‘Toofani’ leader who chose her own path

The 75th Republic Day is an occasion to look back at the days when India was about to attain its hard-earned Independence and the Constituent Assembly was formed in 1946 to frame the Constitution of a free India. The platform was highly coveted, to which only the most deserving ones (elected from the provincial assemblies) could reach. Malati Choudhury, a passionate freedom fighter and activist for social justice and civil rights, was elected to the Constituent Assembly as the only female member from Odisha. However, after attending a few sessions, she felt out of place and resigned.

Malati preferred to focus completely on her social welfare work at the grassroots level rather than participate in the prolonged Assembly proceedings. Her ways and ideas of contributing to the making of the nation were distinctive and, in her opinion, required tangible individual action.

Despite being an eminent public figure, Malati never cared to occupy any position of eminence. All she wanted to do was to bring about change in society in a way she was fully convinced about. Her ideology was to follow her heart and serve people not from a place of authority, but by becoming one of them.

After her resignation from the Constituent Assembly, Malati enthusiastically joined Mahatma Gandhi’s Noakhali Yatra, which began in 1947, aiming to restore peace and harmony in the regions torn by communal riots. She walked alongside him and later wrote: “To me, this appeared more valuable than dozing off on the last bench of the Constituent Assembly.”

Born in 1904 in a Bengali family, Malati was 16 when she joined Rabindranath Tagore’s Santiniketan. She was one of the fortunate few to be closely associated with two of the most revered figures of the period, first Tagore, and later Gandhi. The former lovingly called her ‘Minu’ and the latter nicknamed her ‘Toofani’, owing to her fearlessness and passion for work.

At Santiniketan, Malati found her life partner, Nabakrushna Choudhury, an equally passionate social activist and freedom fighter from Odisha. They moved to Odisha, where she began her rural reconstruction work with an emphasis on adult education, women and child empowerment and anti-untouchability programmes. She spearheaded the Gandhian movements and was jailed multiple times, often with daughter Uttara in her lap.

When her husband became the Chief Minister of Odisha in 1950, Malati utilised the opportunity to launch many welfare schemes with an even greater gusto. When anyone else could have enjoyed the indulgences and comforts of being a Chief Minister’s wife, Malati relentlessly toiled in the remotest and most challenging places, including those where no activist or leader had gone before. For her, even after Independence, the country’s freedom was not complete as the masses were yet to be emancipated from various injustices.

She battled the oppressive forces in pre- and post-Independent India with the same earnestness. She was the force behind the formation of many social welfare organisations and establishment of schools and hostels for children from the disadvantaged classes in Odisha, which are functional to this day. Malati Choudhury passed away in 1998 at the age of 93.