As a staunch communist and the first woman journalist from West Bengal in eastern India, Vidya Munsi has been at the forefront of activism for over 65 years. The 89-year old crusader was the guest of honour at a recent poster exhibition on the Indian women’s movement.
At 89 years, nothing deters the indomitable Vidya Munsi, least of all the cerebral stroke that in 2002 paralysed the right side of her body.
She remembers every debate clearly, the complexities and nuances of each issue that saw her in the forefront and in solidarity with movements in Vietnam, Cuba and the former Soviet Union.
Vidya Munsi has been a familiar figure marching down the streets of Kolkata, taller than her 5’7”, head held high, protesting a dowry murder or the rape of a slum-dweller. A pair of high-powered glasses hides her twinkling eyes, but her hearty laugh and ready wit have regaled audiences, whether on religious fundamentalism or land rights for women.
Poster girl
Fondly called ‘Vidya di’, on March 1, she was once again in her old spirits. The occasion was the exhibition ‘Poster Women’, an exciting initiative tracing the country’s vibrant women’s movement through posters where she was the guest of honour.
Swayam, a women’s rights organisation focusing on ending violence against women, Zubaan, a feminist publishing house in New Delhi, and Seagull Foundation for the Arts have come together to bring this unique exhibition of 157 posters to Kolkata.
Seated in a wheelchair, she was surrounded by groups of young enthusiastic women eager to hear her speak.
Vidya di was introduced to the power of posters in 1943 when she and her colleagues held their first poster exhibition in Sheffield, UK.
The exhibition was to recount the trauma of the Bengal Famine through posters.
The money collected at the exhibition was sent back to India to aid the stricken peasants. “Since then I have drawn so many posters on various issues, whether on rights of women and youth, protesting the retrenchment of workers, or demanding communal peace. The visual power of posters can hardly be undermined,” says Vidya di.
Vidya di has just finished recording the history of the National Federation of Indian Women (NFIW) that was formed in 1954 with democratic mass organisations from different states and progressive women leaders.
She dictated the important events of the last 54 years, and challenges before the NFIW -of which she is an executive member and the only living founder member - from memory (sometimes referring to an odd document) to her husband Sunil Munsi who took painstaking notes, longhand.
Perhaps her urge to report can be traced back decades, to 1952, when she became the first working woman journalist in West Bengal as a correspondent for the Mumbai-based Blitz.
An activist to the core
Those acquainted with Vidya di know this is not an unusual feat for her. She has been in the forefront of activism for over 65 years, joining the communist movement whilst studying in the UK and becoming a member of the national council of the Communist Party of India (CPI).
Later, she became president of the Paschim Bangla Mahila Samiti and worked for several years as member of the West Bengal State Social Welfare Advisory Board and Commission for Women for its first nine years.
What made Vidya di different from others is that she never hesitated to speak her mind or do what she thought was best for the women’s cause.
Many comrades in the communist party, says Vidya di, deplored her decision to work for women’s issues. “But if women do not take on the responsibility of giving priority to women’s issues, believe me the men never will. If we depend on men we will still be waiting for things to change,” she laughs.
Bela Bandhopadhya, a close friend, remembers that when, at a conference, some male leaders lamented that young women were not joining the movement, Vidya di retorted that if the party patriarchs did not mend their ways even the older women would be forced to leave!
Vidya Munsi, nee Kanuga, left home in 1938 to become a doctor. But politics occupied all her attention and in 1942 she gave up her studies and joined the band of Indian communists in the UK when the communist party was still illegal in India.
Since then, she has never looked back.
On her return from the UK she married the geographer Sunil Munsi, editor of the now-defunct journal The Student. There, she was groomed to be a reporter and Vidya di, a Gujarati by birth, learnt to write Bengali.
“From sheer necessity,” she guffaws. “I was suddenly asked to edit the Bengali Chalar Pathe. You can’t have an editor who does not know the language!”
For the many women who crowded to see the Poster Women exhibition, Vidya di represents a symbol of courage and struggle - the women’s movement’s very own Poster Girl.
Rajashri Dasgupta is an independent journalist based in Kolkata.
