People's Democracy
(Weekly Organ of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)
No.
4
February 01, 2009
|
Vol. XXXIII
No.
4 February 01, 2009 |
Comrade Madhuri Dasgupta (1921-2009)
SHE with her erudition, 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 perform their duties as mother, as wife, and as organiser, 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 was universally known in the AIDWA and beyond as Dolldi. 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 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:
Organiser 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 Association, Sudha Sundaraman, Bengal CPI(M) secretary, Biman Basu, member Polit Bureau and AIDWA vice president 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.
