Matangini Hazra

01Child bride, widow, satyagrahi

Matangini was born in Hogla village in the Midnapore country, into a poor Mahishya farming family, and had no schooling. She was married as a child to a much older widower and was herself a childless widow by eighteen. For decades she lived quietly, serving her village. In 1932, when the civil disobedience movement reached Midnapore, she joined the salt-making and was arrested. She took part in the picketing that followed and served time in Baharampur jail. Her neighbours, struck by her khadi and spinning, began to call her Gandhi Buri.

02The march on Tamluk

In September 1942 the Quit India volunteers of Midnapore planned to take over the police stations and government offices of the subdivision. On 29 September a procession of some six thousand, many of them women, moved on the Tamluk police station with Matangini at the front holding the national flag. The police opened fire. Shot repeatedly, she kept the flag raised and kept crying Vande Mataram until she fell. Within weeks the Tamralipta Jatiya Sarkar, a parallel national government, was set up in the area and lasted until 1944. Her statue stands on the Maidan in Kolkata and at the spot in Tamluk where she fell.

Battle · 8 August 1942 – 1944Quit India MovementWith the words Do or Die, Gandhi called for the British to quit India; within hours the leaders were in jail and the country rose in the largest revolt since 1857.Read →