Female revolutionaries and political violence in India and Ireland, 1919–39 1

Abstract

This chapter explores the question of why some Indian female separatists carried out fatal acts of political violence during the long struggle for independence from British rule in the interwar years, whereas in Ireland female revolutionaries were almost entirely debarred from such direct action. It draws on direct testimonies and recollections of Indian female independence fighters, as well as on British and Irish state records. The chapter notes that in Ireland females of a range of social and economic classes and religions were able to participate to varying degrees in revolutionary activity, predominantly in support roles; in India female revolutionaries were almost all Hindus, and were radicalised during their teenage years while at secondary school, college or university. Indian female radicals were conscious of aspects of the Irish independence struggle between the 1916 Rising and the end of the Irish War of Independence; however, what inspired them to take direct violent action was principally the anti-Czarist political violence of the 1880s in which women students played active roles, as well as the example of women’s activities in the Russian Revolution, with its promise of gender equality and social justice. Drawing briefly on examples of women’s fighting roles in other independence struggles, the chapter suggests lines of inquiry for further comparative research.