Indian Suffragettes: Networks, Transnationalism and International Feminism, 1918-1950

该项目将研究20世纪初印度妇女参政妇女在与英国、美国、欧洲、澳大利亚和北非的个人和组织建立和运作的各种跨国网络中的方式。这个项目的重点是女性选举权运动，它是从1918年开始的，之后印度女性发起了第一次投票运动，直到1950年，印度授予了所有18岁以上的成年人完全的选举权。特别关注的是那些在印度境外旅行以获得对这一事业的支持的印度妇女参政论者，看看他们如何利用自己在国外的经验和人脉来塑造印度的政治未来，并探索阶级、性别、民族主义和国际主义等问题。这部历史聚焦于印度女性及其活动，通过展示印度人在帝国时期也是全球移民的方式，重塑全球历史和女权主义历史，并为其增添更广泛的维度。尽管杰拉尔丁·福布斯和贾娜·马特森·埃弗雷特早期写过作品，但关于印度女性选举权运动的历史并没有完整的研究，也没有考虑印度女性如何利用帝国和全球网络在帝国内外旅行，以争取投票权。这个项目突出了印度妇女的全球运动，以及她们如何受到世界各地的女权主义团体和运动的影响和启发，以及她们如何反过来影响全球关于选举权和女权主义的思想。这个项目建立在我对各种类型的印度人(学生、艺术家、宗教人物、医生)的现有研究的基础上，他们在19世纪末或20世纪初大英帝国鼎盛时期前往英国，他们建立了各种社会和政治网络，然后他们回到印度时使用这些网络。这项研究重塑了现有的移民研究领域，这些领域倾向于只关注单向旅行；这里的重点将是圆周运动，因此这些印度人造成的多重全球影响。1921年，印度女性凭借财产和识字率在孟买和马德拉斯的地方选举中获得投票权，其他地区也很快获得了投票权，但直到1950年，印度才给予18岁以上的所有女性和男性普选权。这一历史研究将为理解当今女性的地位和女权主义网络提供更多的背景。印度次大陆有着丰富的女性参政历史，从著名的女性民族主义者到1966年英迪拉·甘地被任命为印度总理，贝娜齐尔·布托于1988年被任命为巴基斯坦总理，到今天印度和巴基斯坦都有大量的女性国务部长和政治家。这个项目考虑了种族、阶级和帝国主义被理解和反映在对这些印度妇女参政论者的修辞和接受中的方式。因此，它将对我们理解20世纪的阶级、帝国主义和性别，以及跨民族主义、移民和全球社交网络的概念做出重大贡献。随着2018年英国女性投票一百周年的到来，媒体对2012年伦敦奥运会开幕式上的妇女参政游行和Pankhurst后裔的持续行动感兴趣，以及强调妇女图书馆(最近转移到伦敦经济学院)持有的宝贵材料的必要性，以及关于当代印度妇女的社会和政治权利的辩论继续进行，特别是在2014年5月即将举行的选举中对于历史学家来说，这是一个特别合适的时机，可以重新研究从大都会城市中移除的女权主义者，并将其应用于对帝国和全球历史的新理解。

This project will research the ways in which Indian female suffragettes created and operated within various transnational networks with individuals and organisations in Britain, America, Europe, Australia and North Africa during the early twentieth century. This project focuses on the campaign for female suffrage specifically as it emerged from 1918, following the first campaigns by Indian women for the vote, up until 1950 when full adult franchise for all over-18s was awarded in India. The particular focus is on Indian suffragettes who travelled outside of India to gain support for the cause, looking at the ways they used their experiences and networks abroad to shape the political future of India, and exploring issues of class, gender, nationalism, and internationalism. This history focuses on Indian women and their activities to reshape and add a broader dimension to the field of global history and histories of feminism by demonstrating the ways in which Indians were also global migrants during the time of empire.There is no complete study of the history of the female suffrage movement in India, despite early works by Geraldine Forbes and Jana Matson Everett, and no consideration of the ways in which Indian women were utilising imperial and global networks to travel within the empire and beyond to campaign for voting rights. This project highlights the global movements of Indian women and not only how they were influenced and inspired by feminist groups and campaigns around the world but also how they, in turn, influenced ideas about suffrage and feminism globally. This project builds upon my existing research on various types of Indians (students, artists, religious figures, doctors) who travelled to Britain in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, at the height of the British Empire, who established various social and political networks, which they then used when they returned to India. This research reshapes the field of existing migration studies which tend to focus on travel in only one direction; the focus here will be on the circular movement and therefore the multiple global impacts made by these Indians. Indian women were granted the vote in local elections in Bombay and Madras in 1921, dependent on property and literacy, and other regions soon followed, but universal suffrage for all women and men over-18 was only granted in India in 1950. This historical research will give added context to understandings of the position of women and feminist networks today. The Indian subcontinent has a rich history of female participation in politics from prominent female nationalists to the appointment of Indira Gandhi as Prime Minister of India in 1966 and Benazir Bhutto as Prime Minister of Pakistan in 1988 to a large number of female state ministers and politicians in both India and Pakistan in the present day. This project considers the ways in which race, class and imperialism were understood and inflected in the rhetoric and reception to these Indian suffragettes. Therefore, it will make a substantial contribution to our understanding of class, imperialism and gender during the twentieth century, and also of conceptions of transnationalism, migration and global social networks.With the hundred year anniversary of the female vote granted to British women coming up in 2018, the media interest in the suffragette procession during the London 2012 Olympics opening ceremony and the continued activism of the descendants of the Pankhursts, as well as the need to highlight the wealth of valuable material held in the Women's Library (recently transferred to the LSE), and as debates continue to hold forth about women's social and political rights in contemporary India especially with forthcoming elections in May 2014, this is a particularly appropriate time for historians to return to a study of suffragettes that is removed from the metropole and apply it to new understandings of imperial and global history.