India has had its significant share of powerful women politicians over the years. It’s a tradition that goes back to the freedom struggle, which had significant participation by women.

  In 1925, Mahatma Gandhi remarked; “As long as women do not come to public life and purify it, we are not likely to attain swaraj. Even if we did, we would have no use for that kind of Swaraj to which women have not made their full contribution.” A few years later, he commented that “the role women played in the freedom struggle should be written in letters of gold”.

  As rightly observed by social analyst Reshma Arif, “the women of the freedom movement lived up to the Mahatma’s standards, would be a gross understatement. Going beyond the actual freedom movement itself, women parliamentarians played a critical role in guiding the Constituent Assembly, thereby, playing a significant role in determining the form and the....