Limitations of Women’s Movements in Northeast India

Women’s movements in Northeast India are among the most visible and resilient forms of grassroots activism anywhere in the country. From the torch-bearing patrols of Manipur to the peace campaigns of Naga mothers, these movements have confronted militarisation, substance abuse, and gendered violence with remarkable courage. Yet despite their energy and moral authority, they operate within real boundaries. Understanding these limitations is essential, because it explains why decades of activism have not always translated into structural change for women in the region. The constraints are not signs of failure but reflections of the complex political, cultural, and institutional landscape these movements must navigate.

Ethnic exclusiveness as the central constraint 🔗

The most defining limitation of women’s movements in the Northeast is their tendency to organise along ethnic lines rather than across them. The region is home to a vast number of distinct tribes and communities, each with its own language, customs, and systems of self-governance. As a result, women’s organisations tend to represent the women of one community rather than women as a broad social category.

This is visible in the way the major movements are structured. The Meira Paibi of Manipur primarily mobilise Meitei women rooted in indigenous traditions, while organisations among the Naga, Khasi, or Bodo communities remain largely community-specific. Each movement draws its legitimacy from its own cultural base, which makes it powerful within that community but limits its reach beyond it.

Why ethnic identity shapes mobilisation 🔗

The Northeast has experienced repeated ethnic conflicts tied to autonomy, integration, and competition over land and resources. In this environment, women’s participation has historically been bound up with ethnic movements rather than with a unified gender agenda. When identity and survival are organised around the community, women’s activism naturally follows the same logic.

The 2023 ethnic violence in Manipur between the Meitei and Kuki communities illustrates the problem starkly. Although the Meira Paibis organised peace marches and confronted injustice, the conflict itself was rooted in long-standing grievances over land rights, political representation, and resource allocation. When a women’s movement is anchored to one community, it can struggle to position itself as a neutral voice for all affected women during inter-ethnic crises.

The cost of fragmentation 🔗

Ethnic compartmentalisation weakens the collective bargaining power of women across the region. When dozens of movements pursue similar goals separately, they cannot pool their numbers or speak with a single voice to state governments or to the central government. A campaign that succeeds in one community rarely scales up to benefit women elsewhere, because the organisational networks, funding, and trust remain tied to a particular group.

This fragmentation also makes movements vulnerable to internal division. During the Naga reservation struggle, pressure from local groups led several women’s groups to sever ties with the Naga Mothers’ Association, the very body leading the fight for quotas. When community loyalty and gender solidarity pull in opposite directions, the movement loses cohesion at the moment it most needs unity.

Exclusion from formal decision-making 🔗

The second major limitation is that women remain largely shut out of the bodies where decisions are actually made. This is one of the deepest paradoxes of the region. Women lead some of the most powerful civil movements, yet they are absent from the councils, assemblies, and traditional institutions that hold formal power.

Traditional councils and customary law 🔗

Many communities maintain traditional governance systems alongside modern democratic institutions, and these systems frequently exclude women from leadership. Among the Nagas, customary law and tradition form the basis of decision-making, governance, and the management of land and resources. These customary practices are recognised and protected under Article 371(A) of the Indian Constitution, which gives them strong legal standing.

The difficulty is that these same customs often bar women from owning land and from sitting on governing bodies. The traditional law of Naga society distinguishes gender roles sharply: women handle domestic matters while men deal with village administration and councils, which means women are not allowed in the traditional village councils that oversee village management. This exclusion is not a relic that has quietly faded; it remains actively enforced.

The Nagaland reservation conflict 🔗

Few episodes reveal this limitation more clearly than the long struggle over 33 percent reservation for women in urban local bodies. In August 2016, the Supreme Court passed an interim order directing the state to reserve a third of the seats for women. Rather than smoothing the way, the order triggered fierce resistance.

Powerful tribal organisations argued that the quota violated Article 371(A) and Naga customary law. The opposition turned violent, and attempts to hold the elections led to deaths and the deferral of polls for years. The conflict only eased after a fresh approach: in 2023 the Nagaland Assembly passed a new Municipal Bill retaining the 33 percent reservation while removing the provisions on taxes, land, and buildings that had drawn the sharpest objections. The episode shows how women’s demands for representation can be framed as threats to community identity, allowing constitutional protection of tradition to override gender justice.

The matrilineal paradox of Meghalaya 🔗

Meghalaya offers a striking case where even favourable social structures do not guarantee political power. The Khasi, Garo, and Jaintia communities are matrilineal, meaning lineage and inheritance pass through the mother. This often creates an impression that Khasi women are empowered. In practice, the society is matrilineal but not matriarchal.

Women inherit property and clan names, but real authority frequently rests with male relatives and with male-led councils. Women are excluded from decision-making positions in traditional bodies such as the Dorbar Shnong (village council) and Dorbar Kur (clan council). The scale of underrepresentation is stark: in the 2023 Meghalaya assembly elections, only three women were elected out of 379 candidates. The matrilineal example proves that cultural prestige in the family does not automatically convert into a seat at the political table.

The gendered division of labour 🔗

The third limitation is structural and cultural at once. A rigid division of labour assigns women to the domestic and social sphere while reserving the political sphere for men. This division does more than restrict opportunity; it shapes what is even considered acceptable for women to do.

How domestic roles define political access 🔗

In Naga society the gendered logic is explicit. Women are expected to manage the family and household, while men are responsible for society, including village administration. This expectation directly justifies the exclusion of women from councils. Because political work is coded as male work, a woman who steps into it is seen as crossing a boundary rather than exercising a right.

The same attitude appears in Meghalaya, where traditionalists hold that women belong to the hearth and home and should not engage in political affairs. A Khasi woman active in politics is sometimes dismissed with the pejorative label of a “crowing hen,” a phrase that captures how political ambition in women is treated as unnatural. These cultural scripts are difficult to challenge because they are framed as the preservation of identity and custom.

When movements reinforce the same roles 🔗

A subtle limitation is that movements built on women’s traditional roles can end up reinforcing those very roles. The Meira Paibi movement draws much of its strength from the maternal, community-protector identity of its members. Yet scholars note that this same moral authority can reproduce maternalistic authority and moral conservatism within the community. The movement challenges militarised patriarchy from the outside while sometimes upholding conservative social norms internally. This means activism rooted in motherhood may not always push toward broader gender equality, because it operates within the boundaries of the accepted female role rather than redrawing them.

Disconnect from mainstream Indian feminism 🔗

A final limitation is the gap between these movements and the wider feminist movement in the rest of the country. Mainstream Indian feminism often draws on Western theory and urban, middle-class experiences. The movements of the Northeast, by contrast, are rooted in rural, indigenous traditions and prioritise community welfare and cultural preservation alongside gender concerns.

This difference produces what observers describe as a cultural disconnect between regions and dominant feminist narratives, with the result that context-specific activism in the Northeast is frequently misunderstood or misrepresented in national discourse. When the rest of the country fails to grasp the logic of these movements, regional women’s struggles receive less solidarity, less media attention, and less political weight than they deserve.

The path toward overcoming these limitations 🔗

None of these constraints is permanent. The most promising direction lies in building inter-ethnic alliances so that movements can speak with combined strength rather than in isolated voices. Coalition-building across communities on shared issues such as peace, health, and representation would multiply the bargaining power that fragmentation currently erodes.

Equally important is the formal inclusion of women in policy-making. The eventual passage of the Nagaland Municipal Bill shows that legal reservation, when negotiated patiently with traditional bodies, can begin to open doors. Even reformers within these communities acknowledge that customs are human-made and can be changed to include women in community leadership. The challenge is to pursue inclusion without forcing a false choice between gender justice and cultural identity, so that women gain a genuine place in the institutions that govern their lives.

What do you think? Should women’s movements in the Northeast prioritise building alliances across ethnic lines, even if it risks diluting the cultural identity that gives each movement its strength? And is it possible for communities to reform customary law to include women in governance without weakening the constitutional protections that safeguard their traditions?

References

1. https://www.counterview.net/2024/06/manipurs-meira-paibis-inter-sectional.html
2. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/351302710_Status_of_women_in_North-East_India
3. https://imphalreviews.in/the-meira-paibi-phenomenon-inter-sectional-activism-regional-stereotyping-and-media-misconstruction/
4. https://theconversation.com/equality-and-tradition-clash-as-naga-women-in-indias-northeast-fight-for-political-representation-73804
5. https://www.downtoearth.org.in/governance/debunking-the-myth-of-the-naga-customary-laws-57438
6. https://www.prokerala.com/news/articles/a1477306.html
7. https://www.eurasiareview.com/08122024-matrilineal-society-of-meghalaya-india-historical-roots-and-contemporary-challenges-analysis/
8. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325093047_Discord_in_Matrilineality_Insight_into_the_Khasi_Society_in_Meghalaya
9. https://www.ejecs.org/index.php/JECS/article/view/2656
10. https://apwld.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/India-Land-FPAR-Sisterhood-Network.pdf