The Other Half of the Revolution: Women in the Freedom Struggle

Indian women were never bystanders in the freedom struggle - they led armies in 1857, ran underground radio in 1942, and went to jail by the tens of thousands in between. Yet their story is often reduced to a paragraph. For UPSC, the women's arc is a scoring theme: it touches 1857, Gandhian movements, revolutionaries, and the Constitution in one sweep.

Before Gandhi: queens, rebels and reformers

Women's resistance predates the organised national movement. Bhima Bai Holkar fought the British in 1817; Rani Channamma of Kittur rose in 1824; and in 1857, Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi, Begum Hazrat Mahal of Awadh, Rani Jindan Kaur and others commanded troops and held cities.

Parallel to this ran the reform current. Pandita Ramabai founded the Sharada Sadan (1889) for widows' education, and Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain campaigned against gender inequality in Bengal. During the Swadeshi movement (1905), women wove indigenous cloth, discouraged imports and picketed foreign-goods shops - their first mass appearance in a modern political campaign.

The barriers: why women's participation stayed limited

For all their courage, women fought inside a cage. Five barriers recur across the movement:

• Absence of leadership roles: women were largely absent from decision-making, often supporting male leaders and implementing plans formulated by organisations like the Congress.

• Lack of scientific education: denied modern schooling, most women could not enter the professions or the press that carried nationalist ideas.

• Patriarchal norms: political activity outside the home was treated as improper; women navigated a growing political consciousness inside households shaped by male relatives.

• Social stigma: women who joined rallies or went to jail faced ostracism; respectability itself was policed.

• Underrepresentation: women had limited representation and leadership opportunities in the Congress and in labour unions.

Gandhi changed the arithmetic. 'A yagna is incomplete without women taking part in it,' he said during the Non-Cooperation Movement, and he meant it as strategy, not flattery: non-violence made it safe for women to join in thousands. He opposed the purdah system and child marriage and promoted girls' education. The results were visible everywhere: during the Non-Cooperation Movement many women went to prison for the first time; in the Civil Disobedience Movement Sarojini Naidu led the Dharasana Salt Satyagraha, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay addressed meetings and made salt, and the Nari Satyagraha Committee was established to organise women's picketing.

The queens in the lede were not alone. Maharani Velu Nachiyar (1730-1796) of Sivaganga fought the British army and defeated them decisively, decades before 1857; and Gauri Parvati Bai, queen of Travancore, put the weight of the state behind girls' education, helping women overcome social and academic stigma. They belong in the lineage that runs from Kittur to Kanpur.

Breaking the leadership ceiling

Annie Besant launched the Home Rule League in 1916 and became the first woman president of the Congress in 1917 (Calcutta session). In 1925, Sarojini Naidu became the first Indian woman to preside over the Congress (Kanpur session).

The All India Women's Conference (AIWC), founded in 1927 by Margaret Cousins, organised women's demands - education, franchise, and social reform - at a national scale, with figures like Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay and Durgabai Deshmukh in its ranks.

The Gandhian phase: salt, satyagraha and sacrifice

Women's mass participation began with the Civil Disobedience Movement. Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay personally persuaded a sceptical Gandhi to admit women to the salt satyagraha - and then proved him wrong about their 'readiness'. When Gandhi was arrested, Sarojini Naidu led the Dharasana Salt Works march (May 1930), where volunteers walked silently into police lathis. Kasturba Gandhi made khadi spinning a symbol of women's resistance, and thousands of women courted arrest through 1930-34.

The revolutionary current had its heroines too. Pritilata Waddedar led the attack on the Pahartali European Club in 1932 and died rather than be captured; Kalpana Datta joined the Chittagong Armoury Raid group. Abroad, Bhikaji Cama unfurled the first Indian tricolour at Stuttgart in 1907.

A word on Sarojini Naidu, the movement's most visible woman. She joined the national movement during the 1905 protest against the division of Bengal, became a nationalist celebrity by 1917, and was appointed the Congress's second woman president in 1925 (Kanpur session). The British had given her the Kaisar-i-Hind medal for relief work during the plague epidemic - she returned it after Jallianwala Bagh. She led the Dharasana salt protest in 1930 and was detained during the Quit India movement in 1942.

Quit India: the underground generation

Quit India (1942) was women's finest hour. After the arrest of the Congress leadership on 9 August, Aruna Asaf Ali hoisted the national flag at Gowalia Tank, Bombay - the movement's most photographed act of defiance - and went underground for the rest of the war. Usha Mehta, then a student, ran the clandestine Congress Radio from Bombay, broadcasting news the censored press would not carry. Sucheta Kripalani organised the underground network, while Matangini Hazra - the seventy-three-year-old 'Gandhi Buri' - was shot dead leading a procession at Tamluk on 29 September 1942.

Armed struggle and the Constitution

Captain Lakshmi Sahgal commanded the Rani of Jhansi Regiment - over a thousand women combatants raised by Subhas Chandra Bose's INA in 1943 - which saw action in the Imphal campaign. Vijayalakshmi Pandit carried India's case to the international stage at San Francisco in 1945.

The political gains were real but modest: the Government of India Act (1935) extended the franchise to more women, and the Communal Award (1932) reserved 3% of provincial seats for women. The deeper legacy was social - decades of women in public protest had permanently expanded the space women could occupy in Indian public life.

Rani Channamma of Kittur (1824): the queen who defeated the Company

Rani Channamma (1778-1829) was the queen of Kittur in Karnataka who led an armed rebellion against the East India Company in 1824, three decades before 1857. When her husband died, the Company refused to recognise her adopted heir and moved to annex Kittur - the same lapse doctrine Dalhousie would later formalise. Channamma's forces met the British in open battle and defeated them, killing the Collector St John Thackeray; only a second, larger assault captured her.

Why she matters: Channamma is one of the earliest woman-led anti-colonial revolts in Indian history - and one of the few in which Indian arms actually beat the Company in the field. She died in Bailhongal prison in 1829, but Kittur's example travelled: the Rani of Jhansi would fight the same doctrine, for the same reason, thirty-four years later.

Key Terms

• Sarojini Naidu led the Dharasana Salt Works march (May 1930: Sarojini Naidu led the Dharasana Salt Works march in May 1930 after Gandhi's arrest had halted his own march to the salt works in Gujarat. On 21 May she and Imam Sahib led hundreds of unarmed satyagrahis toward the Dharasana depot, where police brutally beat the non-violent marchers, an episode reported worldwide by journalist Webb Miller. For UPSC it is the defining follow-up action of the Civil Disobedience Movement. On 21 May 1930, unarmed satyagrahis were beaten by police at Dharasana, as reported by American journalist Webb Miller.
• Aruna Asaf Ali hoisted the national flag at Gowalia Tank: This refers to Aruna Asaf Ali's iconic act during the Quit India Movement: after the Congress leadership was arrested on 8 August 1942, she hoisted the national flag at Gowalia Tank Maidan in Bombay on 9 August 1942, becoming the public face of the underground movement and earning the title of the movement's heroine. For UPSC, she exemplifies women's leadership in the freedom struggle. She later became the first mayor of Delhi in 1958, continuing her public life after independence.
• first woman president of the Congress in 1917: Annie Besant was the first woman president of the Congress in 1917, presiding over the Calcutta session. The Irish theosophist and Home Rule League leader had campaigned for Indian self-government, education and women's rights. Her presidency symbolized the growing role of women and of the Home Rule agitation in the national movement. UPSC relevance: women leaders of the freedom struggle; a direct prelims fact on INC sessions. Annie Besant, Calcutta session of the INC, 1917
• All India Women's Conference (AIWC: The All India Women's Conference is a women's organization founded at Poona in January 1927 by Margaret Cousins to advance women's education. It soon broadened into a platform demanding women's rights, including suffrage, inheritance reform, and action against child marriage. It is significant for UPSC as the first all-India women's organization and a marker of the women's movement during the nationalist era. It campaigned in support of the Sarda Act of 1929, which raised the minimum age of marriage.
• Pahartali European Club in 1932: The Pahartali European Club in 1932 refers to the armed raid on the club led by Preetilata Waddedar on 23 September 1932, on the orders of Surya Sen. The revolutionaries torched the racially exclusive club, and Waddedar, wounded and cornered, consumed cyanide rather than be captured. For UPSC it is a landmark event of the revolutionary nationalist phase and of women's participation in the freedom struggle. Preetilata Waddedar's raid on 23 September 1932
• Begum Hazrat Mahal of Awadh: Begum Hazrat Mahal was the wife of the deposed Nawab Wajid Ali Shah who led the 1857 revolt in Lucknow after Awadh's annexation in 1856. She placed her minor son Birjis Qadr on the throne and organized the siege of the British Residency. After the revolt's defeat she fled to Nepal, where she died in Kathmandu in 1879. For UPSC she matters as one of the foremost women leaders of 1857 alongside Rani Lakshmibai. Her 1857 proclamation denounced British annexations and called on Hindus and Muslims to rise together against foreign rule.
• Tamluk on 29 September 1942: Tamluk on 29 September 1942 is the date of Matangini Hazra's martyrdom during the Quit India Movement. The 71-year-old Gandhian, fondly called Gandhi Buri, led a procession to capture the Tamluk police station and was shot dead by police while holding the Congress flag aloft and chanting Vande Mataram. For UPSC, she is an iconic GS-1 example of women's participation in the freedom struggle and of 1942's militant mass phase. Matangini Hazra's martyrdom, 29 September 1942

• Constituent Assembly's women members: 15 women who sat in the Constituent Assembly and shaped the Constitution's rights provisions.

• Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain: Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (1880 to 1932) was a Bengali writer and social reformer who championed Muslim women's education. Her 1905 novella Sultana's Dream imagined a feminist utopia where women run the world, and in 1911 she founded the Sakhawat Memorial Girls' School in Kolkata. For UPSC she matters as a pioneering Indian feminist and educationist, often featured in modern history and women's empowerment questions. Sultana's Dream (1905) is regarded as one of the earliest feminist science-fiction works in world literature.
• Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi: Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi (1828-1858) was the queen who led her forces against the British during the Revolt of 1857 after the East India Company invoked the Doctrine of Lapse to annex Jhansi. Refusing to surrender, she fought at Kalpi and Gwalior, dying in battle on 18 June 1858. Celebrated as a supreme symbol of resistance and women's valour, she is indispensable for UPSC questions on 1857. Her death in battle at Gwalior on 18 June 1858
• 1927 by Margaret Cousins: The All India Women's Conference was founded in 1927 at Poona through the initiative of Margaret Cousins, an Irish suffragist and theosophist settled in India. Its first conference, presided over by Maharani Chimnabai Gaekwad, focused on women's and children's education and soon expanded into campaigns against child marriage and for women's franchise. For UPSC it is the founding moment of the organised national women's movement. The AIWC lobbied for the Child Marriage Restraint Act of 1929, the Sarda Act.
• Rani Channamma of Kittur: Rani Channamma of Kittur (1778-1829) was the queen of the princely state of Kittur in present-day Karnataka who led an armed revolt against the British East India Company in 1824, after it tried to annex her state over her adopted heir's succession. She defeated a British force before being captured and died in Bailhongal prison. As one of the first women to fight the British, she is a key prelims figure on women's role in the freedom struggle. The Kittur Uprising of 1824

From the struggle to the Constitution: women in the Constituent Assembly

The struggle's last harvest was institutional: 15 women sat in the Constituent Assembly that wrote the republic's founding document. Know the names and one contribution each:

The laws that changed women's status

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