Nurjehan Murshed was such a person. When I first met her in the sixties she was living in a modest Dhaka University apartment that had been allocated to her husband, Dr. Khan Sarwar Murshed, a professor of English. Both of them were engaged in editing, and published New Values, a journal of literary criticism, which reflected a progressive idea.

I was a visitor to Dhaka at the time, and was gladly roped in to help with the editing. It was around their publication that the editors were able to inspire many young teachers and students to join them in intellectual exchanges on politics, literature, music and many other subjects of contemporary interest.

Nurjehan Apa was a politically sensitive person. As an active member of the Awami League, she had been elected as a councilor to the Dhaka Municipal Council. At the time women were elected directly to reserved seats in the council. This had, to some extent, prepared her for the rough and tumble of the popular political movement for autonomy and, later, for a more active role during the war for independence.

She crossed over to India along with her family, but felt compelled to join in the war effort. She traveled to many places in India, explaining to influential groups the reasons behind the liberation struggle.

I say she was politically sensitive because she did not stay as a docile party worker doing the party's bidding. She spoke out when needed, and questioned established hierarchies. After independence she became a member of Bangladesh's first Parliament as a nominee to women's reserved seats.

While most of the other thirty members remained on the back benches, Nurjehan Apa spoke out about the need to recognise the survivors of war rape, and to support them. Many of us found her statements in Parliament very courageous and forthright.

I lost touch with Nurjehan Apa, as she went away to Poland when her husband was appointed an ambassador, and we left for Oxford in the mid-seventies. But later on, after our return in the eighties, I found that she had started yet another magazine, this time in Bangla. It was registered under the name of Edesh Ekal.

Once again she was able to draw many leading writers to contribute analytical critiques on social, economic and political issues. I wrote for it two or three times, and it was a pity that the journal was short-lived because of its many financial and managerial problems. Many of its articles were very provocative and stimulated discussion.

But Nurjehan Apa was not merely a critic. She felt for people. This is probably why she became associated with Bangladesh Mahila Parishad and actively supported the struggle for women's rights. In 1966, when some of us got together and decided to form Ain o Salish Kendra (ASK) whose aim was to offer legal support so that the disenfranchised could access justice, and we had no place to function from, it was Nurjehan Apa who offered two rooms above the garage of her house in Satmasjid Road.

She never asked to become a member of ASK, or to demand recognition for what she had done, but in her own quiet way she gave us the leadership to start our work. The lawyers who went to work at her place were always inspired by her active interest in what they were doing, and the sympathy she demonstrated for those who sought their help.

She was interested not merely in welfare but in changing people's lives, in giving them the strength to struggle, just as presumably she had found the strength to struggle herself. Such leadership is rare indeed.

Dr. Hameeda Hossain is a women's rights activist.