Vina Mazumdar (87), noted women’s rights activist, architect of the report of committee on ‘Status of Women in India’ in post-independent India, passed away in a Delhi hospital on Thursday after a brief illness.
Born in 1927 in a middle-class Bengali household in Kolkata, she did her schooling in the city and studied in Banaras Hindu University and Calcutta University, before going to Oxford in 1947, soon after independence. She went back to Oxford University later and received her DPhil in 1962.
She taught in Patna and Berhampur Universities, joined the University Grants Commission Secretariat and also remained a Fellow of the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, Shimla. later, she became Director, Programme of Women’s Studies, Indian Council of Social Science Research from 1975 to 1980.
Vina Mazumdar was a fighter. Never to get cowed down in front of what she felt was palpably wrong and unjust, she became the first Secretary of the Patna University Teachers’ Association and was at the forefront of a teachers’ agitation against the State Government’s new Bill for Bihar Universities.
Her memoir, Memories of a Rolling Stone, speaks of her liberal upbringing, Kolkata of 1940s, activism and policy making of 60s and 70s, her rebellious daughters and singer-husband Shankar.
Among her known students in Patna University are BJP leader Yashwant Sinha and former Foreign Secretary Muchkund Dubey, while CPI(M) leaders, Prakash Karat, Brinda Karat and Sitaram Yechury were very close to her.
She was the founding Director of the Centre for Women’s Development Studies (CWDS), where she remained a National Research Professor till the end.