The Role of Women in India’s Armed Revolutionary Struggles: Beyond the Gandhian Approach

When we think of India’s independence movement, the images that come to mind most readily are of Mahatma Gandhi leading marches, Jawaharlal Nehru delivering speeches, or Bhagat Singh going defiantly to the gallows. But behind, beside, and sometimes ahead of these figures were women – women who did not simply wave flags or sing patriotic songs but who transported explosives, led armed raids, attempted assassinations, and chose death over surrender. Their stories are not footnotes. They are a parallel history, one that is only beginning to receive the attention it deserves.

Two paths to the same goal 🔗

India’s freedom movement was never monolithic. The Gandhian path – civil disobedience, non-cooperation, and non-violence – drew enormous participation, particularly from women, whom Gandhi specifically called upon to lead boycotts and marches because of their perceived moral authority. But this framing had a flip side: it cast women as inherently passive, suited for peaceful protest but not armed confrontation. In the 1930s, Gandhi was advocating for women to be the face of his nationalist movement because of their propensity for non-violence and passiveness. Women who picked up arms challenged that assumption directly – and proved it wrong.

The revolutionary path, taken by groups like the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA) and Bengal’s Indian Republican Army, believed that dismantling colonial power required direct, forceful action. Both approaches shared the ultimate aim of independence, but they operated in entirely different registers – one in the open, the other underground, one in daylight, the other at night. Women who chose the revolutionary path operated in a world of secrecy, risk, and constant surveillance, facing dangers that went far beyond what their Gandhian counterparts typically encountered.

The Bengal connection: women at the center of armed revolt 🔗

Bengal was a hotbed of revolutionary activity in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and women were embedded in these networks from early on. Revolutionary organizations were quickly growing in number during the 1930s, operating in Bengal, with major centers in Dhaka, Comilla, and Chittagong, where young college women joined secret societies. The Chhatri Sangha, a semi-revolutionary women’s student organization in Calcutta, became a crucial entry point for many of them.

Pritilata Waddedar: Bengal’s first woman martyr 🔗

Pritilata Waddedar (1911-1932) was a Bengali revolutionary nationalist described as “Bengal’s first woman martyr.” Educated in Chittagong and Dhaka, she graduated in philosophy from Bethune College in Calcutta – though her degree was initially withheld by the British authorities because of her anti-colonial activities. That act of institutional retaliation only deepened her resolve.

In 1932, she joined the revolutionary group headed by Surya Sen, known as Master Da, whose network had carried out the famous Chittagong Armoury Raid of 18 April 1930 – an attempt to seize weapons and cut Chittagong off from British communication lines, inspired in part by the 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland. Pritilata and her comrade Kalpana Dutt had to undergo rigorous training to prove their abilities and commitment to the cause, as there was a general belief that women did not possess the necessary grit needed in desperate situations.

The Pahartali European Club in Chittagong became the next target. The club was chosen deliberately – it bore a sign reading “Dogs and Indians not allowed,” a stark symbol of colonial racial arrogance. Though only 21 years old, Pritilata was made the leader of a group of seven to ten trained young men who were to carry out the siege. On the night of 23 September, dressed as a man, she boldly led the attack. She was shot in the leg during the confrontation and, rather than surrender, consumed potassium cyanide as planned earlier, becoming a martyr. She left behind a written appeal urging Indian women not to remain in the background of the freedom struggle.

Kalpana Datta: revolutionary, survivor, documenter 🔗

Kalpana Datta (1913-1995) was an independence movement activist and a member of the armed resistance group led by Surya Sen, which carried out the Chittagong Armoury Raid in 1930. She joined through the Chhatri Sangha, where she had met Pritilata. Kalpana was given the responsibility of transporting explosives and other supplies, and she particularly excelled in preparing gun cotton, a type of explosive agent. She often traveled disguised as a man to move materials undetected.

When Kalpana was arrested before the Pahartali Club attack, Pritilata was assigned the leadership role in her place. Kalpana was later arrested during subsequent revolutionary operations and sentenced to life imprisonment, a sentence eventually reduced. She was released after serving her sentence, graduated from Calcutta University in 1940, joined the Communist Party of India, and served as a relief worker during the 1943 Bengal famine. She wrote her memoirs in Bengali, translated into English as Chittagong Armoury Raiders: Reminiscences, which remains one of the most detailed firsthand accounts of the uprising. It is largely because of Kalpana’s documentation that we know as much as we do about Pritilata’s life.

Bina Das: the student who fired at a governor 🔗

Also emerging from Calcutta’s revolutionary student networks, Bina Das, a member of the Chhatri Sangha, attempted to assassinate Bengal Governor Stanley Jackson in 1932 during the convocation ceremony at Calcutta University – one of the most audacious acts of the period. She fired multiple shots at point-blank range but did not succeed. She was arrested, tried, and sentenced to imprisonment. Bina Das symbolized both intellectual and armed protest, having earlier defied colonial orthodoxy by wearing khadi, distributing revolutionary pamphlets, and writing about banned books in her examinations.

Durga Devi Vohra: the planner in the shadows 🔗

Beyond Bengal, the revolutionary movement in the north found one of its most indispensable organizers in Durga Devi Vohra, widely known as Durga Bhabhi. She was one of the few women revolutionaries who actively participated in armed revolution against the ruling British Raj. A member of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA), she worked alongside Bhagat Singh, Chandra Shekhar Azad, and Sukhdev, and her contributions extended well beyond what popular memory typically records.

Her most celebrated act came after the assassination of British police officer John Saunders in December 1928. Durga Bhabhi posed as Bhagat Singh’s wife and held her son in her lap as the two passed police barricades and boarded a first-class train carriage for Lucknow and then Calcutta, evading capture. The colonial authorities, who were looking for a man traveling alone, never suspected a family unit.

But this escape was far from her only contribution. After the death sentence was announced for Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, and Rajguru, Durga Devi and two other revolutionaries attempted to assassinate the Governor of Punjab in retaliation, eventually firing on a British couple at a Bombay police station in October 1930. After her husband’s death, she was given charge of reorganizing the HSRA in the Punjab province and was a prominent member of the Bhagat Singh Defence Committee, which collected funds to fight for the release of political prisoners. She also established a school for underprivileged children in Lucknow and later founded a research center that first published the collected works of Bhagat Singh.

Rani Gaidinliu: armed resistance from the northeast 🔗

Armed revolutionary activity was not confined to Bengal and Punjab. In the northeast, Rani Gaidinliu, a leader of the Heraka movement, led an armed uprising against British rule in Manipur, Nagaland, and Assam. She was only 13 years old when she joined the movement, which aimed at reviving Naga tribal religion and achieving self-rule. She was eventually captured by the British and imprisoned for years, but the resistance she inspired in the northeast became a significant part of the broader anti-colonial movement. Jawaharlal Nehru, upon meeting her, called her the “Daughter of the Hills.”

The barriers they defied – and what made them invisible 🔗

What made these women’s participation so extraordinary was the double resistance they had to mount: against the British, and against the gender norms of their own society. Women revolutionaries faced the dual challenge of deeply rooted patriarchal structures, restricted access to leadership and decision-making roles, and systematic repression by colonial authorities. Even within revolutionary organizations, women frequently had to prove themselves before being accepted. Pritilata and Kalpana, for instance, were required to undergo rigorous physical and tactical training before Surya Sen allowed them into the inner circle.

Paradoxically, the colonial authorities’ underestimation of women often worked in the revolutionaries’ favor. Colonial authorities underestimated the potential of women to engage in revolutionary activities, which allowed women like Durga Devi to pass through police checkpoints, transport explosives, and run communication networks that men could no longer safely manage. Their social invisibility became a strategic asset.

Yet this same invisibility followed them into history books. In popular memory, the story of the Indian revolutionary movement is largely a story of daredevil acts of heroic men, and there is a clear gender bias in public memories and imaginations of the revolutionary movement. Women’s contributions were frequently framed as supportive or peripheral, even when they were central and independent.

A lasting legacy 🔗

Women’s involvement in the freedom struggle had a profound transformative effect on societal attitudes by contesting entrenched gender norms and cultivating increased political awareness among women. Their participation did not simply add numbers to the independence movement – it reshaped what political agency for women looked like in colonial India and afterward. Women who gained political experience during the freedom movement played influential roles in the Constituent Assembly and early governance structures, ensuring that women’s concerns were meaningfully incorporated into constitutional deliberations and nation-building processes.

The contributions of Pritilata Waddedar, Kalpana Datta, Bina Das, Durga Devi Vohra, Rani Gaidinliu, and many others make clear that India’s armed revolutionary movement was not a male enterprise into which a few exceptional women strayed. These women chose this path deliberately, with clear political consciousness, at extraordinary personal cost. They were not exceptions to the rule – they were part of the movement’s fabric.

What do you think? Why do you think women revolutionaries who took up arms remain far less recognized in popular history than their male counterparts – and what does that gap tell us about how societies remember and construct national heroes? If the Gandhian framework specifically cast women as symbols of moral non-violence, what does it mean for gender politics that women simultaneously rejected that framing through armed struggle?

References

1. https://feminisminindia.com/2019/03/15/women-warriors-chittagong-armoury-raid/
2. https://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR2505586.pdf
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pritilata_Waddedar
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chittagong_armoury_raid
5. https://indianculture.gov.in/node/2790410
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalpana_Datta
7. https://vajiramandravi.com/upsc-exam/role-of-women-in-indian-freedom-struggle/
8. https://www.insightsonindia.com/2025/08/25/bengali-women-revolutionaries/
9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durgawati_Devi
10. https://www.oneindia.com/india/who-was-durga-bhabhi-the-woman-who-helped-bhagat-singh-escape-from-lahore-to-calcutta-2754928.html
11. https://www.newsclick.in/durga-devi-indomitable-revolutionary
12. https://indianculture.gov.in/node/2806403
13. https://www.ijfmr.com/papers/2026/1/67595.pdf