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Journalism of Courage
During her address to the nation on the eve of Independence Day, President Droupadi Murmu paid tributes to women freedom fighters.
“I join my fellow citizens in paying grateful tribute to the known and unknown freedom fighters whose sacrifices have made it possible for India to regain its rightful place in the comity of nations. Great women freedom fighters like Matangini Hazra and Kanaklata Barua laid down their lives for Bharat Mata. Maa Kasturba matched the Father of the Nation, Mahatma Gandhi, every step of the way on the difficult path of Satyagraha,” Murmu said.
Who were Matangini Hazra and Kanaklata Barua, the two freedom fighters mentioned by the President?
Hazra was 73 when she fell to British bullets, leading a march during the Quit India movement of 1942, in Tamluk in West Bengal.
She was born in a village named Hogla, near Tamluk, in 1869. Not much information is publicly available about her early years, but according to research available in the West Bengal government archives, Matangini was the daughter of a poor farmer who could not afford to provide her a formal education. With no means to raise a decent dowry, she found herself married at 12 to Trilochan Hazra, a 60-year-old man from Alinan village in Medinipur. By age 18, Matangini Hazra was widowed, without any children.
Following her husband’s death, she began devoting herself to social causes. In the early 1900s, the Nationalist movement began gaining traction across the subcontinent and Gandhi travelled extensively across the length and breadth of the region, raising awareness about the freedom movement.
In his book ‘Code Name God’, Indian-American scientist and author Mani Bhaumik writes: “Matangani’s love for Gandhi was so great that she became known in our village as Gandhiburi, the old Gandhian woman…”
Bhaumik describes a scene from Hazra’s life: “One blazing afternoon (in 1933), a freedom march was held in the district capital. Its destination was the palace of the Governor… Matangini marched in the parade’s vanguard, holding the freedom movement’s flag high. As they reached…. directly in front of the governor’s balcony, she suddenly broke through the bayoneted cordon, brandishing her banner, and screamed, “Go back, lat sahib” before the stunned soldiers could take her down.”
That afternoon, British police assaulted Hazra. She was arrested and sentenced to six months of hard labour. While weakened by the harsh sentence, Hazra went back to her social work immediately after her release.
At the age of 61, she was arrested for taking part in the Civil Disobedience Movement in 1930 and the Salt March led by Gandhi. Her participation in the Civil Disobedience Movement led to several short stints in prison. It was during this time when she became an active member of the Indian National Congress and started spinning her own khadi in Gandhi’s footsteps.
Her involvement with the freedom struggle intensified during the Quit India Movement launched by Gandhi in August 1942. In September that year, a 73-year-old Hazra led a large procession of around 6,000 protesters, mostly women. The procession marched with the aim to take over the Tamluk police station from British authorities.
In the skirmish that followed between protesters and the police, Hazra stepped forward to appeal to the police to not shoot at the procession. Her pleas went unheard and British police personnel shot at her thrice. She collapsed and died, chanting ‘Vande Mataram’.
According to archives of the Medinipur district government, Hazra’s killing made her a martyr for many, inciting revolutionaries to establish their own local government in Medinipur, till it was disbanded on Gandhi’s request two years later in 1944.
Matangini Hazra was not forgotten by the country for whose freedom she devoted her entire life. In 1977, the first statue in the Kolkata Maidan dedicated to a woman revolutionary was that of Matangini Hazra. Across Bengal, several schools, neighbourhoods and streets have been named after Hazra for her contributions to the freedom struggle, including the long stretch of Hazra Road in Kolkata.
The above is an excerpt from a more detailed piece by Neha Banka. You can read that here
One of the youngest martyrs of the Quit India Movement, Kanaklata Barua has an iconic status in Assam. Barua, then 17, led the Mrityu Bahini, a procession of freedom fighters, to unfurl the Tricolour at Gohpur police station on September 20, 1942. When police did not let them move forward, an altercation led to firing, killing Barua at the head of the procession.
“She had joined the Mrityu Bahini just two days before the incident,” Sheila Bora, retired professor of Dibrugarh University who has authored a monograph on Barua, told The Indian Express in 2020. “The squad strictly admitted members aged 18 and above but Kanaklata was an exception. She wanted to lead the procession and after much persuasion she was allowed to.”
Even as Barua fell to bullets, she did not let go of the flag. “She did not want it to touch the ground. Another woman volunteer behind her — Mukunda Kakoty — came and held the flag, and she, too, was shot,” said Bora.
“The fact that she was a young girl — that captured the imagination of the time,” Avinibesh Sharma, who runs Vintage Assam, a website on Assam’s history, had told The Indian Express. “… It was also a time where you saw a lot of women coming to the fore, leading processions, patriotic fervour was at its peak — and Kanaklata was a product of this time.”
In 2020, the Coast Guard named a Fast Patrol Vessel (FPV) after her, the ICGS Kanaklata Barua.
This is an excerpt from an older piece in The Indian Express. You can read that here
