January 31, 2009

COMRADE MADHURI DASGUPTA (1921-2009)

KOLKATA: She with her eruditition, with her kind yet confident demeanour, most importantly with her great dedication to the cause of Marxism-Leninism is no more with us and the body of immensity of work of her whole life remains with us like a shining star that shed, when she was alive and active, a quiet radiance and provided us with a comfort of leadership and of knowing that we are not alone.

Comrade Madhuri Dasgupta belongs to that class of women who performs their duties as mother, as wife, and as organizer, and above all as a revolutionary who struggles towards the farther changes ahead while organising women with a balance of competence and great dignity.

Comrade Madhuri or Dolldi was universally known in the AIDWA and beyond. We have to draw lessons from her far-sighted efforts to make poor women economically self supporting and training them up vocationally from as far back as the mid-forties.

She donated let it be put on record, a great part of her not-too-large house for initiating a self-employment programme. Perhaps we may even say that the success of today’s scheme of women’s self help groups definitely is conceptually and schematically indebted to her.

The major events of her revolutionary life are:
Organizer and leader of ‘Nikhil Banga Mahila Atmaraksha Samity’(1943)
Membership of Communist Party of India(1943)
Marriage with Communist leader comrade Sudhangsu Dasgupta(Babuda) (1943)
Participation in anti-communal movement in Noakhali in what was united Bengal in the pangs of being torn asunder(1946)
Participation in the historical peace march on the demand of freeing of the Communist leaders from jail, a march on which police fired and Latika, Amiya, Pratima, Gita and one young man, Biman, became martyrs(1949)
Primary role in conversion of ‘Nikhil Banga Mahila Atmaraksha Samity’ to ‘Paschim Banga Mahila Samity’ (1958)
Elected Founder general secretary of ‘Paschim Banga Ganatantrik Mahila Samity’(1970)

General Secretary, All India Democratic Women’s Organization, Sudha Sundaraman, Bengal CPI (M) secretary, Biman Basu, member Polit Bureau and AIDWA leader Brinda Karat, AIDWA leader Shyamali Gupta and others deeply mourned her passage that came in the wake of a protracted illness of a fatal kind.

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