Hemjyoti Medhi, "Gendered Publics: Chandraprava Saikiani and the Mahila Samiti in Colonial Assam" (Oxford UP, 2024)

In Conversation: An OUP Podcast · May 8, 2024 · 1h 4m

Gendered Publics: Chandraprava Saikiani and the Mahila Samiti in Colonial Assam (Oxford UP, 2024) is a first-of-its-kind comprehensive appraisal of the relatively unexplored but highly impactful women’s associations, the Assam Mahila Samiti (1926 cont.) which led one of the most remarkable women’s movements in colonial India; Sucheta Kripalani praised it as the ‘largest democratic women’s association in India’ in 1949. Central to the Assam Mahila Samiti story is its founding Secretary, the firebrand feminist Chandraprava Saikiani (1901–72), who while being an unwed mother and belonging to a…