Introduction

TL;DR: The Introduction explores the early women's mobilization in the Brahmaputra valley with the backdrop of the anti-colonial mass movement. It locates the Assam Mahila Samiti (AMS) story amidst the proliferation of women’s associations across British India and discusses the extraordinary life of Chandraprava Saikiani.

Abstract: Abstract The Introduction offers an overview of the milieu that shaped early women’s mobilization in the Brahmaputra valley with the backdrop of the anti-colonial mass movement. It explores the contested contours of the shifting borders of Assam with colonial intervention, plotting some of the key moments as a complex understanding of the public evolves in a nascent vernacular print culture. The Introduction locates the Assam Mahila Samiti (AMS, 1926 cont.) story amidst the proliferation of women’s associations across British India and a range of contemporary sabhas, samitis, and associations in the Brahmaputra valley. The extraordinary life of the firebrand feminist Chandraprava Saikiani (1901–72), the founding secretary of the AMS, is briefly discussed indicating how she attained celebrity status as a young woman activist mobilizing people in various movements as well as a writer and a controversial columnist, despite being a mother outside matrimony and belonging to a lower caste.