Women’s Movements in Northeast India: State-wise Overview

Across the eight states of Northeast India, women have built some of the country’s most influential grassroots movements. These are not carbon copies of one another. A women’s organisation in Nagaland negotiating peace between armed factions looks very different from a torch-bearing night patrol in Manipur or a century-old reform body in Assam. What unites them is a willingness to step into spaces that politics and the state had left unattended, and to do so on terms shaped by their own communities. This state-wise overview examines how local issues, leadership styles, and ethnic identity have produced distinct yet connected forms of women’s activism in the region.

Why the Northeast produced a different kind of women’s movement 🔗

Women’s movements in most parts of the country have centred largely on gender equality, legal reform, and representation. In the Northeast, the agenda has been broader. Decades of armed conflict, militarisation, substance abuse, and contested ethnic identities meant that women organised around survival and community as much as around rights. According to The Times of India, the Meira Paibi is described as the largest grassroots civilian movement confronting state atrocities and human rights violations in Manipur – a description that would be unusual for a women’s group elsewhere in the country.

Several features recur across the region. These movements tend to be rooted in existing community structures rather than set apart from them. They frequently work within traditional frameworks instead of attacking them head-on. And they routinely partner with student bodies, tribal councils, church groups, and human rights organisations to pursue goals far larger than any single issue. This collaborative instinct, more than any single campaign, is the thread that connects movements across very different states.

Nagaland: motherhood as a tool for peace 🔗

The Naga Mothers’ Association (NMA) was formed on 14 February 1984 in Kohima, against a backdrop of ethnic conflict, rampant alcoholism, and a growing drug problem. The organisation became an umbrella body that brought together the women’s wings of different Naga groups such as the Angamis and the Aos. Its membership rule is striking in its simplicity: every adult Naga woman becomes a member on payment of a token annual fee of one rupee.

The ‘Shed No More Blood’ campaign 🔗

The NMA’s most powerful intervention came during the violent factional killings of the 1980s and 1990s. As fighting between rival Naga outfits and the security forces escalated, the NMA formed a “Peace Team” in 1994 as part of a campaign called “Shed No More Blood”. The campaign treated every life as sacred. Members wrapped unclaimed bodies in traditional shawls regardless of whether they belonged to Naga fighters or Indian security personnel. A former Union Home Secretary who helped shape the 1997 Indo-Naga ceasefire later credited the slogan, coming as it did from mothers who had lost their children, with helping to catalyse the peace process.

Why ‘mothers’ and not ‘women’ 🔗

The choice of the word “mother” was deliberate and political. A former Chief Minister of Nagaland explained that younger members sometimes asked why the group did not simply call itself a women’s association. The reasoning was that the word “mother” carries dignity and universal respect in Naga society, even though the body is open to all women, married or unmarried. By using the moral authority of motherhood, the NMA could speak to insurgents and the state alike in a language that was hard to dismiss.

The NMA also worked alongside bodies like the Naga Hoho, the Naga Students’ Federation, and the Naga People’s Movement for Human Rights to push for a ceasefire. Yet its inclusion in formal peace talks remained limited. Activists have noted that women repeatedly asked to be seated at the negotiating table but their participation stayed peripheral – a reminder that even successful movements can struggle to convert moral influence into formal political power.

Manipur: torch-bearers against alcohol and state coercion 🔗

The Meira Paibi, meaning “torch-bearers” (from mei, fire), are among the most recognisable women’s collectives in the country. During the mid-1970s, Meitei women first organised as “Nisha Bandhis”, an anti-drug and anti-alcohol movement that later evolved into the Meira Paibis. Their early work was deeply local: banning the manufacture and sale of liquor, conducting night patrols, raiding illegal liquor outlets, and counselling addicts and their families.

From social reform to confronting the state 🔗

The movement’s scope widened sharply in the 1980s. Meitei women groups became prominent as Meira Paibis when they began protesting human rights violations and atrocities committed by security forces under the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958. AFSPA grants armed forces extraordinary powers in areas declared “disturbed”, including the authority to search without a warrant and to use lethal force on suspicion.

The defining moment came in 2004. The killing of Thangjam Manorama in July 2004 brought hundreds of women onto the streets demanding the withdrawal of AFSPA. Days later, twelve elderly women staged a now-iconic naked protest in front of the Kangla Fort, then the headquarters of the Assam Rifles. That protest drew nationwide attention and contributed to the central government’s decision to withdraw AFSPA from the Imphal Municipal area in August 2004. The Meira Paibis also sustained the long public campaign behind Irom Sharmila’s sixteen-year hunger strike against the same law.

Strength and controversy 🔗

What makes the Meira Paibi unusual is its scale and reach. Their night patrols and community interventions have helped reduce crime and curb substance abuse, while their sustained opposition to AFSPA has kept the law under public scrutiny. At the same time, the movement’s identity is closely tied to the majority Meitei community, and during the recent ethnic violence in the state some Meira Paibi groups faced criticism over their conduct. This tension illustrates a wider dilemma: movements that draw their strength from ethnic solidarity can find that same identity becoming a source of division when communities turn against one another.

Assam: a century of reform through the Mahila Samitis 🔗

Assam’s women’s movement is the oldest and most institutionalised in the region. It grew out of the early twentieth-century reform and freedom-struggle environment rather than out of armed conflict. The Assam Pradeshik Mahila Samity (APMS) was formed in 1926 and is described as the biggest and oldest women’s organisation in Assam, with roots in villages and panchayats across the state.

Chandraprabha Saikiani and the founding vision 🔗

The driving force behind the Samiti was Chandraprabha Saikiani. She founded the Assam Pradeshik Mahila Samiti in 1926 after joining the Non-Cooperation Movement, and used it to campaign against child marriage and for girls’ education. Her 1925 speech at the Asam Sahitya Sabha session in Nagaon, delivered while women were seated behind a bamboo barricade, became a turning point. Stirred by that address, many women in Assam discarded the purdah system and demanded their social rights. Saikiani went on to edit the Samiti’s Assamese journal, Abhijatri, for around seven years and was awarded the Padma Shri in 1972.

From education to addressing violence 🔗

The Mahila Samitis built their work around education, health, and the eradication of social evils. The organisation took charge of issues relating to women’s education, prevention of child marriage, employment, and the promotion of handloom and handicrafts. Over the decades this agenda expanded to include legal awareness around property rights and protection against domestic violence, along with skill-development programmes in weaving and tailoring that promote economic self-reliance.

Assam’s women also moved into peace work during the insurgency years. The acclaimed writer Mamoni Raisom Goswami played a notable role in mediating during the conflict involving the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA), using her literary standing to push for dialogue. This combination of long-term social reform and conflict mediation gives the Assam movement a distinctive breadth.

Mizoram and Meghalaya: reform within tradition 🔗

The pattern shifts again in the Christian-majority and matrilineal societies of the western Northeast. In Mizoram, the Mizo Hmeichhe Insuihkhawm Pawl (MHIP), or Mizo Women’s Federation, was formed in 1974 and initially focused on reforming traditional and cultural practices, later raising its voice against discrimination and social injustice. Strongly linked to church-based organisations, its work has emphasised education, healthcare, and social welfare rather than confrontation with the state.

The matrilineal paradox of Meghalaya 🔗

Meghalaya is often described as one of the last surviving matrilineal societies, where among the Khasi and Jaintia communities lineage and inheritance pass through the female line. Yet social status does not automatically translate into political power. Despite being central to the matrilineal system, women in Meghalaya have historically been underrepresented in legislative bodies, and customary institutions like the Durbar Shnong, the village council, remain largely male. Women’s organisations such as the Mothers’ Union, the oldest among them, and bodies like Ka Synjuk Kynthei have therefore worked on social welfare, moral reform, and the protection of customary rights while pressing for fuller participation.

This is an important corrective to a common assumption. Although there are more women than men in the Northeast by census figures, their representation in elected bodies remains meagre, with states like Nagaland and Mizoram having had no women MLAs for long stretches. High social standing in the household has not closed the gap in formal politics, which remains a live agenda for movements across the region.

Collaboration as the common thread 🔗

For all their differences, these movements repeatedly converge through collaboration. The clearest example crosses state lines: in 2016, the Naga Mothers’ Association worked with the Meira Paibis to resolve an economic blockade that a Naga outfit had enforced in Manipur’s hills. Two organisations rooted in different ethnic communities, each shaped by its own history, found common ground in the shared goal of ending a damaging standoff.

Within states, the same instinct holds. The NMA partnered with student federations and human rights groups; the Meira Paibis acted alongside local clubs and civil society bodies; the Mahila Samitis worked within the freedom struggle and later with peace efforts. This multi-stakeholder approach has often proven more durable than isolated activism, because it draws on the trust and reach of existing community institutions. The lesson running through every state is consistent: women’s movements in the Northeast succeed not by standing apart from their societies but by mobilising the moral and social authority those societies already grant them.

What do you think? If movements like the Naga Mothers’ Association and the Meira Paibi can broker peace and reshape public life, why do you think women in these same states remain so underrepresented in formal politics? And when a movement draws its strength from ethnic identity, does that solidarity ultimately help or limit its ability to speak for all women in a divided society?

References

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meira_Paibi
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naga_Mothers%27_Association
3. https://scroll.in/article/943445/the-mothers-of-nagaland-are-taking-it-upon-themselves-to-keep-the-peace-yet-again
4. https://feminisminindia.com/2022/04/05/naga-mothers-association-the-role-of-the-mothers-of-nagaland-in-peace-keeping/
5. https://thediplomat.com/2023/08/manipur-violence-understanding-the-shifts-in-meitei-womens-political-activism/
6. https://www.flame.edu.in/in-the-media/meira-paibis-manipuri-women-caught-between-violence-and-narratives
7. https://imphalreviews.in/the-meira-paibi-phenomenon-inter-sectional-activism-regional-stereotyping-and-media-misconstruction/
8. https://www.mahilasamity.org.in/
9. https://feminisminindia.com/2017/05/16/women-leaders-north-east-india/
10. https://thebetterindia.com/251602/chandraprabha-saikiani-assam-woman-freedom-fighter-womens-education-single-mother-india-history-div200/
11. https://www.gktoday.in/womens-social-movements-of-north-east-india/
12. https://meghalaya.pscnotes.com/meghalaya-history/role-of-women/