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Kanak Mukherjee কনক মুখোপাধ্যায় | |
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| Born | Kanak Dasgupta 30 December 1921 Benda, Bengal, British Raj |
| Died | 9 March 2005 |
| Nationality | Bengali |
| Political party | Communist Party of India (Marxist) |
Kanak Mukherjee (30 December 1921 – 9 March 2005) was a Bengali communist. She was a member of the Communist Party of India until the split with the CPI(M) in 1964.
Colonial period[edit | edit source]
Mukherjee was born in 1921 in British-occupied Bengal which was part of India at the time. Her parents were educated nationalists and she joined the anti-colonial movement at the age of ten. In middle school, she joined a Marxist study group. She joined the University of Calcutta in 1937 and became a member of the Communist Party of India in 1938. She was also on the executive committee of the Bengal Provincial Students' Federation and founded the Girl's Students' Association as part of the All India Students' Federation. In 1940, she held a conference promoting women's rights and the Hindu Code Bill.
British authorities arrested Mukherjee multiple times for opposing British involvement in the Second World War. She founded the Women's Self Defense Committee during this time.[1]
Independent India[edit | edit source]
Mukherjee was arrested again after the independent Indian government banned the CPI in 1949. In 1954, she founded the National Federation of Indian Women. She joined the CPI(M) after it split from the CPI in 1964. She served as the president of the All-India Democratic Women's Association from 1981 to 1999, and the organization had over 10 million members by the time of her death.[1]
References[edit | edit source]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 "Kanak Mukherjee" (2021-03-08). Tricontinental. Archived from the original on 2022-11-08. Retrieved 2022-12-05.