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The article focuses on the book "A Decade of Women's Movement in India: Collection of Papers Presented at a Seminar Organized by Research Centre for Women's Studies, S.N.D. T. University, Bombay," coordinated by Neera Desai. The book serves as activists alike: it charts the scope of issues pertaining to women almost a decade after the second wave of the women's movement started in India. It also explores the inner strength the movement has achieved in terms of diverse organizations of women representing different classes and sections, both historically established and newly organized, and their networking potential that evolved at that point in time. The papers collected in this book were presented at the national seminar "A Decade of Women's Movement in India--A Review of Achievement and Issues," organized by The Research Centre for the Women's Studies, S.N.D.T. Women's University, in January 1985, in Mumbai, India. In the Introduction, Neera Desai points out that the seminar's intent was not to theorize about the movement as third world movements do not fit any specific definition. The essays refer to women's caucuses within larger mass organizations.

The article focuses on feminism and the history of the Indian nation with reference to the book "The History of Doing," by Radha Kumar. Kumar takes the reader from the first attempts to include women in the nationalist agitation against colonialism to 1990 when, after decades of struggle, the feminist movement stands embattled as right wing politics begin to claim center stage, using many of the tools developed by the feminist movement. It illuminates the depth and variation in women's resistance in India since the nineteenth century. Second, it shows how many of the deepest conflicts that have rocked the nation since its inception in 1947 have beliefs about gender at their core, even though the conflicts are not ostensibly about gender. The book makes distinctions between difference and equality feminism, feminine versus feminist movements, social versus political struggle, and autonomous versus politically affiliated movements. The difference between anti-patriarchal movements and feminist movements, according to Kumar, is that the former affirm the complementarity of men and women's roles in the social world, even as they condemn the privileging of men over women.

This article deals mainly with social movements in gendered frames. As introduction, framing theories begin from the assumption that language matters politically. Analyses of gender have suggested that language often carries masculinist assumptions and normative judgments that pass as neutral concepts. The essay connects these two perspectives and suggests that gender-conventional conceptions obscure important elements of understanding political thought at multiple levels of analysis, as well as biasing the process of framing research questions about social movement. It argues that uncovering the gender dimension in political discourse would not only bring women into the picture but also to rectify the politically biased understandings of political man. The questions raised in the essay about the future of framing thus arise from feminist concern about the discipline of sociology as a whole. The specific objective of this essay is to use critical ideas about gender to address the literature on framing in social movements. By investigating the often-unexamined assumptions about people and the literature of framing, this paper hopes to clarify both what framing analyses have to offer researchers interested in gender and social change, and what gender analyses have to offer students of political ideas. The essay contends that gender studies could benefit from the conceptual work that has already been done on frames and framing in general while enriching social movement research.

The article focuses on the book "A Space Within the Struggle: Women's Participation in Peoples Movements," edited by Ilina Sen. Written in 1990 at a point in time when India was poised for radical socioeconomic change, this collection of essays reflects on women's participation in the various people's movements of the 1960s. Nevertheless, it was in these alternative political forums that the marginalized groups, including women, found a forum to express their political aspirations. Capturing the synergy of the period, this volume explores women's voices within these different movements. One of the fallouts of this mobilization of women through various tribal/peasant movements in different parts of the country was that it brought into the open the prevailing systems of sexual exploitation of lower-class/caste women by the landlords. As discussed by Ilina Sen in her thought-provoking Introduction, the era was marked by the articulation of gender issues, articulation born out of the realization that the constitutional goal of gender equality could not be achieved without undermining the existing structures of male dominance.

The article focuses on the book "Reflections on the Women's Movement in India: Religion, Ecology, Development," by Gabriele Dietrich. Gabriele Dietrich, prominent thinker and activist in the women's movement in India, follows in the tradition of many European and American women who have made India their home and have become active in its various struggles. As the title suggests, Reflections on the Women's Movement in India is a series of meditations on the women's movement in India. The seven chapters in the book focus on religion, sexuality, work, the relationship of the women's movement to the Dalit's movement, women, ecology, and culture, and the implication of the development model for women. Each chapter can be read independently and discussions include the approaches adopted by the movement to challenge the above mentioned issues, as well as the limitations of the approaches. Dietrich's discussion of religion and politics begins with the "uneasy" relationship between the contemporary women's movement and religion in India--true of most women's rights movements all over the world.

The article focuses on the Indian's women movements. The world's largest democracy, India is a country with a history of social movements. It is particularly known for Gandhi's strategic use of nonviolence in the national freedom movement. Women's organizations confronted and engaged with victims of violence, with the religious fanaticism, and with divisions among women on the basis of religious communities. Women were victims of both groups, Hindus and Muslims. The women's movement clearly had to locate its work in a broader political struggle while understanding the specific impact of religious communalism on women. The contemporary Indian women's movement comprises numerous groups and organizations, which vary in location, form, and type; groups include urban, rural, small, large, informal, formal, localized, national, internationally affiliated, and combinations of all these forms, such as local informal branches of national organizations. The modem women's movement has its genesis in the freedom struggle, and later in the agitations in Maharashtra, India, in the early 1970s, as well as in the anti-price rise and anti-alcohol agitations of the time.

This article discusses three books "Community and Organizations in the New Left: 1962- 1968," by Wini Breines, "Counterculture and Social Transformation: Essays on Negativistic Themes in Sociological Theory," edited by Seymour Leventman and "Choice of Conscience: Vietnam Era Military and Draft Resisters in Canada," by David S. Surrey and "Countercultures," by J. Milton Yinger. These books on the new left are exclusively preoccupied with the counterculture politics that has been often treated only in passing. They recapitulate what was both most attractive and most repelling about the student movement in the sixties. Using not only conventional source materials but also new left archives at Madison and Berkeley as well as probably now yellowing leaflets, pamphlets, underground newspapers, and other counterculture documents. The work in these books reminds one how intelligent, incisive, and eloquent many of the new left leaders were, how clearly and quickly they saw to the heart of many of the issues that concerned them. Unfortunately these books also unintentionally remind one, of the ethereal character of so many of the debates within the movement.