March

2nd March 1949: Death Anniversary of Sarojini Naidu

An important figure in the Indian independence movement, Sarojini Naidu was also a well-known feminist and poet.

Known as ‘the Nightingale of India’, Ms. Naidu was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1914. The Golden Threshold (1905), The Bird of Time (1912) and The Broken Wing (1917) are some of her note-worthy works.

She was the first Indian woman to be president of the Indian National Congress and to be appointed a governor of an Indian state.

2nd March 1961: Muslim family law ordinance passed in Pakistan

The All Pakistan Women’s Association (APWA) started a campaign for reforms in marriage laws, following increase in second marriages among Pakistani men and the subsequent neglect of the first wife. These efforts resulted in the 1961 ordinance.

Under the Muslim Family Law Ordinance 1961, during the subsistence of an existing marriage, no man shall contract another marriage except with the previous permission in writing of the Arbitration Council and the first wife. The person entering into a second marriage without prior permission is liable to punishment and a fine.

3rd March 1971: Indira Gandhi wins the 5th General Elections

Indira Gandhi managed to overcome a split in the Congress party and win a landslide victory in the 5th Lok Sabha elections with 352 seats out of 518.

However, it was during this tenure that the state of emergency was declared in India in 1975, suspending democracy and outlawing political opposition. Democracy was restored in 1977 and the Indira Gandhi led Congress was defeated in the subsequent general elections.

8th March 1983: Formation of Women’s Action Committee in Sri Lanka

Considered to be one of the first significant steps towards women’s rights and peace building efforts in Sri Lanka, the Women’s Action Committee was formed with representatives from various women’s rights groups who got together to find solutions for the increasing hardships for women due to rising ethnic politics and armed conflict. The Committee had representatives from among women workers, peasant women, students, church denominations and also kept in touch with Tamil women’s groups and plantation workers. The Committee sought to improve working conditions for women in Sri Lanka and also advocated to end ethnic conflict and the politics of violence in the country.

8th March 1910: International Women’s Day

The idea for an International Women’s Day was born out of a labor movement, when Clara Zetkin called for it at an International Conference of Working Women in Copenhagen. But it was instituted seven years later in 1917, as women in Russia took to the streets demanding ‘bread and peace’. Within four days of this war-time strike, the Tzar was forced to abdicate his throne and women in Russia were granted the right to vote by the provisional government. The strike began on what is the 8th of March in the Gregorian calendar, giving the world a date to remember that women lead movements have historically overthrown the unjust.

10th March 1897: Death Anniversary of Savitribai Phule

Savitribai Phule is recognised as one of the earliest feminists in India, who worked tirelessly to educate girls and abolish discrimination in Maharashtra. Along with her husband Jyotiba Phule and Fatima Begum Sheikh, Savitribai operated various schools for young girls from diverse backgrounds.

Despite being ostracized and humiliated for her efforts to reduce caste oppression, she continued with her mission, even after Jyotiba’s Death, often facing assault from upper caste and class groups.

The couple also started a care centre for unwed mothers to reduce infant mortality. She opposed child marriage and the practice of Sati and was a proponent of widow remarriage. Regarded as the first female teacher in India, she was also a prolific author and poet.

12th March 1954: Doria Shafik’s Hunger Strike for Representation

Doria Shafik led an eight-day hunger strike, in protest at the creation of a constitutional committee with no women on it in the newly formed Arab Republic of Egypt. She ended her strike upon receiving a written statement that Egyptian President Mohammed Naguib was committed to a constitution that respected the rights of women.

13th March 2013: Assassination of Pakistani Activist, Perween Rahman

Pakistani social activist and architect Perween Rahman was the Director of the Orangi Pilot Project which works on housing and sanitation projects for the impoverished residents of Orangi. Perween extensively documented the land grabs that happened in the villages surrounding Karachi, Pakistan and worked for the victims of the land mafia, despite receiving death threats on multiple occasions. She continued her work and was steadfast in wanting to not give in to the threats. On 13th March 2013, 4 gunmen open fire at her vehicle, killing her.

26th March 1907: Birth Anniversary of Mahadevi Varma

Mahadevi Varma was a gandhian educator and one of North India’s the most celebrated poets. She is considered one of the four doyens of the Chhayavaadi genre in Hindi literature. She was a prominent poet in Hindi Kavi Sammelans and organized various conferences herself, when she was the Principal and later Vice-Chancellor of Allahabad Mahila Vidyapeeth.

She was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1956, the Sahitya Akademi Fellowship in 1979, the Jnanpith Award in 1982 and the Padma Vibhushan in 1988.

26th March 1972: Anniversary of the Mathura Custodial Rape Case

The Mathura rape case led to various essential reforms in India’s rape laws and the definition of consent was broadened. The reforms took a while, but they came through in the year 1983, where the amendment to the rape law made consent a requirement, the survivor’s past sexual history and ‘character’ became immaterial and the burden of proof shifted from the accuser to the accused once intercourse was established. Objectionable questions which were intended to harass and intimidate the survivor were also prohibited with amendments to the evidence act.

26th March 1974: Gaura Devi led a group of 27 women to begin the Chipko movement

The Chipko Movement which began in Uttarakhand, India, was a peasant movement in defense of traditional forest rights, continuing a century-long tradition of resistance to state encroachment.

It began when Gaura Devi along with 27 women rushed to the Garhwal forests and hugged the trees to stop the officials and contractors from felling the trees. The courage and vigilance of Uttarakhandi women saved many forests and earned them a hallowed place in the history of the global environmental movement.

26th March 2009: Unity Dow conferred with the ‘Prominent Women in International Law’ award

The first female judge to be appointed to Botswana's high court and a prominent women’s rights activist, Unity Dow has been paving the way for other women fighting for equality and justice.

She recognized the inherent sexism within legal discourse and the language of the law, and her work led to amendment of sexist citizenship laws and the Botswanian government's commissioning of a study to see what other laws discriminated against women. On 26th March 2009, she received the ‘Prominent Women in International Law’ award in Washington, DC.

27th March 1824: Birth Anniversary of Virginia Minor

Virginia Minor was an important suffragist who established the first organization dedicated solely for women’s suffrage in 1867 in Missouri. In 1872, Minor sued the city registrar who refused to let her register to vote.

The Supreme Court of Missouri ruled against her and she appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States, which agreed with the Missouri court’s decision. Undaunted, Minor spent her life fighting for the right to vote. Although she didn’t see suffrage extended to women in her lifetime, she laid the foundation for the future in her home state of Missouri.

27th March 1862: Birth Anniversary of Jelena Dimitrijevic

Jelena was a self-taught polyglot who is considered to be the first women in modern Serbian history to have published a work of travel related prose in 1894 and the first Serbian female author after publishing 'Pisma iz Niša o haremima' (Letters from Niš Regarding Harems) in 1897. Her work gave a valuable insight into the world of harems in the former Ottoman Empire. Her novel 'Nove' (New Women) is considered her most important work as it deals with the dilemmas facing educated Muslim women in the twentieth century in relation to their traditional way of life.

28th March 1927: Birth Anniversary of Vina Mazumdar

Vina Mazumdar was an Indian academic and pioneer of the ‘Twin Campaigns’ of women’s studies and the women’s movement for the emancipation of Indian women. She was appointed as the Member Secretary in the Committee on the Status of Women in India and she held various other positions of importance in various organisations throughout her career.

She was the founding member of Indian Association of Women Studies (1982) which aims to promote women’s studies in the India. She ensured that the voices of the most vulnerable women were heard when she was appointed the Drafting Secretary of the report of the status of women, in 1971. This report was called ‘Towards Equality’ and has been instrumental in shaping women’s studies research and the women's movement in the country.

28th March 1941: Death anniversary of Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf is considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and also a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device.

While she is best known for her novels, especially Mrs. Dalloway (1925) and To the Lighthouse (1927), Woolf also wrote pioneering essays on artistic theory, literary history, women’s writing, and the politics of power. A fine stylist, she experimented with several forms of biographical writing, composed painterly short fictions, and sent to her friends and family a lifetime of brilliant letters. She founded the Bloomsbury Group along with her sister and friends and the Hogarth Press along with her husband.

Woolf battled with mental illness for most part of her life, on the 28th of March 1941, she drowned herself in the River Ouse.

30th March 1995: Release of 'The Dancing Girl' in English

The Dancing Girl by Quratulain Haider, is the English translation of Nashtar, which is the Urdu translation of Sayyid Muhammad Hasan Shah’s Afsana-e-Rangin. It is the story of a tragic love affair between the narrator and a courtesan. It is believed to be autobiographical.

The moving tale goes ahead with the help of exchange of letters and singing of ghazals. The Dancing Girl is Haider’s celebration of India’s multilingual poetic tradition that she is such an important part of.

Quratulain Haider is widely regarded as the grande dame of Urdu literature. ‘Aag ka Darya’ (1959) is considered her magnum opus. She received the 1967 Sahitya Akademi Award in Urdu for Patjhar Ki Awaz (Short stories), 1989 Jnanpith Award for Akhire Shab Ke Humsafar, and the highest award of the Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters, the Sahitya Akademi Fellowship in 1994. She also received the Padma Bhushan from the Government of India in 2005

30th March 2010: Release of Taslima Nasreen’s ‘No Country for Women’

No Country for Women is a collection of essays where Nasreen articulates the status and place of women in this man-made world. Since there is no place that a woman can claim as her own, they have to fight for every inch of ground to get their rightful place. She calls out the wanton hypocrisy of the elites who mistreat and abuse women behind closed doors or don’t speak up and align with the right causes. She argues for the uniform civil code in India and recognizes the adverse impact of patriarchy on non-normative relationships.

Taslima Nasreen has been living in exile since 1994, after her writings challenged the misogyny in religions. There were significant threats to her safety and life, especially in Bangladesh with bounties being placed on her head.

31st March 1934: Birth Anniversary of Kamala Surayya Das

Kamala Surayya Das was an English language poet and Malayalam author who wrote about bold feminist themes that were considered taboo with no guilt or fear of judgment.

Lauded as the “Mother of modern Indian poetry”, Kamala won various awards like the PEN Asian Poetry Prize (1963), Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award for Story – Thanuppu (1968), Shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in Literature (1984),Kendra Sahitya Academy Award (English) – Collected Poems (1985), Kerala State Film Award for Best Story (1988), Vayalar Award – Neermathalam Pootha Kalam (1997), Honorary D.Litt by University of Calicut (2006), Muttathu Varkey Award (2006), Ezhuthachan Award (2009).

References

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Sarojini-Naidu

https://thewire.in/south-asia/a-lesson-from-pakistan-on-protecting-the-rights-of-muslim-women

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1971_Indian_general_election

https://reliefweb.int/report/sri-lanka/role-women-peace-building-sri-lankan-perspective

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doria_Shafik

http://www.genderconcerns.org/news/3889/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahadevi_Varma

https://edition.cnn.com/2012/06/29/world/africa/unity-dow-botswana-judge/index.html

https://www.webcitation.org/687aNhWS7?url=http://www.indianexpress.com/Storyold/74290/

https://www.drishtiias.com/daily-updates/daily-news-analysis/gaura-devi-as-part-of-international-women-s-day-celebrations

https://historicmissourians.shsmo.org/historicmissourians/name/m/minor/

References

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-47446243

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jelena_Dimitrijevi

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1954/03/06/a-consciousness-of-reality

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Virginia-Woolf

https://feminisminindia.com/2017/09/21/vina-mazumdar/

http://mulosige.soas.ac.uk/the-nautch-girl/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qurratulain_Hyder

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taslima_Nasrin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamala_Surayya

https://feminisminindia.com/2017/03/31/kamala-das-essay/