Gandhi and Liberation of Women through the Freedom Movement

Abstract

There is no one perhaps in modern times about whose life and ideas so much has been recorded and written as that of Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948). His collected works alone fill 90 substantial volumes. He would usually speak and write quite spontaneously, and complete consistency cannot reasonably be expected from someone whose autobiography was called The Story of My Experiments with Truth. He told a meeting of the Gandhi Seva Sangh (Gandhi Service Society) in 1936,

There is no such thing as Gandhiism. I do not claim to have originated any new principle or doctrine. I have simply tried, in my own way, to apply the eternal truths to our daily life and problems…. The opinions I have formed and the conclusions I have arrived at are not by any means final. I may change them tomorrow if I find better ones.

The movement is essentially a movement for freedom of the women. The full freedom of India will be an impossibility unless your daughters stand side by side with your sons in the battle for freedom, and such an association is not possible on absolutely equal terms on the part of India’s millions of daughters unless they have a definite consciousness of their own powers.

M. K. Gandhi (1927)¹