Google remembers Indian women's right pioneer Anasuya Sarabhai

11th November 2017
Google remembers Indian women's right pioneer  Anasuya Sarabhai

November 11 2017: Google today honours Anasuya Sarabhai, Indian  women's rights pioneer on her  132nd birth anniversary, with a doodle. Anasuya was born in Ahmedabad on 11 November 188 and founded the Ahmedabad Textile Labour Association, India's oldest union of textile workers, in 1920. 
With the help of her brother, she went to England in 1912 to take a medical degree, but switched to the London School of Economics when she realised the animal dissection involved in obtaining a medical degree was in violation of her  Jain  beliefs. While in England, she was influenced by the  Fabian Society and got involved in the Suffragette movement. She returned to India in 1913 and started working for betterment of women and the poor. She also opened a school. She decided to get involved in the labour movement after witnessing exhausted female mill workers returning home after a 36-hour shift. She helped organise textile workers in a 1914 strike in Ahmedabad. She was also involved in a month-long strike in 1918, where weavers were asking for a 50 per cent increase in wages and were being offered 20 per cent.  Gandhiji,  a friend of the family, was by then acting as a mentor to Anasuya. Gandhiji began a hunger strike on the workers' behalf, and the workers eventually obtained a 35 per cent increase. Following this, in 1920, the Ahmedabad Textile Labour Association (Majoor Mahajan Sangh) was formed. Anasuya arabhai was called Motaben, Gujarati  for "elder sister". She mentored  Ela Bhatt , founder of the Self-Employed Women's Association of IndiaSarabhai died in 1972 on  11 November 2017.  Source:Wikipedia