40 SOCIAL SCIENTIST Debi Ghoshal formed the Bharat Stri Mandal in Calcutta. In 1913, Kumudini Maitra attended the International Women Suffrage Alliance Conference at Budapest as a delegate from India to represent Indian women. In 1917, the Women's India Association was founded by Annie Besant, Dorothy Jinarajadasa, Malati Patwardhan, Ammu Saminathan, Mrs Dadabhoy and Mrs Ambujammal. Annie Besant, one of the most fiery figures in the national movement as a whole, made it a point to call upon women to play an active role in the Home Rule Movement in her numerous public speeches of that time. She was elected President of the Calcutta Congress Session in 1917. At that important session, three women — Annie Besant, Sarojini Naidu, and Begum Ammam Bibi (mother of the Ali brothers, Muhammad and Shaukat Ali) — were on the dais, representing the women of India. That same year — 1917 — Sarojini Naidu led a delegation of women to meet the Montagu-Chelmsford committee to demand a series of reforms in the condition of Indian women. In the first real mass movement in the freedom struggle — or what is known as the Non-Cooperation Movement — launched* by Mahatma Gandhi in 1920-21, groups of women participated in different parts of the country, picketing liquor shops and holding dharnas. In Bombay, for instance, Sarojini Naidu and Maniben Patel founded the Rashtriya Stree Sabha. In Bengal, C.R. Das started the Nari Karma Mandir in 1921 for training women in national service. Basanti Debi (Mrs C.R.Das), Urmila Debi, and Suniti Debi, were well known women organisers during the Non-Cooperation Movement. The Bengal Provincial Congress Committee (BPCC) session held in Chittagong in 1922 (which was to play such an important role in the future revolutionary activities of the Chittagong group led by Surjya Sen) was presided over by Basanti Debi. Another famous name from this period was Kamladevi Chattopadhyaya who joined the movement in 1921. Sarojini Naidu was elected president of the Indian National Congress in 1925, the first Indian woman to hold that post. The All India Women's Conference was founded at the initiative of Margaret Cousins in 1926. Its initial objective was to promote women's education, but it soon enlarged its role and became active in the political movement. By the late 1920s, the country was consumed by renewed political ferment revolving around the Simon Commission boycott campaign. Students were in the forefront of the campaign, and girl students in Bengal were drawn to it in large numbers. In response to this, perhaps,