Documenting the Indian women's movement through its posters.

Worldwide, the campaign poster, an immediate, often ephemeral form of art and communication--used to mark an occasion, to mobilise support, to confront opposition--has received considerable recognition both for its aesthetics and its politics.

In India, however, the political poster has not had much attention. And yet, different forms of political mobilisation have made use of posters, and many campaigns, such as the campaign for the victims of the Bhopal gas tragedy, or against the Narmada dam, are remembered as much for their actions and strategies, as they are for the posters that accompanied them.

This is also true of the Indian women's movement. Since the early seventies, the period that is characterised as giving rise to the contemporary women's movement in India, virtually every campaign has been marked by the production of interesting, colourful, eye-catching posters. For the many feminist/women's groups that were born at this time out of student, left and peasant movements, the poster played an important role and remained an important mobilisational tool.

Zubaan, an imprint of Kali for Women, is an independent publishing house based in New Delhi and established by Urvashi Butalia. The Poster Women project, conceptualised and curated by Zubaan, began with the idea of locating and archiving as many posters of the movement as possible. The idea was to look at how the women's movement and its concerns could be mapped visually, to ask what the history of the movement would look like through its posters and the visual images it had used.

When the project began, we had no idea it would catch on so fast, or that individuals and groups from all over the country would respond so enthusiastically. Posters began to pour in, in all kinds of shapes and sizes, some in very fragile condition, others wonderfully preserved. We managed to garner some 1500 posters and it is these that provided the base for the Zubaan Poster Women exhibition, currently travelling to six cities in India.

For further information contact: Urvashi Butalia / Jaya Bhattacharji at Zubaan, an imprint of Kali for Women-Email: [e-mail]

From its very inception, the women's movement in India has focused on violence against women as a key area of struggle, with the early campaigns addressing rape, dowry, widow immolation. Other forms of violence have been more difficult to take up because they take place in the private realm, and women are reluctant to speak about them. Today, nearly a quarter century after it began to be raised publicly, women's groups have secured some legal change in relation to domestic violence and sexual harassment.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

In the area of health too, the violence of imposing coercive family planning, forcing injectable contraceptives and banned drugs on women, became major campaign issues, as did the crime of female infanticide and foeticide which has skewed the sex ratio in many parts of the country.

"But we look upon you as goddesses!" This is an argument virtually all Indian women are familiar with, and one many are sceptical about. Within the women's movement, the goddess image has taken a completely different turn: while many individuals and groups have looked for images of empowerment and strength, and have found them in religion, others have turned the goddess image on its head. We came across any number of posters in which the image of the many-armed Hindu goddess, whether Kali or Durga or Saraswati, was transformed into an image of the many-armed woman, performing tasks from morning to night.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

How open and inclusive has the women's movement been? One challenge has come from women mobilising on the basis of same-sex identity. Lesbian groups have been strongly critical of what they describe as the silencing of their voices within the movement, and the ignoring of their concerns and issues.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

There have been many moments in campaigns where women activists have expressed a sense of power, of the desire to reach for the sky, of celebration, of possibility. It is these images that show how hope is kept alive in a situation that can often seem daunting and create despair. While the women's movement in India is large, dynamic, complex and while the challenges it is confronted with are enormous, there is little doubt that the movement is also powerful, that the women within it are strong, often articulate, progressive and willing to go not just one, but many extra miles.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]