International Feminism from an Asian Center: The All-Asian Women’s Conference (Lahore, 1931) as a Transnational Feminist Moment

This article focuses on the South-South encounters of Indian women from across the Indian subcontinent with women from other colonized countries (Burma, Ceylon, Indonesia) and the non-Western world (Afghanistan, Japan, Persia). Acknowledging an intricately interwoven history of the (Western-led) international women’s movement, it shows how women in the interwar period networked across continental, regional, and national, as well as ethnic, linguistic, racial, and religious divides. The All-Asian Women’s Conference that convened in British India in 1931 serves as an example thereof. Its objectives were to appreciate the qualities of what attendees identified as Asian womanhood in light of an international sisterhood and to speak in a unified voice on international and national political platforms. Notwithstanding the ephemerality of this pan-Asian project, its spirit may well be understood as international feminist, offering Third World and transnational feminist scholarship a historical account of an instance of women’s international organizing headquartered in Asia.