India. Women have changed public life in the country far more than their presence in formal politics would suggest.
And so, as India marked its 79th birthday over the weekend, I found myself reflecting on the multitude of people’s movements, big and small – as well as the women who helped shape them. During India’s struggle for freedom from British rule, women organised boycotts of British goods, made contraband salt and marched to confront the police, taking on roles usually dominated by men. In the 1970s Chipko movement, protesting deforestation, women put their bodies on the line, wrapping them around trees to stop them being felled, turning a local struggle into a national reckoning over environment and development. More recently, grandmothers in Shaheen Bagh sat to protest the citizenship law, which critics have denounced as discriminatory, creating space for dissent when many thought none existed.
