Indian Suffragettes: female identities and transnational networks

Dr Sumita Mukherjee looks at the activities of Indian campaigners for the female vote in Asia, Europe, USA, Britain and other parts of the British Empire, and how they had an impact on campaigns in the Indian subcontinent.

In the context of her new book, she discusses the experiences of the Indian suffragettes who travelled around the world to lobby the British parliament, attend international women’s conferences, and conduct speaking tours to gather support for Indian women. Dr Mukherjee will demonstrate the ways in which the suffrage movement was a truly global enterprise, not solely confined to Britain or America, that involved and affected women from a range of diverse backgrounds.

The British Library of Political and Economic Science was founded in 1896, a year after the London School of Economics and Political Science. It has been based in the Lionel Robbins Building since 1978 and houses many world class collections, including The Women's Library.

Dr Sumita Mukherjee is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Bristol. Her research focuses on the transnational mobility of South Asians in the imperial era (nineteenth and twentieth century) i.e. the movement of men and women from the Indian subcontinent to other parts of the world, and also the return back to India.

Dr Imaobong Umoren is Assistant Professor at the Department of International History, LSE. Her research interests include the intersecting history of race, gender, migration, and religion in the nineteenth and twentieth century Caribbean, US and global African diaspora.

Find out more about the LSE Library celebrations of the 100 year anniversary of the Representation of the People Act on our Suffrage18 page and on  #LSESuffrage18.