Political history of Sri Aurobindo
Anushilan Samiti was founded as an attempt to organize Bengali youth through a program of physical fitness and spiritual training for a nationalist program. By 1902, Calcutta had three societies working under the umbrella of Anushilan Samity, a society earlier founded by a Calcutta barrister by the name of Pramatha Mitra. These included Mitra's own group, another led by a Bengali lady by the name of Sarala Devi, and a third one led by Aurobindo Ghosh. The Anushilan Samiti had Aurobindo and Deshabandhu Chittaranjan Das as the vice-presidents, Suren Tagore the treasurer. Jatindra Nath Banerjee (Niralamba Swami), Bagha Jatin, Bhupendra Nath Datta (Swami Vivekananda's brother), Barindra Ghosh were among other initial leaders.
By 1905, the work of Aurobindo and his brother Barin Ghosh allowed Anushilan Samity to spread through Bengal.
Chandraprava Saikiani
Saikiani started her career as a teacher at a primary school in Nagaon and later, became the headmistress of the Girls’ M. E. School, Tezpur. During this time, she refused to honour her parents' commitment to marry her off to an elderly person and got engaged to Dandinath Kalita, an Assamese writer. The relationship resulted in Saikiani becoming a mother out of marriage and she remained a spinster for life after Kalita married another woman. She was reported to have faced strong opposition from the conservative society in bringing up her son as a single mother but her life in Tezpur brought her opportunities to meet and interact with social and cultural leaders such as Chandranath Sharma, Omeo Kumar Das, Jyotiprasad Agarwalla and Lakhidhar Sarma. In 1921, she joined the non co-operation movement of Mahatma Gandhi and worked to spread the message among women of Tezpur. She was an invited speaker at the Nagaon session of the Assam Sahitya Sabha in 1925 where she called upon the women attendees who were seated in a separate enclosure to break the barriers and the women heeded her call to come out to the open area. Returning to her village, she joined Kaljirapara school as a teacher but resigned her job when she was denied permission to attend the Guwahati session of the Indian National Congress. She continued her social activism and founded Assam Pradeshik Mahila Samiti in 1926 to act against child marriage, polygamy and the discrimination of women at the temples and to take up issues like women's education and self-employment. Her efforts were reported in getting the Hayagriva Madhava Temple, Hajo, near Guwahati opened to women. Her involvement with the civil disobedience movement landed her in jail in 1930 and later in 1943, she was jailed again while participating in the non co-operation movement.