Fighting for Their Rights: Indian Women and the British Suffragette Movement

This project looks at the influence and exchange between the British women’s rights movement and the Indian independence movement from 1906-1918. Focusing on the Suffragette movement and the influence they had on female Indian independence activists this paper, focuses on each group’s methods of protesting inequality. The use of hunger strikes, and civil disobedience become the primary focus simultaneously with the opinions of top British politicians such as Winston Churchill and Keir Hardie. Some Indian independence activists such as Sophia Duleep Singh would become deeply involved with the Suffragettes and came to view their militant methods of protest as necessary to bring attention to their cause where as others such as Mahatma Gandhi viewed them as damaging to the credibility of the movement. But this did not stop Gandhi and others from adapting Suffragette protest methods to fit their ideals