Kamini Roy, was a leading Bengali poet, social worker and feminist. She was the first woman honours graduate in India.

Life

Born on 12 October, 1864 in the village of Basanda, then in Bakergunj district of East Bengal and now in Barisal District of Bangladesh, she passed the entrance examination in 1880 from Bethune School, Kolkata, and first arts in 1883. A part of the earliest batch of girls to attend school, she was the first woman honours graduate in the country, having passed her bachelor of arts degree with Sanskrit honours from Bethune College in 1886. Kadambini Ganguly was three years senior to her in the same institution. She continued her association with Bethune College as a teacher.

Her father, Chandi Charan Sen, a judge and a writer, was a leading member of the Brahmo Samaj. In 1894 she married Kedarnath Roy.

Kamini Roy was a feminist in an age when even women’s education was a taboo. In a Bengali essay titled The Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge she wrote, “The male desire to rule is the primary, if not the only, stumbling block to women’s enlightenment... They are extremely suspicious of women’s emancipation. Why? The same old fear - ‘Lest they become like us’.” This has been included in an English book Talking of Power - Early Writings of Bengali Women from the Mid-Nineteenth Century to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century edited by Malini Bhattacharya and Abhijit Sen. She was a member of the Female Labour Investigation Commission (1922-23). In her later life, she lived at Hazaribagh for some years. In that small town, she often had discussions on literary and other topics with such scholars as Mahesh Chandra Ghosh and Dhirendranath Choudhury. She passed away on 27 September, 1933.

Literature

She was inclined towards literature from a young age and started composing poems at the age of eight. Her first book of poems, Alo O Chhaya, was published in 1889.

Amongst her notable literary contributions were – Mahasweta, Pundorik, Pouraniki, Dwip O Dhup, Jibon Pathey, Nirmalya, Malya O Nirmalya, and Ashok Sangeet. She wrote Gunjan for children and a book of essays Balika Sikkhar Adarsha.

She went out of her way to encorage other writers and poets. In 1923, she visited Barisal and encouraged Sufia Kamal, then a young girl, to continue writing. She was president of the Bengali Literary Conference in 1930 and vice-president of the Bangiya Sahitya Parishad in 1932-33.

Kamini Roy lost her husband in 1909. Her intense grief and pain over his premature death deeply affected her personal life and was reflected in her poems. She was influenced by the poet Rabindranath Tagore and Sanskrit literature. Calcutta University honoured her with the Jagattarini Gold Medal.

Reference

• Sansad Bangali Charitabhidhan (Biographical dictionary) edited by Subodh Chandra Sengupta and Anjali Bose and Banglapedia.