WEAVE: Indian women’s movements and struggles against violence

The WEAVE Project is a collective endeavour by feminist researchers, activists, and activist-researchers from four countries (Australia, India, Nicaragua and South Africa) to document women’s movements against violence and their impacts on policies.

The India research report maps the history of Indian women’s movements through the voices, stories and standpoints of those who were in the thick of landmark struggles, each marking an inflection point in the evolution of a feminist politics of resistance. From the word-of-mouth mobilisation of the early years to the slow and often painful process of building solidarities across identities and divides; the widening of feminist agendas from rape and domestic violence to state repression and the violence of ‘development’, to the othering and targeting of minorities in furtherance of the idea of India as a Hindu nation – this report opens windows into the journeys that have brought women’s movements to the frontlines of democratic struggles in India today.

“The experience of researching and writing this report has been like a pilgrimage. I thought I knew these histories, but they came alive and revealed new dimensions when seen through the eyes of those in the thick of the struggle, as much as through the perspectives and vantage points of those who bore witness to these events and recorded them as they happened. What started as a report became a container for a diversity of narrations, reflections and opinions: perhaps the seed of an archive that will be owned and held collectively by those who made these histories and those who are taking them forward.”
– Kalyani Menon Sen, lead researcher and author of the WEAVE India report