Bimalpratibha: Bimalpratibha Devi, wife of Dr.Charuchandra Banerjee, a physician, belonged to a very conservative and aristocratic Brahmin family in Calcutta. She had to get over a lot of hurdles to come out in the streets to serve the country’s cause and actually left her husband and her in-laws’ family in the process.
Bimalpratibha joined the Non Cooperation movement before marriage under her father’s influence and later
acted as volunteer during the Calcutta Congress (1928). She also became close to Subhas Chandra Bose during this time. Defying her in-laws’ objections she actively joined politics and became the leading organiser of Nari Satyagraha Samiti in Calcutta during 1930. On June 22, 1930 the Samiti took out a historic procession in the Calcutta streets in defiance of Section 144 and took the police by surprise. Bimalpratibha was arrested and put behind bars for about six months. On October 2, 1931, she was arrested again in connection with a ‘dacoity’ at a farm at Canal West Road in East Calcutta. She accompanied five revolutionary activists in her family car and sped off with them after the dacoity.
But on the way they all got arrested and were later tried by a special tribunal. The deputy commissioner of police, Special Branch, dubbed Bimalpratibha as the “brain of the party.” She was however acquitted of the charge but rearrested and held as a ‘detenue’ for six years. According to one of her colleagues,
she confronted a lot of public criticism.
