Gendered Publics : Chandraprava Saikiani and the Mahila Samiti in Colonial Assam

The book comprehensively appraises the relatively unexplored but highly impactful women''s association, the Assam Mahila Samiti, which led one of the most remarkable women''s movements in colonial India. The Assam Mahila Samiti was perhaps the largest democratic women''s association in India. Central to the Samiti story is its founding secretary, Chandraprava Saikiani (1901-72) who, despite being an unwed mother, and belonging to a lower caste, was a celebrated writer and a polemical columnist.

This work is the first comprehensive effort to recover the forgotten histories of the highly impactful women''s association, the Assam Mahila Samiti, and the life and times of its founding secretary Chandraprava Saikiani, who was a celebrated writer, mobilizer, and publisher, despite being an unwed mother and belonging to a ''lower'' caste. The book traverses the individual and collective journeys of Saikiani and the mahila samitis from the 1920s to the 1950s in conversation with parallel tribal-caste and literary associations, anti-colonial movements and international ideological paradigms such as the Bolshevik revolution. It also makes significant methodological interventions in interdisciplinary studies through the careful interweaving of print sources with handwritten minutes of early mahila samiti meetings, performative spaces such as Women''s singing of naam kirtan, women''s weaving and women''s memory (recorded as part of a digital archive of the mahila samitis in Assam). It provides insights into issues related to history and memory, literary studies, and nascent vernacular publics in South Asia and Women''s Studies.