Over the past decade, entrenched intersectional inequalities in India have been deepened by the shrinking space for civil society, the criminalisation of dissent and mass-incarceration of activists, state-sponsored violence against marginalised communities, the corporatisation of media, and the rise of anti-feminist trends, particularly following the change in government after the 2014 elections (Chigateri and Kundu 2024). Women human rights defenders, and Dalit, Adivasi, Bahujan, and Muslim women have been especially impacted by these shifts. Hijab bans and changes to citizenship laws have targeted Muslim women’s citizenship rights, while other recent laws ostensibly for the protection of women centralise power, increasing the vulnerability of marginalised communities (ibid.). Economically, neoliberal policies and the Covid-19 pandemic have intensified inequalities, particularly affecting women’s rights organisations operating under resource scarcity reliant on foreign funding, further strained by amendments to the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (ibid.). This targeting of foreign donors disproportionately impacts marginalised women and smaller collectives, exacerbating structural inequalities and having a profound and debilitating effect on feminist organising.
Since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power in 2014, incidents of violence related to inter-caste and inter-religious marriages have increased, reflecting the intensification of Hindutva politics – a Hindu nationalist ideology promoting a Hindu nation, upper-caste Brahmin supremacy, anti-Muslim hate, and a caste-based social order, rooted in neoliberal rationalities. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 2024 campaign expressly invoked rhetorics of Muslim threat and the state’s role as protector and saviour of women, mobilising ‘gender’ in ways that shore up the power, privilege, and legitimacy of the Hindu right and majority, while advancing the attack on Muslims in particular (Raghavan and Mushtaq 2024). Modi’s reign has also witnessed the co-option and appropriation of Muslim women’s struggles, with the government celebrating how it has ‘empowered Muslim women by protecting them from the barbaric practice of Triple Talaq’. In terms of sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI), while the Supreme Court decriminalised homosexuality in 2018, in 2023 it ruled against legalising same-sex marriage, with the federal government dismissing the demand for legal recognition of same-sex marriage as reflecting ‘urban elitist views’. The central government also invoked the ‘accepted view’ in India that marriage between a biological man and woman is a ‘holy union, a sacrament and a Sanskar [cultural values]’, and would be violated by the recognition of same-sex unions (Rajagopal 2023). Failing to consider activists’ inputs, the ostensibly progressive Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill (2019) bureaucratises and medicalises gender, in contravention of international standards for gender recognition (Human Rights Watch 2019).
Landscape of anti-rollback actors
A particularly challenging reality of both researching as well as operating within the landscape of women’s rights and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and more (LGBTQI+) rights organisations in India is that of acute hierarchies within these activist spaces. Mirroring broader social hierarchies, oppressor-caste, class-privileged, cis-het feminists continue to monopolise much of the social and material capital within feminist and queer activism, worsened by both a shrinking funding landscape and increased attacks on minoritised activists. Many collectives – due to caste, regional, religious, and linguistic factors – may remain invisible or marginal, creating a vicious cycle where invisibility limits funding, which then exacerbates their absence from social registers.
This brief examines 16 collectives, nine of which originated as ‘movements’, while the rest were established more formally as organisations. Operations are split between national and sub-national levels, with two grass-roots organisations and one international organisation. Membership varies: ‘movements’ often focus on key identity-based memberships, while organisations blend issue-based networks with grass-roots involvement. Within institutions, there is good funding transparency, whereas ‘movements’ typically maintain lower visibility for strategic reasons. Non-governmental organisations (NGOs), bound by legal regulations, show more accessible funding information. Movement-based collectives are more express in their recognition that sustained social change cannot be effected through short-term, outcome-based funding – for instance, the All India Dalit Mahila Adhikar Manch expressly refuses project-based funding (Banerji 2017a). Thematically, key areas of focus include gender-based violence, sexuality and reproduction, SOGI, and women’s public participation. Intersectional issues address Muslim women’s rights, gender- and caste-based violence, domestic workers’ rights, tribal women’s rights, and disability.
Counter-rollback strategies
Especially in relation to gender-based violence, SOGI, and the rights of marginalised women, protests have been a key strategy to counter rollback, but have often been met with violent repression from the state – for instance, the anti-Citizenship (Amendment) Act protests by Muslim Women at Shaheen Bagh, and protests by women wrestlers against the Wrestling Federation of India chief accused of sexual harassment. Mass mobilisations have also resulted in notable successes, including Pinjra Tod’s campaigns against Brahminical patriarchy, and the surveillance and control of women resulting in the Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) issuing notices to 23 universities towards the easing of hostel restrictions for female students.
Evidence-building, advocacy, and awareness-raising towards norm change is another central strategy. Breakthrough Trust’s gender-sensitisation curriculum has reached more than 200,000 adolescents across multiple states, significantly transforming attitudes towards gender-based violence. Sex workers in West Bengal secured voter registration and the celebration of the Durga Puja festival in Kolkata’s red-light district through sustained advocacy campaigns (Sethu 2022; Bose and Jana 2021). Khabar Lahariya (News Waves), led by Dalit women journalists, employs feminist framing to empower marginalised voices and challenge traditional representation through grass-roots journalism (Isaac 2023; Banerji 2017b).
Across issues, service provision, skills training, and capacity building constitutes another domain of focus, including through legal aid for domestic workers, support for survivors of gender-based and caste-based violence, and access to health-care services like HIV testing and counselling for sex workers and the LGBTQI+ community. Breakthrough India trains health workers on gender, rights, and sexuality to reduce bias and improve adolescent services. Nazariya (a queer feminist resource group) conducts workshops on diversity, equity, and inclusion to help organisations create more inclusive workplaces by addressing biases and promoting equitable practices. Following government funding cuts and weak 2017 HIV support legislation, Durbar and the South India AIDS Action Programme (SIAPP) offer essential HIV testing, counselling, and care. Durbar’s Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee (DMSC) also combats trafficking through self-regulatory boards that include sex workers and community allies, monitoring brothels and ensuring the care of trafficked individuals (Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women n.d.).
Several movements also resist rollback through legal and policy interventions, with notable victories including the Supreme Court’s decision allowing women entry into the Haji Ali Dargah Mosque (Asrar 2017; Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan n.d.), and the decriminalisation of homosexuality in India (The Naz Foundation (India) Trust 2022). Finally, movements also engage in coalition building to strengthen collective voice. The 2015 amendment to the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act 1989 was realised through the dedicated work of more than 50 organisations, incorporating specific clauses designed to protect Dalit women (Banerji 2017a).
Gaps and areas for future research/work
Intersectional inequalities in the landscape of women’s rights and LGBTQI+ organising in India have led to erasures/lack of documentation and knowledge around the specific challenges and strategies relating to Adivasi women’s movements, Dalit women’s groups, collectives in occupied areas, and those operating largely in non-urban, non-English/Hindi-speaking contexts. Ongoing conflicts and difficulties within the broader women’s movement underscore the importance of addressing intersecting hierarchies in understanding and addressing rollback in India. There is also a need to rethink funding principles to ensure that they are redistributive within the landscape of women’s/queer rights work, and do not simply reinscribe existing hierarchies. Effective social movements rely on sustained efforts rather than linear strategies, indicating that funding should move beyond project-based cycles and objective metrics.
Credits
This Country Brief was written by Harshita Kumari. It was supported by the project Rapid Scoping Review – The Nature of Feminist and LGBT+ Movements in a Range of Selected Countries, funded by UK International Development from the UK government. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of IDS or the UK government’s official policies.
This is an Open Access brief distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original authors and source are credited and any modifications or adaptations are indicated.
