Kamini Roy

Kamini Roy (12 October 1864 – 27 September 1933) was a Bengali poet,social worker and feminist in British India. She was the first woman honours graduate in British India.

Born on 12 October 1864 in the village of Basunda, then in Bakerganj District of Bengal Presidency and now in Jhalokati District of Bangladesh, Roy joined Bethune School in 1883. One of the first girls to attend school in British India, she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree with Sanskrit honours from Bethune College of the University of Calcutta in 1886 and started teaching there in the same year. Kadambini Ganguly, one of the first two women honours graduates ever in the country, was three years senior to her in the same institution.

Nisith Chandra Sen, her brother, was a renowned barrister in the Calcutta High Court, and later the Mayor of Calcutta while her sister Jamini was the house physician of the then Nepal Royal family. In 1894 she married Kedarnath Roy.

She picked up the cue for feminism from a fellow student of Bethune School, Abala Bose. Speaking to a girls' school in Calcutta, Roy said that, as Bharati Ray later paraphrased it, "the aim of women's education was to contribute to their all-round development and fulfillment of their potential".

In a Bengali essay titled The Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge she wrote,

The male desire to rule is the primary, if not the only, stumbling block to women's enlightenment ... They are extremely suspicious of women’s emancipation. Why? The same old fear – 'Lest they become like us'.

In 1921, she was one of the leaders, along with Kumudini Mitra (Basu) and Mrinalini Sen, of the Bangiya Nari Samaj, an organization formed to fight for woman's suffrage. The Bengal Legislative Council granted limited suffrage to women in 1925, allowing Bengali women to exercise their right for the first time in the 1926 Indian general election.She was a member of the Female Labour Investigation Commission (1922–23).

Roy went out of her way to encourage other writers and poets. In 1923, she visited Barisal and encouraged Sufia Kamal, then a young girl, to continue writing. She was president of the Bengali Literary Conference in 1930 and vice-president of the Bangiya Sahitya Parishad in 1932-33.

She was influenced by the poet Rabindranath Tagore and Sanskrit literature. Calcutta University honoured her with the Jagattarini Gold Medal.

On 12 October 2019, Google commemorated Kamini Roy with a Doodle on her 155th birth anniversary. The accompanying write up started with her quote, “Why should a woman be confined to home and denied her rightful place in society?”

Among her notable literary contributions were:

• Mahasweta, Pundorik
• Pouraniki
• Dwip O Dhup
• Jibon Pathey
• Nirmalya
• Malya O Nirmalya
• Ashok Sangeet
• Gunjan (Children's book)
• Balika Sikkhar Adarsha (Essays)