Poharir Mel! The Mahila Samitis in Assam

Abstract

Abstract Chapter 3, ‘Poharir Mel! The Mahila Samitis in Assam’, maps the contours of the disparate histories of the mahila samitis by contextualizing two significant events or landmarks in the lives of the samitis in the 1930s and the 1940s. These are—(i) The Assam Mahila Samiti’s notice to a groom opposing a child marriage citing the Sarda Act in 1934, and (ii) The Tezpur Mahila Samiti’s attempt to redefine domesticity by claiming ‘leisure’ in a resolution on ‘fixed meal times’ in 1948. The chapter cross-references these events with a spectrum of responses from contemporary Asamiya print as well as other sabhas, samitis, and associations. The discussion of the chequered history of the mahila samitis’ connections with parallel organizations such as the Assam Sahitya Sabha (1917 cont.) and the All India Women’s Conference (1927 cont.) allows us to visualize how these women’s associations functioned in a matrix of overlapping constituencies and were never insulated from the immediate as well broader political cross-currents. The chapter argues that while the mahila samitis largely remained ideologically embedded in the Asamiya middle-class milieu, the members did selectively challenge contemporary ideology of domesticity and framed dominant modes of defining womanhood to create new ways of being a gendered citizen subject in late colonial Assam.