Voting Rights For Women: A Long Fight For A Better Life

The artist of a 100-year-old postcard printed in Britain took a wild guess at the probable scenario in the Parliament if women were to enter it as representatives of the people. While one woman on the postcard is seen talking about “Man and how to treat it”, another appears busy staring into the mirror; yet another is seen reading a book while a mother holds her baby close.

Photo: BBC

Another postcard declares: “Convicts, Lunatics and Women have no vote for Parliament”.

Photo: Independent

In those times, women were seen as having an inferior intellectual and emotional capability to men and therefore unable to make sound political judgment. So, they were found to be unfit to vote or stand for election.

However, with the First World War raging on and the men of the country engaged in battle, it was the women of the United Kingdom (UK) who supported the country from within by engaging in industrial activities. They worked hard for hours every day in factories and at home, were abused because of their inferior social standing, and laughed at because of their gender when they tried to put their intellect to use.

Women were also paid a lot lesser than men despite the back-breaking work. It was then that they started a long battle demanding the right to vote, hoping that at least with political representation their lives would improve.

The women formed unions, staged peaceful protests, and urged the Parliament for a right to vote. When they were ignored and mocked, some of them formed a new group and started a violent campaign. This section left explosives on trains and in post offices, cut telegram and phone wires, and burnt the homes of members of Parliament.

The government of the time, which arrested thousands of suffragettes – as they were called, also had to face the displeasure of the public when the convicts went on a hunger strike inside the jail and refused to eat. They grew weak and the government, fearing backlash, force-fed them cruelly with the use of mechanical devices like the rubber tube, pushed through the nose till the stomach, and with metal pegs to keep the mouth open.

When this move, too, failed to contain the suffrage movement and created a public outcry against the violence, the UK government passed the Prisoners (Temporary Discharge for Ill Health) Act in 1913, which was commonly called the Cat and Mouse Act. The suffragettes were released when they grew too weak from hunger, as they would no longer be a danger to the government, until they started to eat after they were released and regained health gradually. Then they were arrested again and kept in jail till they grew weak again from hunger. The alternative name to the Act came from the cat’s habit of playing with a mouse before finishing it off.

In 1918, a 100 years ago, after a long and hard struggle, women in the UK got the right to vote under the Representation of the People Act. But not all women. Voting rights were restricted to women who were over 30 years of age, owned a property, were a graduate in a university, or were the wife of a householder. One suffragette, Lilian Lenton, said, "I didn't vote for a very long time because I hadn't either a husband or furniture." Women contesting elections was unheard of and strongly opposed by even some women who believed their place was at home and not in the Parliament.

In December 1918, women in the UK voted for the first time; women also contested for the first time that year, and among the 17 contestants, only one woman won – Constance Markievicz became the first woman to be elected to the Britain House of Commons. However, Lady Nancy Astor became the first woman to enter the Parliament. Winston Churchill, who was appalled at the entry of a woman into the Parliament, reportedly said: "I find a woman's intrusion into the House of Commons as embarrassing as if she burst into my bathroom when I had nothing with which to defend myself, not even a sponge."

It was heartening to learn that women from India, too, joined their counterparts in the suffrage or right-to-vote movement in the UK. Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, daughter of Maharaja Duleep Singh, the last king of Punjab deposed by the British, lived in the UK all her life under royal patronage. Though a favourite god-daughter of Queen Victoria’s, she rebelled against the government and was at the forefront of the women's suffrage movement. As a member of Women's Tax Resistance League, she refused to pay her taxes. She also organised a flag day for Indian troops and worked for the Indian soldiers wounded in the Great War. She was in constant contact with Indian freedom fighters like Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Lala Lajpat Rai, and others. She became a revolutionary for the cause of suffrage, apart from fighting with the police and throwing herself on the Prime Minister's car during the brutal Black Friday march of 1910, in which hundreds of women got injured. She publicly supported the bomb makers and arsonists among the suffragettes.

Princess Sophia Duleep Singh selling subscriptions for the Suffragette newspaper outside Hampton Court in London, April 1913.

Though our colonial rulers, who prided themselves on being a highly civilised society, took until 1918 to give their women the right to franchise, it was to the credit of Indian women that they fought for and won that right even before the country’s independence. While the British argued that universal franchise was a "bad fit for India", women like Sarojini Naidu, Lolita Roy, Herabai Tata, and Mithibai Tata travelled to London to convince the British Parliament for their right to vote. Roy went to London and campaigned for the cause even as early as 1901.

According to Dr Sumita Mukherjee of the University of Bristol, women from India received huge support from women's societies, councils, and other organisations in Britain and Ireland, who then sent letters to the India Office in London. Though Naidu's visit to London was unsuccessful, the British agreed to give freedom to separate Indian provincial councils to decide on voting rights for women. An Independent member of Parliament of Britain, Eleanor Rathbone, set up a separate committee to decide on women's franchise in India.

Mahatma Gandhi, who visited London in 1906 and 1909, was highly impressed with the peaceful protests and hunger strikes held by women for suffrage and praised them in his weekly journal, Indian Opinion. He believed Asia's men could learn some lessons from the women of England and come forward willingly to fight for the cause.

Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) at Boulogne station with Sarojini Naidu, on the way to England to attend the Round Table Conference. (Douglas Miller/Getty Images)

In India, the women’s cause was taken up by Edwin Samuel Montague, a British MP who was made the secretary of state for India in 1917. The 38-year-old was liberal in his views and even proposed self-government to India, which was discarded in favour of Lord Curzon's proposal to keep India as an integral part of the British Empire.

Naidu founded Women's India Association along with Annie Besant and met Montague to push for voting rights for women. It was partly due to Montague's efforts that India got universal franchise, though with a few riders. The British government said a woman's name should be removed from the electoral roll if she is divorced, a widow, or if her husband had lost property. In 1921, the then Bombay and Madras councils gave limited votes to women.

Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay became the first woman in India to run for a legislative seat in 1926. In the same year, Muthulakshmi Reddy of Tamil Nadu became the first woman to enter the legislature as a legislative council member.

Now, universal franchise may seem like a non-issue across the world, with almost all countries recognising the need to acknowledge that intellect is not reliant on gender. Saudi Arabia was the last country in the world to grant voting rights to women, in 2015, apart from Vatican City, which only consists of men.

We have celebrated yet another platitudinous International Women's Day this year. At the ground level, the difference between the condition of women a 100 years ago and today is not much. It's time for both drawing room feminists and women in decision-making political offices to make the hard-earned women's vote worthwhile by giving their silent struggles at home and outside a voice. For those women who have fought hard for the franchise, voting was not just a right but the only path towards realising their dream of a better life, a hope for the future, and the freedom to choose.

This article appeared in Swarajya magazine on March 16, 2018.

Mao's China or Modi's India?

The world may have forgotten the June of 1989, when thousands of unarmed students and activists were butchered by the Chinese state in what came to be known as the Tiananmen Square massacre. Sir Alan Donald, the then British ambassador to China, wrote in a secret diplomatic cable to the UK Foreign Office that at least 10,000 people were killed; wounded students bayoneted as they begged for their lives and a mother shot as she tried to help her three-year-old daughter were just two horrific instances recorded by him.
The students were merely asking for 'democracy'; a word which is amorphous and selective in today's world as is 'human rights'. They sought freedom from corruption and nepotism in Communist Party of China, seeking freedom of speech and press.
When party leader Zhao Ziyang sought a peaceful dialogue with the students, he was arrested. Thousands of activists were reportedly kept under house arrest, some allegedly tortured in custody and many went missing.
Unfortunately, the government of India, under its Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, suddenly remembered its 'Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai' slogan and ordered government-controlled TV channels to give minimum coverage to the massacre. He indicated to China that "it will not revel in China's domestic troubles and offer some political empathy instead". While in Russia, Mikhail Gorbachev went one step further and switched off the microphone when human rights activist Andrei Sakharov rose on the podium to demand the recall of Soviet Ambassador to China as a protest.
The ripples of the movement were so powerful that they can still be felt by those who advocate for freedom from fear and state oppression in China. Young lawyer Xu Zhiyong was jailed in 2013 for four years for starting a movement to take the Chinese constitutional rights – rights to vote, speak, criticise the government, enjoy the dignity of the person – seriously. Swedish human rights activist Peter Dahlin was detained for 23 days in an unknown location for working in support of the families of human rights lawyers, journalists and other activists, who were under attack and went missing. However, it was the arrest of Liu Xiaobo, literary critic and human rights activist, which caught the world's attention. The Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who prevented further massacre at Tiananmen Square through his peaceful negotiations, died of cancer as a state prisoner with no permission to travel abroad for treatment.
Each year, hundreds of activists go missing in China for speaking against the government. A few of them who are eventually released and deported narrate frightening stories of alleged torture through beating, deprivation of food, water and sleep, forced confessions on state-controlled media. Nearly 2,761 such cases have been reported from 2012 to 2015. Hundreds of missing cases go unreported in the media as even the families of the activists are under house arrest and barred from speaking out.
Michael Caster, who worked with Peter Dahlin, has written a book titled People's Republic of the Disappeared based on the 'black jails' or 'Residential Surveillance at a Designated Location' which simply is an ambiguous term for undisclosed places where people who dare speak against the party or the government are kept following state-sponsored abduction. It has been legalised now.
Being paranoid about its own citizens, China has managed to strangle even the religious practices of its Muslim and Christian citizens. Uighur Muslims and Roman Catholics are under constant surveillance. Around 10 million Muslims in the country are not allowed any of their customs including long beards, hijab, keeping Islamic names or even fasting during Ramzan.
Uighur Muslims are being sent to unacknowledged 're-education camps' to unlearn Islam and discard religious practices. They are made to learn Communist Party of China principles, sing party songs and thank President Xi Jinping every morning at breakfast. Around 120,000 Muslims are said to be living in the camps, as also Christians.
Only churches set up by the government are allowed in China and they have no relation with the Vatican. Church leaders, who are recognised by the Vatican and not by the government, are detained as was the case of Bishop Peter Shao Zhumin, who went missing last year. He reappeared after seven months of detention. In January this year, the government blew up Golden Lampstead Church in Shanxi province amid protests from its 50,000-strong congregation.
TV stations have been banned from airing programmes with 'excessive entertainment and vulgar tendencies' with two hours a day reserved for party news. Social media is closely monitored for anti-party activities.
In a democratic country like ours, the Golden Quadrilateral project of 5,846 kms linking Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata and Delhi took 11 years to complete beginning from 2001 to 2012. But China completed 34,000 kms expressway in six years beginning from 1998. When land acquisition for road building starts in India, so does a slew of protests and court cases dragging the project for years. But China often takes the easy and not-so-democratic way out. In October 2011, the residents of a new enclave were given an ultimatum of three weeks to accept the government compensation and move out so their houses could be bulldozed to make way for roads.
And the world turns not only a blind eye but also deaf ears to the plight of the 1.4 billion citizens of one of the super powers which has effectively turned the country into a virtual prison through facial recognition, access to each person's smartphone, robot police and worst internet freedom in the world. Not to mention bull-dozing its way into neighbouring Tibet and India.
The United Nations which often hides behind silence when it comes to China's human rights violations, has suddenly found its voice to warn India about the army's "unlawful killings" in Jammu and Kashmir. Our human rights activists and liberals who have been hollering about the 'environment of fear' that has supposedly engulfed India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, must remember that they have all the freedom to write, shout on television channels, hold candles and take out marches, express their anger on the social media and bad-mouth India on western platforms; in Mao’s China which they look up to, they would just go missing for actions lesser than these while in India, which is a true albeit a flawed democracy, they will always have their freedom of speech and expression.
The Arundhati Roys of India must remember that while they "love India not as a nation but so much of the music, poetry, river valleys," they must also remember that if India does not remain as a nation with its state machinery, policies, military, there will be no more music, no more poetry and no more river valleys for them to save. No country can turn into their impossible utopia.
Though in the last four years we have seen a hitherto unprecedented attack on the actions and words of the country’s Prime Minister by the liberals, it is to Modi’s credit that he has continued on the path of development as an answer to all the attacks; be it connecting North-East to the rest of the country or improving the lives of tribals as an answer to extremism. It must only be because of the compassion he has for his fellow countrymen. Human rights and true freedom are not separable from India’s idea of non-violent justice.
Whenever I read about how China is slowly turning into a police state, I am reminded of Ayn Rand's novella 'Anthem'. A dystopian world divided in 'Cities', governed by councils, babies separated from mothers and raised by the state, their education, profession decided by a group of people. A collectivistic society where individuals live as mere ghosts of men and women, who have no idea of the existence of their freedom to think, to choose and to love. It is my hope that one day my country too will not turn into that dystopian society where freedom exists only for select individuals.
After all, as Albert Camus wrote in Resistance, Rebellion and Death, "If justice has a meaning in this world,… it cannot, by its very essence, divorce itself from compassion". It’s now time for liberals to choose between Mao’s China or Modi’s India.

https://swarajyamag.com/politics/if-modi-indeed-was-dictator-india-would-like-communist-china