Aroti Dutt - Background

Background

Aroti Dutt was born on 23 September 1924 to Satyendra Chandra Mitra and Uma Mitra. She was their only child. Her father was a Freedom fighter and a politician. For a time her father was a member of the Central Legislative Assembly in New Delhi and was also jailed by the British Indian Government for his political activities against British Rule in India, and young Aroti spent her years of childhood traveling to many places in India, and was educated mainly at home. Eventually, when her father became President of the Bengal Legislative Council, Aroti graduated from the University of Calcutta, majoring in Philosophy.

She married Birendrasaday Dutt, the only son of Gurusaday Dutt, ICS, in 1942. She used to say that she cannot claim any “inner call” that took her into social service and that she had married into it. Her father-in-law had founded Saroj Nalini Dutt Memorial Association in memory of his wife, a women’s organization dedicated to the welfare of women. The Dutt family are renowned for their work in the field of social welfare, so Aroti took to it soon after her marriage at the age of 18. Her only child, Devsaday, was born in 1948.

In 1958, she won a scholarship to do a Diploma in International Social Welfare at the Institute of Social Studies at The Hague, The Netherlands. She received her Diploma for her paper “Social Welfare Planning for low-income countries” in 1959.