IN India, the caste system provided most of the bonds for ‘binding’ the workers. Maintenance of this system required the rigid control of women’s sexuality, especially in the case of the propertied upper castes. Women were the ‘borders’ between the castes; and these borders were heavily policed; if they married outside the caste, the caste’s ‘purity’ would be breached. Though women of ‘lower’ labouring castes were relatively more free, in the absence of land or property requiring lineage to be established, that freedom is now being eroded for a variety of reasons. In India, feudal remnants are very strong even today – its symptoms include explicit hierarchies and subordination of women: the purdah; the husband as lord and master; father and brothers have full control over who she will marry; honour killings in case of inter-community marriage; women are so devalued as to be killed off at birth or in the womb and where the father pays to get rid of his daughter etc... The caste system and the openly unequal position of women are the major elements of feudal shackles that bind the productive forces in India. Women in particular have a stake in the democratic revolution, which, if completed in under the leadership of workers and peasants, can usher in massive freedoms in women’s lives.