The following article on the first British-Asian feminist group, was written as background material for Tate Britain’s  ‘Women in Revolt’ exhibition tour to Edinburgh (25/5/24 – 26/1/2025) and Manchester (7/3/2025 – 1/6/25).

We’re making this article available, as a contribution to the history of British-Asian feminism. Additionally, we would like to reference the book ‘Finding A Voice’ by Amrit Wilson, first published in 1978 (reprinted 2023), and the momentous work of Southall Black Sisters, set up in 1979.

Britain and India have a long, contentious and complicated history: two hundred years of violent colonialism, embedding racist myths and cultural inferiority; millions of Indian soldiers fighting for Britain in its world wars; millions of people massacred, dispossessed and displaced during the Partition of 1947.

After WW2 Britain needed workers. After Partition and the impoverishment of colonialism Indian men needed work. Thus, the migration of Indian men to Britain began in the early 1950s.

The pattern of early migration wasn’t predicated on long-term settlement. Most migrant men came with the idea of staying for a few years, working as hard as they could, and eventually returning to their homes in India. However, as the years passed, as they bought their own houses and roots developed, they began to send for their families. The late 1950s and the 1960s became the years when the second generation, the sons and daughters started to enter the British educational system and accept Britain as their home.

In the 1960s and early 1970s future British-Asian feminists were still at school, but their history lessons would have included the campaigns of the suffragette movement, although the participation of Princess Sophia Duleep Singh wasn’t covered in the textbooks of the time. At home, family conversations may have included talk of the various strikes against discrimination and racism in factories involving Asian women workers, such as the Mansfield Hosiery Mills strike in 1972 and the Imperial Typewriters strike in Leicester, in May 1974 ‘debunking the myth that Asian women were passive.’

In the mid-1970s, in London, a group of Asian and British women from differing professional backgrounds (community work, social work, youth work, journalism) came together to form the Asian Women Community Workers Group, to set up a refuge and resource centre for Asian women. Lily Khan, a teacher and community activist working with women in Tower Hamlets, chaired the group and Amrit Wilson, journalist and a feminist activist, was one of the members. The group had identified specific difficulties that Asian women attempting to escape domestic violence, experienced within mainstream Women’s Aid refuges, such as racism and lack of appropriate support in their mother tongue. Ravinder Randhawa was appointed as their first worker; her brief being to raise funds and acquire a suitable property in which to locate the refuge. The Asian Women Community Workers Group (AWCWG) was registered as a charity. In 1980 the group established the first refuge in Britain for Asian women in the London Borough of Southwark, followed by a second refuge a few years later. In 1986 the group officially transformed and operated under the umbrella of Asha Projects.

AWCWG was the first to identify tangible obstacles hindering Asian women from escaping domestic abuse and to propose a suitable and sustainable solution. This provided the impetus and the framework for other women’s groups to follow suit across the country.

Whilst the purpose of AWCWG was service provision, it had attracted a range of Asian women, some of whom wanted to explore and respond to the wider political issues affecting Black and Asian women at the time, whilst developing their feminist ideas. Anxious not to compromise AWCWG’s charitable status, they decided it was necessary to form a separate group.

Calling themselves AWAZ (meaning voice) the group began to meet in mid-1977, as a British-Asian feminist group. Its members were Amrit Wilson, Gulshun Rehman, Ravinder Randhawa, Faye Rodrigues, Anita Goswami, Prafulla Vadgama and others. In its time, the group held its meetings in several locations: at Amrit Wilson’s house, the offices of Minority Arts Advisory Service (MAAS) in Mortimer Street, London W1, and the London Voluntary Services Council in Chalton Street, NW1. AWAZ became the first British-Asian feminist group. Most of the members of AWAZ were in their early twenties, starting to become conscious of class, patriarchy, the insidious implications of cultural tradition and the concept of izzat (meaning personal or family respect, dignity, honour, prestige) in South Asian cultures. As their ideas developed they noted that British feminists weren’t looking at feminism through a racism lens, and that British-Asian feminists would need to develop their own feminism.

Within their consciousness raising, AWAZ explored gender, race and class, sometimes using texts like Franz Fanon’s ‘The Wretched of the Earth’, and analysing South-Asian expectations of ‘normal’ female behaviour, such as obedience, acceptance of male privilege and dowry.

The 1970s and 1980s were a highly charged, politically active time. Within the Asian community a generational shift had occurred. Whilst most of the 1^st generation had accepted racism, focusing on building security and supporting their families, a psychological and political shift occurred with the younger generation who saw themselves as British-Asian, entitled to the same rights as white British people. Asian youth movements evolved across the country to challenge racial discrimination and police brutality.

AWAZ linked with other organisations, recognising commonality. Partnering with the Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent (OWAAD), and participating at the first OWAAD conference in 1979.

In early 1979 the scandal of ‘Virginity Tests’ erupted. Several organisations, including AWAZ, mobilised against the practice and campaigned for its immediate cessation. AWAZ organised a demonstration outside the Home Office and later, a sit-in at Heathrow airport in conjunction with OWAAD, supported by many white feminist and wider political organisations e.g Indian Workers’ Association.

AWAZ members were also present in Southall on 23^rd April 1979, the night of the so-called Southall ‘riots’, when people gathered to protest a National Front meeting in the town hall. Blair Peach, a young teacher was killed that night by a Special Patrol Group (SPG) police officer (as concluded by Commander John Cass of the Metropolitan Police’s Complaints Investigation Bureau in a report published 2010).

During 1979 AWAZ organised a major national demonstration against state brutality, in conjunction with Brixton Black Women’s Group and the Indian Workers’ Association GB.

Into the early 1980s AWAZ continued to meet. Some members giving talks and writing articles, contributing to the dissemination of British-Asian feminist ideas. AWAZ also continued to support campaigns such as the one for Anwar Ditta, the Bradford 12 and the Newham 7.

Ravinder Randhawa. Gulshun Rehman. 31st March 2024