93rd birth anniversary of Ila Mitra observed
The 93rd birth anniversary of Ila Mitra, the legendary leader who led the peasant movement known as Tebhaga Andolon in Nachole, was observed in Chapainawabganj yesterday.
The district administration organised a procession that paraded different roads of Chapainawabganj town.
A discussion, presided over by Deputy Commissioner AZM Nurul Haque, was also held on the occasion at the district headquarters.
Speakers at the programme discussed Ila Mitra's contributions to peasants' rights movements in the region.
Monjurul Huda, deputy director of Department of Agricultural Extension; Dr Chitrolekha Naznin, deputy director of Local Government Division; Prof Sultana Razia, former principal of Nawabganj Government College; Bidhan Chandra Singh, president of Ila Mitra Smriti Sangsad; and Jotin Hemrom, indigenous community leader; spoke among others.
Ila Mitra, the front runner of communist movement in the sub-continent in undivided Bengal and a friend to the cause of Bangladesh's Liberation War in 1971, was born as Ila Sen in Kolkata on October 18, 1925.
Her forefathers are from Bagutia in Jhenidah. She became active in communist movement in the early 1940s, when she was a student at Bethun College in Kolkata.
In 1945, after marrying Ramendra Mitra, Ila came to her husband's village home in Krishnagobindapur of Chapainawabganj and took a teaching job at a girls' school.
Her husband was from a zamindar family of Chapainawabganj and an active member of Communist Party of India.
Ila later undertook the leadership of Tebhaga movement and played a key role in the Santal rebellion as well as the Nachole uprising from 1946 to 1950. She was arrested in 1950 and in police custody, she underwent brutal physical abuse and torture. She was sentenced to life imprisonment by the court.
In 1954, after she fell seriously ill in Rajshahi jail, the erstwhile government of Pakistan allowed her to go to Kolkata for treatment on parole. She never returned home and later resumed her political activities in Kolkata. She died in Kolkata on October 13, 2002.
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