Leela Nag: First female student of Dhaka University

Leela Nag (2 October 1900 - 11 June 1970), was a leftist politician and a social reformer, and a close associate of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose. She was the first female student of Dhaka University. She is known as Leela Roy too.
She was born into an upper middle class Bengali Hindu family in Sylhet in Bengal (now in Bangladesh) and educated at the Bethune College in Calcutta, graduating with a gold medal in English

. Her father was Giris Chandra Nag. He was the tutor of Subhash Chandra Bose. She fought with university authorities and became the first woman to be admitted to the University of Dhaka and earned her M.A. degree. The then Vice Chancellor of Dhaka University Philip Hartog gave a special permission for Leela Nag's admission.

She threw herself into social work and education for girls, starting the second girls school in Dhaka. She encouraged girls learning skills and receiving vocational training and emphasized the need for girls to learn martial arts to defend themselves. Over the years, she set up a number of schools and institutes for women.

She contacted Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose when he was leading the relief action after the 1921 Bengal floods, Leela Nag, then a student of the Dhaka University, was instrumental in forming the Dhaka Women's Committee and, in that capacity, raised donations and relief goods to help Netaji.

In 1931, she began publishing Jayasree, the first magazine edited, managed, and wholly contributed by women writers. It received the blessings of many eminent personalities including Rabindranath Tagore, who suggested its name.

Leela Nag formed a rebellion organization in December 1923 called Deepali Sangha (Dipali Sangha) in Dhaka where combat training were given.Pritilata Waddedar took courses from there. She took part in the Civil Disobedience Movement and was imprisoned for six years. In 1938, she was nominated by Congress President, Subhas Chandra Bose to the National Planning Committee of the Congress. In 1939 she married Anil Chandra Roy. On Bose's resignation from the Congress, the couple joined him in the Forward Bloc.

In 1941, when there was a serious outburst of communal rioting in Dhaka, she along with Sarat Chandra Bose formed the Unity Board and National Service Brigade. In 1942, during the Quit India Movement both she and her husband were arrested and her magazine was forced to cease. On her release in 1946, she was elected to the Constituent Assembly of India.

During the partition violence, she met Gandhi in Noakhali. Even before Gandhiji reached there, she opened a relief center and rescued 400 women after touring on foot 90 miles in just six days. After the Partition of India, she ran homes in Calcutta for destitute and abandoned women and tried to help refugees from East Bengal.

In 1947 she founded the Jatiya Mahila Sanghati, a women's organization in West Bengal. Leela Nag was sworn in as a member of the constituent assembly from Bengal on 9th December 1946. She was the only woman member from Bengal to be elected to the assembly. She resigned her post a few months later to protest against the partition of India.

Leela Roy's fleeting appearance in the constituent assembly was a result of her disagreement with the congress party's acquiescence to the partition plan. A staunch feminist, social activist and political activist, Leela Roy preferred being the driver, and a champion of the kind of social revolution that the constituent assembly would debate and put in writing a full two years later.

Her dedication to the cause of women's education & their upliftment, and her extraordinary commitment to the communist cause made her a force to be reckoned with in undivided Bengal. She was associated with Anil Roy & his band of firebrand revolutionists, & played a central role in Subash Chandra Bose's Forward Bloc.

Born on the 2nd of October, 1900 in Goalpara, Assam, Leela Nag grew up in a Bengal that was carving its own identity in the national freedom struggle movement. Her formal education led to a BA in English from Bethune College, and an MA from Dhaka University. She was the first female student at the university. Leela Roy, along with 3 other women joined the masters course in Bengali and Sanskrit at the university prompting the university authorities to conduct evening classes separately for women.

Completing her studies at a time when the country was navigating the non cooperation movement and the Satyagraha Movement, Leela Nag's biggest challenge was in trying to defy the norms of traditional masculine and feminine roles that had stepped into the conversation surrounding the freedom struggle. S.D Gupta, the author of a paper on the Nationalist-Feminist movement, elaborates on the critical role that Leela Roy played in casting away the notion "that women's role in the struggle against colonial masters had to necessarily be tailored in a way that would complement her roles as 'mistress of the house' and the 'mother of man', for picketing of liquor or foreign cloth shops and for spinning and weaving of khadi."

Her experiences during the flood relief effort she organized in 1922, and her work for women's suffrage through the All Bengal Association convinced her that true emancipation for women could come only through an education that included every aspect of understanding the world, and training their mind and bodies at a level that would equal or surpass men's education.

She started Deepali Sangha in 1923, a women's group that encouraged and taught social, and political awareness to women, alongside leadership training, and physical fitness. Leela Roy's motivation was to create a generation of women who would embrace politics wholly rather than accept roles that reduced them to role models & subservient activists.

Leela Nag was also the first female member to enter the 'core group of an all male revolutionary party', when she joined Shree Sangha in 1926. She joined the party at the behest of its founder Anil Roy whom she would later marry. Revolutionary groups like the Shree Sangha, and its predecessors the 'Anushilan Samiti' and 'Jugantar' were conceived primarily as all male bastions where men would pledge their lives for violent, nationalist causes. Women started stepping into ancillary roles initially, since they were less likely to attract police attention. They went on to occupy central roles and be part of integral missions in Bengal's national freedom movement.
Leela Nag died in June 1970, after a prolonged illness.


The writer is an online journalist in
The Asian Age