Kolkata, August 25, 2021

 

Press Information Bureau, Government of India, Kolkata today organised a webinar on the Unsung Heroines of India’s Freedom Movement as a part of the celebration of the ‘Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav’. The speakers included Dr Jishnu Basu, Scientist, Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, eminent journalists and political analysts like Shri Kumaresh Ghosh, Shri Rantidev Sengupta and Sujit Ray.

Dr Basu stated that a volume or an audio-book on 75 Unsung Heroines from Bengal who fought for India’s freedom is the need of the hour, when we are celebrating the ‘Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav’. He spoke on the contributions of Women revolutionaries of Bengal like Kamala Dasgupta, Kalpana Dutta Joshi, Asha Dasgupta, Asha Guha and many others of undivided Bengal who fought relentlessly against the British tyranny.

Shri Kumaresh Ghosh, who hails from Midnapur spoke about the sacrifices of lady revolutionaries like Sabitri Bala Dashi and those belonging to prostitution who used to give shelter regularly to the revolutionaries in hide. It is to be remembered that  Rani Siromoni of Karnagarh earned the first lady prisoner for leading the Chuar rebellion in 1794, besides Rani Krishnapriya of Tamluk who in 1781 showed the courage to contest the English East India Company in order to protect her rights.

Shri Rantidev Sengupta reminisced the contributions of Padma Bhusan Rani Gaidinliu, from Manipur who fought relentlessly to oust the British from Manipur and was arrested in 1932 at the age of 16 to be thrown into life imprisonment and the lady whom Jawaharlal Nehru promised to release from jail though got her freedom from jail after independence. Shri Sengupta spoke of Jhalkari Bai who took on the British forces Disguised as Laxmibai, took the command of the Jhansi Army thus giving the real queen a chance to escape. He also spoke about Rani Chennama of Kittur, Kanaklata Barua of Assam, Sister Nivedita.

Shri Sujit Ray spoke on the contributions of Bina Das, Begum Rokeya Sakhawat, Matangini Hazra who fostered Mani Bhaumik, the eminent Indian physicist and the others.

From the audience side, a primary school teacher, Akhil Bandhu Mahapatra urged for declaring the first women detention camp adjoining the Kharagpur IIT as heritage building.

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