This article examines the Indian nationalist campaign against indentured labour emigration from British India in the early 20th century from a micro perspective, by exploring the interventions of the Prayag Mahila Samiti (Allahabad Women’s Association). The proceedings of a conference organised by the women’s organisation in 1917 reveal that its elite Indian women participants displayed sisterhood, patriotism and concern for emigrant male and female plantation workers in a manner that crossed the boundaries of gender, caste, class and the rural–urban divide. Their campaign operated within colonial civilising discourses while making use of middle-class nationalist idioms, claiming that the honour of Indians was threatened by the morally unrestrained and sexually exploited female labourers employed in plantation colonies. The campaign ultimately led to a petition to the Viceroy of India, Lord Chelmsford, marking it as the first instance of Indian women lobbying as political subjects.
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