A Revolutionary Woman

A Passionate Life, a collection of essays on Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, edited by Ellen Carol Dubois and Vinay Lal, which also includes a selection of her own writings, puts to shame scholars of Indian political history, and those writing on the Indian women’s movement.

Here is a woman, born in 1903, in a rural area in south-western India—married at 12 and widowed at 14—who broke every social and cultural norm of that era. She engaged in India’s freedom struggle at the highest level, as a critic who could not be ignored, writing in newspapers, journals, as well as political documents. There are hardly any substantial writings by prominent modern history scholars on her life. A Passionate Life corrects that neglect substantially and also stimulates a call for more on her life and work.