Feminist Constitutional Activism in India

Abstract

This paper assesses feminist constitutional activism in India, i.e. feminist engagements with the Constitution with the aim of broadening women's rights. To this end, the paper looks at several generations of feminist activists. It shows how feminists impacted the process of constitution-making and how they realised women's constitutional rights by holding the legislature accountable to the Constitution and demanding that the judiciary declare laws unconstitutional if they violated women's fundamental rights. The paper places a particular focus on the constitutionally enshrined conflict between religious freedom and women's rights—a conflict that plays out in a specific way in many countries of the Global South and that confronts feminist activists with challenges that their counterparts in the Global North might not face in the same way.