Women’s Movement

The women’s movement, in India, is a rich movement which has taken different forms in different parts of the country. Women participated in the nationalist movement. Sarojini Naidu went into become the first woman president of the India National Congress in 1925. Her presence was a signal for hundreds of other women to join the nationalist movement. But it is important to recognize that for a country’s of India’s magnitude, change in male-female relations and the kinds of issues women activists are focusing will not come easily. Foe every step, movements take forward, there will be a backlash backlash, a possible regression. And it is this that makes for the contradiction, this that makes it possible for them to be woman who can aspire to, and attain the highest political office in the country, and for women to continue to have to confront patriarchy within the home, in the work place, throughout their lives. Women’s reservation in the legislature is being sought, though it has been made compulsory at the local-government levels. The National Commission for Women (1992) and the  National Policy  for the Empowerment of Women (2001) are steps towards the betterment of women in the country but its acess is limited to few.

Tribal Movement

The tribal movements in colonial India, it must be understood, were born out of deep dissatisfaction and often discontent against socio-economic policies of the British Government, which adversely affected their lives. Whether it be the question of encroachment of tribal lands by money-lenders backed by the Govt., the acquisition of tribal forest, high taxation or enhancement of rent, everyone of these policies created among the tribes and nomadic communities extreme distrust of the authorities and turned them against the rulers - often against outsiders (Sudsldikus) in general, since that was how the tribal mind perceived the situation to be. The situation was further worsened by the fact that famines in the latter half of the 19th century forced the tribals into destitution. Dr. Verrier Elwin remarks that the chief cause of the decline of tribal communities' '....was the loss of land and forests" which according to him, "had the effect of enervating tribal organism that it had no interior resistance against infection by a score of other evils ..." If we look back over the long series of tribal rebellions against authority in other parts of tribal India, we see that the majority of them arose over this one point. Thus, the Kol insurrection of 1833 was caused by encroachment on tribal land. The Tamar rebellions repeated seven times between 1789 and 1832 were primarily due to the illegal deprivation of their rights in land, which the Hos, Mundas and Oraons suffered. The Santhal Rebellion (1855) was primarily a revolt against oppression of landlords, village money-lenders etc. The Birsa Munda Revolt (1895-1901) too was directed against the 'outsider7-namely landlords, traders and government officers. As evident, the movements were spread over large part of the country. A noteworthy feature of these tribal movements, separated in space and time from one another, was that they occurred not in one or two pockets but were spread out across the country and had at the root, common or similar issues. Significant tribal movements took place in the beginning of the twentieth century. Most important among these was in the present Andhra Pradesh, where the tribals' forest agitation merged with Gandhi's non-cooperation movement and subsequent to its withdrawal was carried further under the leadership of Sitarama Raju. According to Prof. Summit Sarkar the spread of the movement was far beyond Andhra. "On 10 July 1921, Reading reported to the Secretary of State that 2,50,000 out of 4,00,000 acres of forest in Kumaon Division of U.P. had been burnt down. Cavalry had to be sent to Muzaffarpur in North Bihar in Dec. 1921 to tackle an agitation over grazing rights. From Bengal, too, came reports of Santhals reasserting their lost forest rights in the Jhargram region of Midnapur and widespread looting of woodlands in  Banskhali land Cox's Bazar areas of Chittagong." A study of these innumerable tribal movements reveals interesting characteristics which have parallels in similar agrarian movements elsewhere in the world. Most of these have been characterized by what has been called a negative consciousness by Ranajit Guha wherein, more than their own consciousness as a class or social group, a consciousness based on an identification of the enemy has played a vital role. Often enemies of the people have been identified as enemies of the faithful, oppressed and disenfranchised and have been mingled with religious calls for struggle against such enemies. Teachings of Judaism, Christianity and Shia'ite Islam often had, as integral part of their teachings the promise of a paradise on earth for a thousand years through divine intervention. This has been variously described as Messianism, Millenarianism or Mahdism. Such millenarian elements can be seen in the different Mahdist movements in the Babism of mid 19th century Iran or in the vision of a Heavenly Kingdom in the Taiping Rebellion in China or in the many variants of Brasilian Cultic protest movements. Kathleen Gough, on the basis of a study of 77 agrarian revolts has roughly  classified them into five types in terms of their goals, ideology and methods of  organization: 1) Restorative rebellions to drive out the British and to restore earlier rulers and social relations, 2) religious movements for the liberation of a region or an ethnic group under a new form of govt., 3) what had been referred to as 'Social banditry' by E. J. Hobsbawm, 4) Terrorist vengeance, with ideas of meeting out collective justice and 5) Mass insurrections for the redress of particular grievances. Though Eric Hobsbawm, Norman Cohn and Peter Worsely have suggested thatmillenarian movements were rare or absent in India, as the widespread opinion is that they stem from Indacocuristian influences, Gough holds a different opinion. According to her, it is probably true in the 'strict sense of a belief in a thousand year period in which the evil one will be chained, in a wider sense it is not true. The belief and expectation that the present evil world will be transformed by divine intervention and bliss shall reign on earth, has permeated many a tribal movement in India. "Birsa Munda received teaching both from Lutheran missionaries and Hindu ascetics but then reverted to his