Anybody remember Leela Roy?

They met secretly, printed proscribed leaflets, passed on arms, attacked British officials, languished in jails. They were part of the Deepa...

They met secretly, printed proscribed leaflets, passed on arms, attacked British officials, languished in jails. They were part of the Deepali sangha movement that mushroomed in eastern Bengal in the 1920s. These women revolutionaries have been resurrected recently by the National Book Trust in a book, Women Pioneers in India’s Renaissance, conceived as a tribute to Leela Roy, the creator of Deepali.

Born in October 1900, Leela Roy was a revolutionary and a pioneer of the women’s movement. However, Roy — who was a close associate of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose — did not found Deepali. It was formed in 1923 in Dacca to organise women on issues like literacy, employment and awareness-building. A dozen girls’ schools and several vocational training centres sprung up under the sangha. ‘‘The efforts of the sangha were to prepare the youth physically and mentally to do social work,’’ writes the author Sheila Sen.

A wave of armed revolutionary activity was sweeping Bengal in 1925-26, along with the non-violent struggles of the freedom movement. ‘‘And the leadership of Leela Roy and Anil Roy, who started similar sanghas for boys, instilled revolutionary political ideas in the minds of members…The sanghas soon opened centres for physical training where women were taught drill, parade, bratachari, sword fighting and lathi wielding…’’

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Sanghas became the frontal platforms for daring armed attacks carried out by youth groups. Sen refers to other young sangha women too: Preetilata Waddedar, who laid down her life by consuming cyanide while leading an armed attack on the European Club of Chittagong in 1930. The two teenaged girls, Suniti Choudhury and Shanti Ghosh, who killed the DM of Comilla the next year. Bina Das, a fresh graduate who shot at Bengal governor Anderson during a convocation in Calcutta University…The list is startling, considering that these were times when women barely left their homes.

The wave of violence was suppressed as Roy and many other women were sent to jails. Roy continued her work behind bars, making many fellow inmates study and take examinations. Later, Roy along with her husband, Anil, joined the Forward Bloc in 1939, when Netaji started it. Roy went on to become the only woman member elected from undivided Bengal to the Constituent Assembly and later merged a section of the Forward Bloc with the Praja Socialist party of Jayaprakash Narayan in 1953.

Modern women politicians need to borrow a leaf or two from the original ‘didi’ of Bengal politics, for her politics was always for the people and not herself. The spirit of Roy and her Deepali sanghas are symbolic of what we are missing today. That Roy was in jail for four years until the eve of independence — she was arrested for suspected links with Netaji and the INA — should remind us of the silent, difficult sacrifices she made. Hopefully, her work should inspire us to do our bit for the country and its people.