Early Life
Manikuntala Sen was born in Barisal in what is now Bangladesh, an area known for the activities of the nationalist jatra playwright Mukunda Das. Ashwini Kumar Dutta, a prominent nationalist leader and educationist, was a friend of the family and an early influence on her, as was Jagadish Chandra Mukhopadhyay, principal of Brajamohan College, then affiliated with the University of Calcutta, where Manikuntala Sen got her BA degree; Mukhopadhyay especially encouraged her to develop her mind. Sen met Gandhi when he visited Barishal in 1923, and was particularly impressed by the way he exhorted a group of prostitutes to work towards liberation. The family stopped wearing imported fabrics and patronised the Bangalakshmi Mills, owned and run by Indians and an icon of the nationalist movement. Barishal was then a hotbed of revolutionary politics, with the extremist Anushilan Samiti very active. Sen took up teaching at a girls' school where she met Shantisudha Ghosh, a member of the Jugantar party, whose circle read and shared the writings of Marx and Lenin. Initially sceptical, Sen became more and more influenced by their ideas, even more so when she saw Shantisudha Ghosh taken in for questioning and harassed by the police. Sen persuaded her family to allow her to go to Calcutta to complete her studies and, she secretly hoped, to make contact with the Communist Party.
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