Nellie Sen Gupta

(1886-1973)
President- Calcutta, 1933

Daughter of Frederick William and Edith Henrietta Gray, Nellie was born in 1886 at Cambridge, England. She passed her Senior Cambridge in 1904. Jatindramohan Sen Gupta of Chittagong, Bengal was a student of Downing College and used to visit the family. They fell in love and were married in 1909, after which Jatindramohan returned to Chittagong with her.

The stormy Indian Freedom struggle absorbed Jatindramohan in 1921. Nellie forsook a cosy family life. She gladly shared his trials. After his imprisonment during the Assam-Bengal Railwaymen's strike, she forcefully 'protested against the District authorities' imposition of a ban on assembly, addressed mass meetings and courted arrest symbolically defying the law by hawking Khaddar cloth. In 1931 she suffered four months' imprisonment at Delhi for addressing an unlawful assembly.

The early thirties witnessed the Congress Committees banned and the leaders in jail but Nellie was fearlessly active. When Madan Mohan Malaviya was elected President of the Calcutta session of the Indian National Congress 1933 and was arrested, Nellie was chosen as the Congress President.

The Calcutta Corporation elected her an Alderman the same year and again in 1936. She was returned uncontested to the Bengal Legislative Assembly in 1940 and re-elected, in 1946, bitterly fighting a Communist. During World War II her fervent speech describing criminal assaults by soldiers on helpless village women in South Chittagong had a tremendous impact on both opposition and treasury benches. The Chief Minister, Nazimmuddin assured that such incidents would not recur.

After the partition of India in 1947, she chose to live in Pakistan. She was returned unopposed to the East Pakistan Legislature in 1954. Though elected a member of the Minority Board, she recognised no communal barriers and often ignored failing health and poor eyesight. She never spared herself during calamities like floods and cyclones as in 1946.

An Englishwoman, earnestly serving the cause of Indians and their freedom, dignified and unassuming, courageous and ever prepared to take risks and suffer privations, Nellie Sen Gupta was opposed to all social disabilities and economic disparities.

She returned to India for medical treatment, and was treated with great respect by the Indira Gandhi Government. She died in Calcutta in 1973.

-Bhupendra Kumar Datta