Print, Public Sphere, and Political Awakening: Women’s Organizations and the Making of a Feminist Public Sphere in Bombay Presidency (1910–1942)

This article examines the intersection of print culture, associational life, and gendered political articulation in the Bombay Presidency from 1910 to 1942. Traditional historical narratives of late colonial India have frequently subsumed women’s political participation under the broader rubric of anti-colonial nationalism, often framing women’s entry into public life as a byproduct of nationalist mobilization. Conversely, subaltern and gender histories have highlighted women’s agency but have left the specific structural mechanisms of their political articulation—namely, the discursive space of print—underexplored. Drawing on interdisciplinary methodologies from history, gender studies, media studies, and political theory, this study investigates how early twentieth-century women’s organizations, such as the Bombay Presidency Women’s Council (BPWC) and regional branches of the All India Women’s Conference (AIWC), strategically utilized burgeoning regional and English-language print networks. By analyzing organizational reports, petitions, journals, and legislative debates, the article argues that these organizations constructed a robust, gendered “counter-public.” This feminist public sphere allowed Indian women to transcend their nineteenth-century roles as passive subjects of male-led social reform. Instead, they emerged as active political agents who critically reshaped the discourse of colonial citizenship. In doing so, they formulated an autonomous political vocabulary that challenged both the patriarchal paradigms of the nationalist script and the paternalistic frameworks of the British imperial state. Ultimately, the article demonstrates that the political awakening of women in western India was not merely an auxiliary to the nationalist movement, but a distinct, textually mediated process of claiming space within a highly contested colonial modernity.