Born: 11 December 1910, Bangladesh
Died: 11 September 1987
Country most active: India
Also known as: NA
Activist, politician and memoirist Manikuntala Sen was one of the first women active in the Communist Party of India. Her 1982 memoir, Sediner Katha, was translated into English and released in 2001 as In Search of Freedom: An Unfinished Journey.
Born in Barishal in modern-day Bangladesh, Sen was influenced from an early age by people like nationalist and educationist Ashwini Kumar Dutta and Brajamohan College principal Chandra Mukhopadhyay, who encouraged her education. She also met Gandhi when he visited in 1923, and was impressed at how he encouraged prostitutes to work for liberation. The area was a hotbed of revolutionary politics, from playwright Mukunda Das to extremist Anushilan Samiti.
Sen began teaching at a girls school, where she met Shantisudha Ghosh, who introduced her to the writings of Marx and Lenin. Initially skeptical, she was eventually persuaded by their work, especially after seeing Ghosh harassed by police. She convinced her family to allow her to complete her studies at the University of Calcutta, where she hoped to connect with the Community Party.
In Calcutta, Sen made friends with other girls living in the city for the first time, though the awe she first felt quickly faded. Living in a hostel, she was disgusted by the harassment she and her friends faced from men, and the close-minded conservative attitudes of established families she occasionally encountered. She was able to connect with political activists, including leaders of the Mahila Shakti Sangha and prominent women in the Congress, encouraging her feminism and leading her to think about the need for expanding women’s roles in society.
Ironically, while she made contact with the Revolutionary Communist Party of India, she later discovered that the “real” Communist Party of India, which was underground at the time, was based in her own hometown: Barishal.
Although her parents were unsure at first about her activism, Sen took her mother to a meeting shortly after becoming a communist in 1939. A passionate speech by Biswanath Mukherjee converted her mother to the cause. As a result, Sen was given permission to travel with young male activists to another meeting. With a small party stipend, Sen began to travel to small villages in 1942, speaking to people about the cause. The men shunned her because she was a woman and the women, in purdah, avoided her because she was a “leader” and therefore equivalent to a man. But she persisted with patience and tact.
Famine ravaged Bengal in 1943, with war, a cyclone and the loss of Burmese rice. Doing relief work there, Sen spent most of the years of World War II travelling and helping poor women. Only a few months after India gained independence in 1947, the Communist Party was made illegal and Sen was jailed in 1948. When she was finally released in 1951, the party was mired in controversy and Barishal was now part of East Pakistan.
Rather than getting dragged into ideological divides in the party, Sen focused on her work with feminist organisations like the Women’s International Democratic Federation and the All India Women’s Conference. She had come to recognise the inherent sexism in the party, and knew she would not rise to a leadership role there.
During this time, she met her future husband, party activist Jolly Kaul. In 1952, she was elected to represent Kalighat in the West Bengal Legislative Assembly, where she clashed with right-wing leaders and fought for the Hindu Code Bill, which abolished religious law in favor of a common law code.
War with China in 1962 increased tensions and exacerbated divisions in the Communist Party of India, leading to a split and a crackdown on those who continued to support China. Kaul resigned and Sen withdrew from active participation. They moved to Delhi, but later returned to Calcutta, where Sen died 11 September 1987.