The Ugly Truth About Feminism in India No One’s Talking About!

Feminism in India isn’t hard to define, but it’s incredibly easy to misunderstand. Most people think they know what it is, or worse, what it should be. Depending on who you ask, it’s either about fighting for equality or about women wanting special treatment. It’s a word that’s been stretched, diluted, mocked, and misused until the very mention of it starts to feel exhausting.

That fatigue isn’t new. It happens to any idea that tries to challenge power, especially when that power feels familiar and normal. The truth is, a lot of people don’t dislike feminism but they dislike being made to think about systems they benefit from. When someone says “not all men” or brings up a false accusation to discredit the entire movement, what they’re doing isn’t asking a question. It’s building a wall. And once that wall goes up, there’s no room left for nuance, let alone progress.

What’s often missed is how Indian feminism isn’t just about men and women. It’s about caste, class, religion, language, and access. It’s about how a Savarna woman’s freedom can coexist with a Dalit woman’s oppression and how pretending otherwise is dishonest. A woman in Mumbai refusing to marry isn’t experiencing the same feminism as a girl in rural Rajasthan being pulled out of school. We know this. We don’t say it often enough.

What we also don’t say enough is that feminism doesn’t guarantee moral perfection. Like any movement, it has its share of contradictions and uncomfortable moments. Some feminists are complicit in casteism, women who judge other women, activists who don’t listen. That’s not a failure of feminism. That’s a reminder that humans are messy, and no belief system is immune to ego or error. But to use that messiness as an excuse to dismiss the whole ide a,that’s lazy.

At its core, feminism asks one question: Who gets to decide how we live? And the answer, for centuries, has mostly been: men in power. Feminism wants to shift that answer, not by flipping the hierarchy, but by challenging its very need to exist.

In India, that challenge takes a different shape. We’re not just dealing with sexism. We’re dealing with tradition. With silence passed down like inheritance. With families where daughters are loved deeply but expected to shrink. With a culture that can worship women in theory while controlling them in practice. And so, Indian feminism carries an extra burden 

not just to push back against gender inequality, but to do so without being accused of attacking culture, family, or “values.”

It’s a delicate balance, and honestly, it’s exhausting. That’s why some people check out. They think it’s too political, too angry, too much. But if you’ve ever watched a girl lower her voice in a room full of boys, or seen a woman rehearse saying “no” before she says it, you know what’s at stake. These aren’t dramatic examples. They’re everyday ones. Which is exactly the point.

Feminism isn’t a campaign. It’s a shift in attention. It asks us to notice the things we’re trained to ignore, i.e. the joke that always comes at the woman’s expense, the rule that punishes girls for boys’ behaviour, the admiration given to men for doing the bare minimum. It invites reflection, not war.

And maybe that’s the hardest part because reflection requires discomfort. It requires people to admit they were wrong, or that they benefited from someone else’s silence. That’s not easy. But it’s necessary. Because feminism, when done right, doesn’t just liberate women. It liberates everyone from a rigid script about who they’re supposed to be.

That doesn’t mean every version of feminism is right. Some are performative. Some are shallow. Some are just branding exercises dressed up as politics. But the answer to that isn’t to abandon feminism. It’s to do it better. To keep it honest. To let it evolve.

You don’t have to agree with every feminist to understand why feminism exists. You just have to be willing to listen. Not to win the argument but to understand what it feels like to be interrupted before you finish your thought. To be spoken over. To be called difficult for asking too many questions.

Because in the end, feminism isn’t about proving a point. It’s about making space. And space, as we’ve seen, is rarely given. It’s taken, quietly, firmly, and one conversation at a time.

By Aditi Sawarkar