Constitution Day & the Women Behind

 

On the occasion of Constitution Day, we are remembering and celebrating the 15 women Constituent Assembly members and their crucial contribution in the making of the Indian constitution.

 

1. Ammu Swaminathan

Ammu Swaminathan was an upper-caste Hindu family in Anakkara of Palghat district, Kerala. She formed the Women’s India Association in 1917 in Madras, along with Annie Besant, Margaret Cousins, Malathi Patwardhan, Dadabhoy and Ambujammal. She became a part of the Constituent Assembly from the Madras Constituency in 1946.

 

2. Dakshayani Velayudhan

Dakshayani Velayudhan was born on July 4, 1912, on the island of Bolgatty in Cochin. She leads the (then titled) Depressed Classes.

In 1945, Dakshayani was nominated to the Cochin Legislative Council by the State Government. She was the first and only Dalit woman to be elected to the Constituent Assembly in 1946.

 

3. Begum Aizaz Rasul

Malerkotla was born in a princely family and married to the young landowner Nawaab Aizaz Rasul. She was the only Muslim woman member of the Constituent Assembly. With the enactment of the Government of India Act 1935, Begum and her husband joined the Muslim League and entered electoral politics. In the 1937 elections, she was elected to the UP Legislative Assembly.

She was elected to the Rajya Sabha in 1952 and was a member of the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly from 1969 to 1990.

 

4. Durgabai Deshmukh

Durgabai Deshmukh was born in Rajahmundry on July 15, 1909. When she was 12 years old, she participated in the Non-Co-operation Movement and along with Andhra Kesari T Prakasam, she participated in the Salt Satyagraha movement in Madras city in May 1930.

In 1936, she established the Andhra Mahila Sabha, which within a decade became a great institution of education and social welfare in the city of Madras.

 

5. Hansa Jivraj Mehta

Born on July 3, 1897, to the Dewan of Baroda Manubhai Nandshankar Mehta, Hansa Mehta studied journalism and sociology in England. Along with being a reformer and social activist, she was also an educator and writer.

She wrote many books for children in Gujarati and also translated many English stories including the Gulliver’s Travels. She was elected to the Bombay Schools Committee in 1926 and became President of the All India Women’s Conference in 1945-46.

 

6. Kamla Chaudhary

Kamla Chaudhary was born in an affluent family of Lucknow, however, it was still a struggle for her to continue her education. Moving away from her family’s loyalty to the imperial government, she joined the nationalists and was an active participant in the Civil Disobedience Movement launched by Gandhi in 1930.

She was vice-president of the All India Congress Committee in its 54th session and was elected as a member of the Lok Sabha in the late seventies. Chaudhary was also a celebrated fiction writer and her stories usually dealt with women’s inner worlds or the emergence of India as a modern nation.

 

7. Leela Roy

Leela Roy was born in Goalpara, Assam in October 1900. Her father was a deputy magistrate and sympathised with the Nationalist Movement. She graduated from Bethune College in 1921 and became an assistant secretary to the All Bengal Women’s Suffrage Committee and arranged meetings to demand women’s rights.

In 1923, with her friends, she founded the Dipali Sangha and established schools which became centres of political discussion in which noted leaders participated. Later, in 1926, the Chhatri Sangha, an association of women students in Dacca and Kolkata, was founded. She became the editor of a journal, Jayashree.

 

8. Malati Choudhury

Malati Choudhury was born in 1904 to a distinguished family in the then East Bengal, now Bangladesh. In the year 1921, at the age of 16, Malati Choudhury was sent to Santiniketan where she got admitted to Viswa-Bharati.

During the Salt Satyagraha, Malati Choudhury, accompanied by her husband joined the Indian National Congress and participated in the movement. They educated and communicated with the people to create a favorable environment for Satyagraha.

 

9. Purnima Banerjee

Purnima Banerjee was the secretary of the Indian National Congress committee in Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh. She was one of a radical network of women from Uttar Pradesh who stood at the forefront of the freedom movement in the late 1930s and ’40s.

She was arrested for her participation in the Satyagraha and Quit India Movement. One of the more striking aspects of Purnima Banerjee’s speeches in the Constituent Assembly was her steadfast commitment to a socialist ideology. As secretary for the city committee, she was responsible for engaging and organising trade unions, Kisan meetings and work towards greater rural engagement.

 

10. Rajkumari Amrit Kaur

Amrit Kaur was born on February 2, 1889, in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh. She was India’s first Health Minister and she held that post for ten years. She did her educated at the Sherborne School for Girls in Dorset, England, but gave it all up to become Mahatma Gandhi’s secretary for 16 years. She was the founder of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and argued for its autonomy. She was a firm believer in women’s education, their participation in sports and their healthcare.

 

11. Renuka Ray

Renuka Ray lived in London to complete her BA from the London School of Economics. She submitted a document titled Legal Disabilities of Women in India; A Plea for a Commission of Enquiry’ in the year 1934, as legal secretary of the AIWC.

From 1943 to 1946 she was a member of the Central Legislative Assembly, then of the Constituent Assembly and the Provisional Parliament. In 195257, she served on the West Bengal Legislative Assembly as Minister for Relief and Rehabilitation. In 1957 and again in 1962, she was a member of Malda of the Lok Sabha.

 

12. Sarojini Naidu

Sarojini Naidu, also known as the Nightingale of India, was born on February 13, 1879, in Hyderabad, India. She was the first Indian woman to become the president of the Indian National Congress and the first woman to be appointed as an Indian state governor.

 

13. Sucheta Kriplani

Sucheta Kriplani was born in 1908 in present-day Haryana’s Ambala town. She is especially remembered for her role in the Quit India Movement of 1942.

Kripalani also established the women’s wing of the Congress party in 1940. Post-independence, Kripalani’s political stint included serving as an MP from New Delhi and then also as the Minister of Labour, Community Development and Industry in Uttar Pradesh’s state government.

 

14. Vijalakshami Pandit

Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit was born in Allahabad on August 18, 1900, and she was the sister of India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. She was imprisoned by the British on three different occasions, in 1932-1933, 1940, and 1942-1943.

Pandit’s political career began with her election to the Allahabad Municipal Board. In 1936, she was elected to the Assembly of the United Provinces, and in 1937 became minister of local self-government and public health the first Indian woman ever to become a cabinet minister.

 

15. Annie Mascarene

Annie Mascarene was born into a Latin Catholic family of Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. She was the first woman to be part of the Travancore State Congress Working Committee. She was one of the leaders of the movements for independence and integration with the Indian nation in the Travancore State.