When the Constituent Assembly debates were ongoing, despite all ideological and political differences between leaders, there was unanimous agreement on ensuring the right to vote for women in India. Everyone believed women had to be treated as equal political entities. This was unusual given the history of women’s suffrage, particularly in the west which refused to grant voting rights to women despite championing equality and democracy in the world.
The battles for suffrage were long and arduous, often spanning decades, before women could cast their ballot. In the United States, it was the remarkable 19th Amendment of 1920 that ushered in women’s right to vote, 144 years after its independence. England took another 8 years to concede equal voting rights for women.
India decided not to toe the line of the west. With the implementation of its constitution in 1950, the universal adult franchise came into force throughout the country, granting every adult citizen the right to vote regardless of gender.
India’s outlook
The colonial government was never an advocate of women’s suffrage. It believed women were incompetent to fulfil such a responsibility. Even when it granted women the right to vote in provincial elections in 1930, the property restrictions limited it to a mere 1 percet of women.
With independence came the idea of ‘one person, one vote, one value.’
However, this was not without its challenges. Illiteracy was widespread. At independence, India’s overall literacy rate stood at 12 percent while the level of female literacy was reprehensible. World Bank India reported that only 1 in 11 girls in the country were literate at the time of freedom. Added to this was extreme poverty. 80 percent of the country’s population lived in abject poverty.
Given these figures, universal franchise was seen as a threat to India’s fledgling democracy with many advising India against it. But independent India was clear in what it wanted for its citizens.
Dr. Ornit Shani in her book “How India Became Democratic (2017)” tells how the primary concern was not illiteracy or poverty. When preparation of electoral rolls began in November 1947 a large number of women refused to give their names, instead registering themselves as someone’s wife, daughter, or widow. This had been accepted earlier by the colonial administration but India’s first chief election commissioner, Sukumar Sen, spurned the practice.
As a result, nearly 2.8 million women voters became ineligible to vote in the first general elections held between October 1951 and February 1952. Mr. Sen had full faith that this was essential to bring these women into the electoral fold as equals.
The concerns surrounding ‘purdah,’ clad women were adequately addressed by setting up separate booths, but not before women like Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain and Begum Jahanara Shahnawaz had vociferously argued in its favour.
Lest it be wrongly assumed, this remarkable decision by a nascent India was not without a history of struggle. Women leaders and their organisations in pre-independence India were at the forefront of sowing the idea of political equality in India.
The Women’s Indian Association (WIA) founded in 1917 at Madras became a platform for cooperation between Indian and European women working to create a more equitable society in India. Annie Besant, Margaret Cousins and Dorothy Jinarajadasa, prominent figures from the west, joined hands with stalwart Indian women like Sarojini Naidu, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, Muthulakshmi Reddy and S. Ambujammal to fight against social evils obstructing women’s path to suffrage.
They sent regular petitions to the British Government highlighting their cause and Annie Besant even led a delegation to the Secretary of State for India, Sir Edwin Montagu, to demand voting rights for Indian women.
In 1919, Sarojini Naidu, Herabai Tata and Mithan Tata held meetings in the House of Commons and tried to lobby British MPs to heed their demands.
Moreover, WIA’s magazine, Stri Dharma, edited by Jinrajadasa and Cousins, gave a voice to women across the globe to elucidate women’s issues and struggles, thereby serving as an empowering force.
Contributions from Britain
There were many first generation British female MPs who sympathised with the cause of Indian suffragists.
Eleanor Rathbone set up a Committee for Indian Women’s Franchise in 1933 and pushed for reforms to enfranchise women in the Government of India Act, of 1935. Mary Pickford was part of an Indian Franchise Committee that toured India in 1932 to suggest ways to increase the number of voters in India. Similarly, Irene Ward suggested two amendments to the Government of India Act, of 1935 that could increase the number of Indian female voters.
Another MP, Nancy Astor wrote to the Secretary of State for India in 1935, Samuel Hoare, demanding a higher proportion of female voters in India.
The limited voting rights granted to Indian women by the Government of India Act, of 1935 were in part a result of the efforts of these British MPs who lent much-needed support to female activists back in India.
Besides MPs, other women in Britain championed the cause of women’s suffrage in India.
Sophia Duleep Singh, a British suffragist, was an English woman of Indian origin who visited India several times and encouraged Indian women to fight for their rights, particularly the right to vote.
Another remarkable woman, Lolita Roy, shifted to England from Calcutta in 1900 and played an active role in petitioning the British Government to grant voting rights to Indian women.
However, historian Dr. Sumita Mukherjee warns against getting carried away by this narrative. She points out the imperialist bias inherent in the way colonial women were viewed in Britain, reflected in the then-popular idea that British women could ‘uplift,’ women of colour living in the empire.
What is the situation in India today?
We have come a long way from the first general elections in 1951-52 where 2.8 million women failed to disclose their names. Today, every Indian woman aged 18 or above can vote. The only criterion she needs to fulfil is being an Indian citizen.
Women are also free to contest elections and there are no constitutional or legal barriers preventing them from rising to the highest offices in the land. President Droupadi Murmu, a tribal woman, occupying the topmost governmental office in the country is a case in point.
However, the picture is not all rosy. Out of a total of 543 elected seats in India’s parliament, only 14 percent are occupied by women representatives. The situation is more egregious in states. In 2023, only 9 percent MLAs were women.
The Women’s Reservation Bill, 2023 which will reserve one-third of all seats in the Parliament and state legislatures for women was passed after a prolonged battle of 27 years. Regardless, there is no clarity as to when it will come into force. Since the 2024 Lok Sabha elections are already over, it will likely not be anytime before 2029, when the next general elections are scheduled.
