Before NGOs: Women’s Organizations in Colonial India

This essay begins with the contemporary critique of NGOs that work with women as overly dependent on foreign expertise, agendas, and financial support by focusing on the history of women’s organisations in colonial India. The issues that contemporary NGOs face: defining their goals, developing organisational structures, linking their work to international agendas, and securing financial support, are not new. Drawing on the history of Indian women’s organisations, this essay draws out the ways in which these organisations were connected to Western women, ideas, and institutions. In the present as in the past, women’s organisations walked a thin line between advocacy for their agendas and financial support.