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A number of organizations exclusively for women under the leadership of women appeared in India with the beginning of 20th century. At the beginning of 1913, Nalini Dutt, an educated Indian woman belonging to a higher class of IAS examination and caste began mahila samitis (womens committees) in many towns in Bengal. In 1910 Saradadevi Choudarani, also of elite background, founded Bharat Stree Mahamandal. Several other organizations of all India nature also came into being during this period. Annie Besant founded the Womens India Association (WIA) in Madras in 1917. She urged Indian women to join the Home Rule League and the Swadeshi movement. Lady Aberdeen and Lady Tata founded the National Council of Women in India (NCWI) in 1925. The All- India Womens Conference (AIWC) was founded in 1927 by the efforts of Margaret Cousins. All these organizations concerned themselves with eradicating the social problems of women and educating them. At the same time, a strong nationalist trend went through them. While taking part in the nationalist movement and the addressing the political issues, these organizations also stood for achieving womens rights. As early as 1917, WIA raised the issue of womens suffrage. Its lobbying was somewhat successful and it could influence the adoption of the Government of India Act, 1919, which granted restricted franchise to women. Women were allowed voting right in the provincial assemblies based on the conditions of wifehood, ownership of property and educational achievement. Later this Act was amended twice to extend the voting right to many more sections in society including women. Working from a social and educational perspective, one of the basic IAS exam preparation intentions of AIWC was to organize women to demand reforms in the system of education. It alerted society to the political danger of masculine type of education for women, which would result eventually to an unequal fight for professions for which in the end it cannot be denied that men are far more suited. While working with the political parties and the nationalist movement for the ouster of the British, the womens organizations were linking the freedom of women with the freedom of India. In response to pressure from womens organizations, the Indian National Congress pledged itself to the principles of sexual equality and adult suffrage after independence at its annual meeting at Karachi in 1931. Later on these promises of equality were carried over to the Indian Constitution. Even though the basic principles of equality between the sexes were established in constitutional law, not all the anomalies and discrimination were eliminated in practice. Women in India continued to be victims of several forms of discrimination in and out of home. These sex based discrimination and various other social issues became the basis for large-scale women movements in the independent India