Women’s Movements in Assam: From Violence to Autonomy

Long before “women’s empowerment” became a policy buzzword, women in Assam were organising, marching, writing, and negotiating their way into public life. Their story stretches from a colonial-era campaign against child marriage to bold protests during armed insurgency, and right up to today’s demands for safer streets and stronger political voice. Understanding women’s movements in Assam means tracing how ordinary women turned personal grievances into collective action, often in the shadow of violence, and how they kept pushing for autonomy over their own lives and communities.

Historical context of women’s movements in Assam 🔗

Organised women’s activism in Assam began taking shape in the early twentieth century. This was a period when girls’ schooling was rare, child marriage was common, and women were largely confined to domestic spaces and the margins of religious life. The earliest movements grew out of two overlapping currents: social reform within Assamese society and the broader anti-colonial struggle against British rule.

The most important institutional development was the rise of Mahila Samitis (women’s associations). These bodies gave women a platform to raise concerns collectively and to act on issues that the male-dominated reform movements often ignored. They campaigned for female education, maternal and child health, and the removal of social evils such as child marriage and dowry. Crucially, they also functioned as training grounds where women learned to speak in public, run organisations, and engage with politics.

The Assam Pradeshik Mahila Samiti 🔗

The turning point came in 1926 with the founding of the Assam Pradeshik Mahila Samiti (APMS). This was the first organised women’s movement in the region, and it set the template that later groups would follow. The Samiti worked against child marriage, polygamy, and discrimination against women in temples, while championing women’s education and self-employment. By 1949, the Congress leader Sucheta Kripalani described it as the largest democratic women’s association in India.

What made the APMS effective was its reach into both villages and towns. It rallied women who had never before participated in public life and transformed them into active agents of reform and, increasingly, of the freedom struggle against the British. The organisation also ran its own magazine, Abhijatri, showing early on how women’s movements in Assam would combine activism with the written word.

Chandraprabha Saikiani: the pioneer 🔗

No account of women’s movements in Assam is complete without Chandraprabha Saikiani (1901-1972), the founding secretary of the APMS and widely regarded as the pioneer of the feminist movement in the state. Born in Doisingari village of Kamrup district, she grew up in a society where formal education for girls was almost unheard of. Her own struggle to get an education shaped her lifelong conviction that education was the key to breaking women free from social constraints.

Saikiani was a striking figure for her era. She was a celebrated writer, mobiliser, and publisher who became a single mother at a time when this carried heavy social stigma, and she belonged to a lower caste in a society stratified by it. Rather than retreating, she challenged male dominance in public spaces directly. In a famous incident at the 1925 Assam Sahitya Sabha session in Nagaon, she urged women seated behind a bamboo screen of purdah to come forward and join the public gathering.

Activism beyond the Samiti 🔗

Saikiani’s work was never limited to social reform alone. She participated in the Non-Cooperation Movement of 1921 and the Civil Disobedience Movement of 1930, activities that landed her in jail. Her life demonstrated the seamless link between the women’s movement and the nationalist struggle: mobilising women for the freedom movement was, in her view, inseparable from mobilising them for their own rights.

Her contributions were eventually recognised at the national level. She received the Padma Shri in 1972, and the Government of India issued a commemorative postage stamp in her honour in 2002 under its Social Reformers series. Her life also inspired the Sahitya Akademi award-winning novel Abhiyatri by Nirupama Borgohain, ensuring that her story reached new generations of Assamese readers.

Mamoni Raisom Goswami and the politics of peace 🔗

If Saikiani represents the foundational phase of the movement, Mamoni Raisom Goswami (1942-2011), also known as Indira Goswami, represents its evolution into the era of insurgency and peacebuilding. A pioneer of modern Assamese literature and winner of the Jnanpith Award in 2000, Goswami used both her pen and her personal credibility to intervene in one of the region’s most intractable conflicts.

From the late 1970s, Assam was gripped by the armed insurgency of the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), which sought a sovereign Assam. The conflict brought decades of violence, militarisation, and human rights concerns. Goswami stepped into this turbulent landscape not as a politician but as a respected writer trusted by both sides.

The People’s Consultative Group 🔗

Goswami’s most concrete contribution was helping create a channel for dialogue. Her involvement led to the formation of the People’s Consultative Group (PCG), a citizens’ body established by ULFA in September 2005 to initiate peace talks between the militant group and the central government. ULFA selected the PCG’s eleven members, and Goswami served as its chief interlocutor.

Interestingly, Goswami consistently described herself as an “observer” of the peace process rather than a mediator or initiator. This modesty aside, her role was widely acknowledged as pivotal. A former Assam chief minister later remarked that the state’s peace process was a result of what she had started. Her literature, too, reinforced this work, drawing national and international attention to the social and political grievances of ordinary Assamese people.

Goswami’s example matters because it shows women’s movements expanding beyond social reform into the high-stakes arena of conflict resolution. Across Northeast India, women have repeatedly stepped into the role of peacemakers precisely because they are often seen as standing outside the cycles of armed politics, even though they are frequently its worst victims.

Bodo women and the struggle for autonomy 🔗

The Bodos, one of the largest plains tribal communities in Assam, launched a full-scale mass movement in 1987 demanding a separate state. The decades that followed saw armed struggle, ethnic clashes, and fratricidal violence among Bodo factions, eventually producing a series of accords and the creation of the Bodoland Territorial Council. Throughout this turbulent period, Bodo women were far more than bystanders.

During the different phases of the Bodoland Movement, women played a striking range of roles. They acted as information gatherers, carriers, advocates, witnesses, conflict-resolution agents, and peacemakers. They also bore the brunt of the violence, with many imprisoned, assaulted, or killed during the conflict.

The All Bodo Women’s Welfare Federation 🔗

To organise this participation, women formed the All Bodo Women’s Welfare Federation (ABWWF), originally established as a tribal women’s welfare body before being renamed. When clashes erupted between Bodos and other communities, and among rival Bodo armed groups, ABWWF members intervened as mothers to negotiate peace. They organised rallies, protest marches, and gheraos, publishing magazines in the Bodo language on women’s and social issues and stepping in between police forces and villagers.

Yet their political journey has been uneven. The ABWWF often operated under the directives of the male-led All Bodo Students’ Union and later the political parties controlling the territorial council. This constrained the organisation’s independence and, by extension, the political participation of its members, a tension that continues to shape women’s roles in Bodoland’s governance.

The Bodo Women Justice Forum 🔗

The Bodo Women Justice Forum (BWJF) emerged as another powerful voice, particularly on questions of justice and accountability for violence against women. Like the Naga Mothers’ Association and the Meira Paibis of Manipur, the BWJF is part of a wider tradition of women’s peace activism across Northeast India.

One of its most arresting actions came after two paramilitary personnel were accused of raping women in the Udalguri district, with the perpetrators escaping accountability under the protections of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act. In response, hundreds of women led by the forum’s president Anjali Daimary staged a bold demonstration with the words “Rape Us” inscribed on their chests and backs. The protest deliberately echoed the famous naked protest of Manipuri mothers, using the body itself as a statement against impunity.

Bodo women’s activism is also distinctive for its cultural methods. Alongside memoranda and demonstrations, activists have used literature, magazines, and street plays in the Bodo language to spread their messages. This strategy serves a double purpose: it raises political consciousness while simultaneously strengthening Bodo cultural identity, which lies at the heart of the community’s demand for autonomy.

Violence, representation, and the unfinished agenda 🔗

For all these achievements, the conditions women’s movements in Assam confront today remain severe. Assam has repeatedly ranked among the worst states for gender-based violence. According to NFHS-5 data, roughly 32 per cent of married women aged 18 to 49 in the state have experienced spousal violence. Activists point to a disturbing range of problems including domestic abuse, witch-hunting, trafficking, acid attacks, and increasingly, tech-enabled harassment.

Some observers argue that part of the rise in reported violence reflects a backlash as women increasingly challenge patriarchal values in the state. In other words, as women become more visible and assertive, resistance to them can intensify. This makes the demand for institutional protection, such as women’s safety committees at the panchayat and district levels, central to contemporary campaigns.

The question of political voice 🔗

Political representation remains the other major frontier. Despite a long history of mobilisation, women continue to be underrepresented in Assam’s legislative assembly and in the leadership of autonomous councils. After the creation of the Bodoland territorial arrangement under the Sixth Schedule, for instance, women who had been active in the movement found themselves largely excluded from the new political structures.

At the grassroots, reservation in panchayati raj institutions has opened doors, but participation is often hampered by low awareness of women’s rights and entitlements, the burden of domestic responsibilities, and the persistent threat of intimidation. Genuine empowerment requires not just reserved seats but capacity building, gender sensitisation, and protection for women leaders who step into public roles.

What ties the entire history together is a clear trajectory captured in the idea of moving from violence to autonomy. Whether it was Saikiani confronting social oppression, Goswami brokering peace amid insurgency, or Bodo women demanding both justice and self-rule, the underlying goal has consistently been the same: greater control over their own lives, bodies, and communities. The agenda is far from complete, but the foundations laid over a century give today’s activists a powerful tradition to build upon.

What do you think? Why do women so often emerge as peacemakers in conflicts where they are also the primary victims? And as digital platforms reshape activism, how might the next generation of women’s movements in Assam carry forward the legacy of figures like Chandraprabha Saikiani and Mamoni Raisom Goswami?

References

1. https://academic.oup.com/book/55250
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4. https://ijnrd.org/papers/IJNRD2512097.pdf
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Consultative_Group
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