Negotiating Vote: Women Suffrage in Colonial India

This paper examines the complex history of women’s suffrage in colonial India by analysing feminist demands, the responses of Indian nationalist leaders, and the legal strategies employed by the British colonial state. It addresses a central question: How did Indian women negotiate political citizenship within a landscape where both nationalist and imperial authorities sought to regulate their participation? To answer this, the study explores how prominent women reformers, activists, and political leaders articulated their claims to the vote, and what social, cultural, and political arguments they invoked to justify them. It also considers how leading nationalist politicians and organizations reacted to these demands, revealing broader tensions between the pursuit of gender equality and the priorities of the anti-colonial movement. Women’s suffrage activism in India represented a dual struggle—against colonial domination and indigenous patriarchy alike. Beginning with the landmark 1917 delegation to Secretary of State Edwin Montagu, figures such as Sarojini Naidu, Herabai Tata, and Begum Jahanara Shahnawaz asserted that enfranchisement was essential to Swaraj, democratic citizenship, and women’s growing participation in public life. Yet, nationalist responses were far from uniform. Ideological divisions among Indian leaders produced uneven and often ambivalent support for women’s political rights. Simultaneously, the colonial state pursued a cautious and restrictive policy: the Government of India Act of 1919 excluded women from the franchise despite sustained campaigning, while the Government of India Act of 1935 introduced only limited enfranchisement through property, education, and community-based qualifications—mechanisms that reinforced imperial control rather than democratization. The paper argues that Indian women secured the vote not as a benevolent concession from the empire nor solely as a result of nationalist advocacy, but through protracted negotiations that exposed contradictions within both imperial and nationalist discourses. Drawing on archival materials, legal-historical evidence, and postcolonial feminist theory, the study demonstrates how the struggle for suffrage in India redefined notions of rights, citizenship, and political agency. It ultimately contributes to a more inclusive and globally contextualized understanding of women’s legal and political emancipation.