1 April 1921: when Madras let women vote, and what followed
The first Justice government made voter qualifications gender-neutral, among the earliest such moves in British India. Five years later Dr Muthulakshmi Reddi entered the Legislative Council.
caption-h-senate2: Senate House of the University of Madras. In 1907 Muthulakshmi Reddi became the first woman admitted to Madras Medical College.
Explainer
The franchise rules framed under the Government of India Act 1919 did not give women the vote; provinces were left to decide whether to extend it. On 1 April 1921, the first Justice Party government in Madras did so, making voter qualifications gender-neutral. Madras was among the first provinces in British India to take that step.
The vote was still limited by property and tax qualifications that applied to men and women alike, so only a small number of women qualified at first. But the principle had changed: a woman's sex was no longer a reason to keep her off the roll.
The first woman legislator
The resolution cleared the way for women to sit in the council too. In 1926, Dr Muthulakshmi Reddi, a physician who had led the agitation for the municipal and legislative franchise for women, was nominated to the Madras Legislative Council. Wikipedia describes her as the first woman to become a member of any legislature in India, and the first woman legislator in British India. She later wrote about the experience in "My Experiences as a Legislator".
In the council she moved a Bill in 1926 to abolish the Devadasi system, under which girls were dedicated to temples. She supported women's participation in the Civil Disobedience Movement of 1930 and resigned from the council in protest against the arrest of Mahatma Gandhi.
A legacy worth naming accurately
Context
It is easy to overstate the story. The 1921 reform did not create universal suffrage; that came only with the Constitution of 1950. And women's rights were advanced by campaigners such as Muthulakshmi Reddi, whose politics did not always match the Justice Party's, as much as by any government.
But it is also easy to forget. In 1921 most of the world's democracies still denied women the vote. A provincial government in Madras, working inside the narrow limits of dyarchy, decided that political rights should not depend on sex. That decision deserves a place in the history of Indian democracy.