Leela Roy (Nag)

1900-1970

Born on October 2, 1900. Leela Nag was the daughter of Raibahadur Girishchandra Nag and Kunjalata Nag of Sylhet. Her idealist parents made a deep impression on her life from quite a young age, she was conscious of the social problems  and the sufferings of the people of her country under foreign rule. She was eager to play her role in social reform and in freedom struggle.

In 1921 she graduated from the Bethune College in Calcutta, receiving Padmabati gold medal in English. In her college days her spirit of revolt was revealed on many occasions.

She got her M.A in English from the University of Dhaka in 1923 after winning a battle with the authorities to allow girl students to study in that university. As an accomplished, educated and beautiful daughter of a well-established father, she had many avenues of life open to her but she chose for herself a thorny and uncertain path. The condition of women, their low status in family and society always pained her and she identified its root cause as the lack of facility of female education in our country.

She took up the cause of female education in right earnest and started a high school for girls. It was indeed a great achievement when we realize that there was only one girls' school run by the Government in Dhaka at that time. Simultaneously she established a women's organization named Deepali Sangha. Among its activities were the establishment of some high and primary schools for girls, centers for teaching handiworks and handicrafts which would make the girls economically independent to some extent and organizing philanthropic work and Deepali Exhibition through which women would be drawn into the wider national like of the country. In addition girls were taught martial arts to develop self-defense.

In 1928 she established on after another schools like Nari Siksha Mandir, Siksha Bhawan and Siksha Niketon. One can easily understand how much worries, anxieties hard labor and struggle for young lady had to under go to run those schools. For all these activities she soon became household name in Dhaka.

During this period she came in contact with Anilchandra Roy, leader of Sree-Sangha, a well-known revolutionary organization of that time and gradually became a leader of the revolutionary party. Through her influence and increasing number of women gradually joined the revolutionary party.

While preoccupied with the spread of female education and the multifarious activities of Deepali Sangha on the one hand and political activities for the freedom of India on the other, Leela Nag made a new venture in 1931 - the publication of Jayasree, the first magazine edited and managed by wond wholly contributed by women writers. It received the blessings of many eminent personalities including Rabindranath Tagore.

The political unrest of the country in the thirties led the government to round-up political workers and in this process she was arrested in December 1931 and was imprisoned until October 1937. In 1938 Jayasree appeared from Calcutta in a new form, it now became a standard bearer of the progressive ideas of the new age. In the political life she worked for a wider and open national movement through Congress. As a nominated member of the Women's Sub-committee of the National Planning Committee of Congress  set up by the then president Subhaschandra Bose, she submitted in 1938  a thoughtful report on the needs, difficulties and grievances of the women of Bengal. In 1939 she married Anilchandra Roy. When Subhaschandra formed the Forward Block, Anil Roy and Leela Roy supported him as co-workers and proceeded towards developing a leftist movement.

In 1941, when there was a serious outburst of communal riot in Dhaka, she along with Saratchandra Bose formed the Unity Board and National Service Brigade. In 1942 both Anil Roy and Leela Roy were arrested and the office of Jayasree was put under lock and key by the police. After she was released in 1946, Jayasree again appeared as a monthly magazine. When riots of Noakhali and Calcutta broke out, in 1946 she rushed to serve and help the distressed. 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.

In 1946 she founded the Jatiya Mahila Sanghati.  Her new venture was the establishment of a residential home for the working girls in Calcutta and providing training centers where different types of handicrafts would be learnt by the poor, destitute and the refugee girls. After the partition she tried her utmost to help the unfortunate uprooted people of East Bengal, who came to the Western part in millions. She formed the Minority Welfare Central Committee to organize relief to the refugees. From 1962 she gave up active politics but was philosopher and guide to her old comrade. She worked hard for the regular publication of Jayasree and maintained its high ideological standard.

Her health began to fail from 1952 when her husband died in April 1968 she had her last severe cerebral attack, rendering her totally unconscious and in 1970 she passed away silently.

A great woman and exceptional human being she gave everything for her country and the people.

Source: Profile: Leela Roy (Nag), Steps Towards Development