Feminism and the History of the Indian Nation.

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.