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

该项目将研究印度妇女参政者如何在世纪初与英国、美国、欧洲、澳大利亚和北非的个人和组织建立和运作各种跨国网络。该项目的重点是妇女选举权运动，特别是从1918年开始的妇女选举权运动，这是继印度妇女第一次争取选举权运动之后，直到1950年印度授予所有18岁以上的成年人全部选举权。特别关注的是前往印度以外的印度妇女参政运动，以获得对该事业的支持，研究他们如何利用他们的经验和海外网络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的问题。这段历史的重点是印度妇女和她们的活动，通过展示印度人在帝国时期也是全球移民的方式，重塑和增加了全球历史和女权主义历史领域更广泛的维度。没有完整的研究印度女性选举权运动的历史，尽管杰拉尔丁福布斯和贾娜马特森埃弗雷特的早期作品，也没有考虑到印度妇女利用帝国和全球网络在帝国内外旅行争取投票权的方式。该项目突出了印度妇女的全球运动，不仅是她们如何受到世界各地女权主义团体和运动的影响和启发，而且也是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，宗教人士，医生）的现有研究基础上，他们在世纪末或二十世纪初，在大英帝国的鼎盛时期前往英国，建立了各种社会和政治网络，然后在他们返回印度时使用。这项研究重塑了现有的移民研究领域，这些研究往往只关注一个方向的旅行;这里的重点将是循环运动，因此这些印度人对全球的多重影响。 1921年，印度妇女在孟买和马德拉斯的地方选举中获得了投票权，这取决于财产和识字率，其他地区很快也效仿了，但印度直到1950年才赋予所有18岁以上的男女普选权。这一历史研究将为理解当今妇女和女权主义网络的地位提供更多的背景。印度次大陆有着丰富的妇女参政历史，从著名的女民族主义者到1966年任命英迪拉·甘地为印度总理和1988年任命贝娜齐尔·布托为巴基斯坦总理，再到今天印度和巴基斯坦都有大批女国务部长和女政治家。这个项目考虑了种族，阶级和帝国主义在这些印度sufficienttes的修辞和接待中被理解和扭曲的方式。因此，它将为我们理解二十世纪的阶级、帝国主义和性别，以及跨国主义、移民和全球社交网络的概念做出实质性贡献。随着2018年英国妇女获得女性投票权百年纪念日的到来，媒体对伦敦2012年奥运会开幕式期间妇女参政游行的兴趣，以及潘克赫斯特家族后代的持续行动，以及需要强调妇女图书馆拥有的宝贵资料（最近转移到伦敦经济学院），随着当代印度关于妇女社会和政治权利的辩论继续进行，特别是2014年5月即将举行的选举，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市中移除的妇女参政权，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.