Gandhi’s call for non-cooperation gave respectable women the scope to join the freedom movement in large numbers, although the narrow social base of women political activists-elite and upper-caste-has been widely noted. The bhadramahila began their political journey in the late nineteenth century, their participation ranging from moderate Congress Party activism to militant terrorism. The freedom movement already had a half-century history by the 1920s, when the labour movement began to gather momentum under the leadership of middle-class men, many of whom operated at the margins of mainstream nationalist politics. The core gender narrative of politics in this period has been of middle-class women’s participation in the nationalist movement. Asked in the 1980s about women in the labour movement in India prior to Independence, the octogenarian labour leader, Santoshkumari Devi, said: ‘We could not get men to work in the movement, where would we find women?’ Footnote 1 Santoshkumari was one of a handful of bhadramahila (middle-class Bengali women) who were active in the labour movement from the 1920s to the 1970s.
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