This paper examines the contribution of the Assam Mahila Samiti, formerly the Assam Pradeshik Mahila Samiti, to the promotion of women's education in colonial Assam between 1926, the year of its founding, and 1935. This Samiti was established by the reformer Chandraprabha Saikiani in the political ferment surrounding the non-cooperation and civil disobedience movements. The Samiti combined institution-building, print activism through its journal Ghar Jeuti, cultural mobilisation around events such as the Joymoti Utsav, and direct legal action against child marriage to advance the cause of girls' schooling. This paper studies the Samiti's activities within the wider context of halting the progress of female literacy in the province. It argues that the Samiti's significance in this first decade lay less in large-scale enrolment gains, which remained modest through the mid-1930s, than in its role in building an associational, print, and cultural infrastructure within which the later institutional milestones of Assamese women's education became possible.
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