Pramila Dandavate

Dandavate was born on 27 August 1928 in Bombay to Janardan and Lakshmibai Karande. Her father was a gynaecologist whose clinic and maternity hospital were near Girgaum Chowpatty and who was president of the Mumbai Obstetric and Gynaecological Society from 1950 to 1952. As a child she was associated with the Swastik League.

During the Second World War she was sent with her siblings to Malvan in the Konkan, where she completed her fourth standard at the Anant Shivaji Desai Topiwala High School and began attending Rashtra Seva Dal activities. On returning to Bombay she matriculated from Chikitsak Samuha Shirolkar High School and attended Rashtra Seva Dal shakhas at Girgaum from 1945. She enrolled in a home economics course at Sophia College for Women but did not complete it, and in 1951 took a degree in fine arts from the Sir Jamsetjee Jeejebhoy School of Art. She painted posters for Vinoba Bhave's Bhoodan movement, which were published in the weekly Sadhana, worked for a time as a teacher at an art school, and learned dance from Madame Menaka.

Dandavate was a member of the Mumbai Municipal Corporation from 1968 to 1973. She was imprisoned during the Emergency. In 1980 she was elected to the seventh Lok Sabha from Mumbai North Central as a Janata Party candidate, succeeding Ahilya Rangnekar, and held the seat until 1984. She was later a general secretary of the Janata Dal (Secular).

She died in New Delhi on 31 December 2001, aged 73. Her husband was the socialist politician and former finance minister Madhu Dandavate.

Mahila Dakshata Samiti was founded in 1977 by a group of women that included Dandavate, Sushila Nayar, Suman Krishan Kant, Mridula Sinha, Manju Mohan, Prem Ahluwalia and Indira Saxena, and was registered under the Societies Registration Act in January 1978. Sushila Nayar was its first president and Dandavate its secretary; Dandavate was later elected the organisation's second president, holding the post until 1993.

The organisation campaigned against dowry demands, bride burning and violence against women, and its emblem became the belan, or rolling pin. Under Dandavate's leadership the Samiti organised demonstrations and sit-ins against dowry and price rises, in which women carried belans and thalis outside the houses of families accused of harassing or killing women over dowry. The Samiti says she was instrumental in securing amendments to the Dowry Prohibition Act and in the passage of the Sati prohibition law. In Maharashtra she had earlier taken part in agitations against price rises, in the latne morcha marches in which large numbers of women carried rolling pins.

With Prem Khanna, the Samiti's first treasurer, Dandavate started Shilpika Haat, which provided a livelihood to artisans.[2][3][4][5]