Matangini Hazra
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A brief biography
Sep 29, 2023: The Indian Express
A staunch Gandhian from Tamluk, Bengal, Matangini Hazra fell to British bullets on September 29, 1942, while leading a Quit India Movement march.
Matangini Hazra was 73 when she fell to British bullets, leading a protest march in 1942 in Tamluk, Bengal. Her death made her a martyr, and one of the earliest casualties of the Quit India movement.
A staunch Gandhian, Hazra was among the thousands of women who answered the Mahatma’s call to join the freedom struggle. She is one of Bengal’s tallest nationalist icons with roads, schools, and neighborhoods across the state named after her.
On the 81st anniversary of her martyrdom, we remember Matangini Hazra and her life, dedicated to the nation.
Widowed at an early age, Hazra became a social activist.
Matangini was born in a village named Hogla, near Tamluk, in 1869. She was the daughter of a poor farmer who could not afford to provide her a formal education or raise a decent dowry. Thus, she found herself married at 12, to 60-year-old Trilochan Hazra, from Alinan village in Medinipur. By the time she turned 18, Matangini Hazra was widowed, without any children.
However, following her husband’s death, she began devoting herself to social causes, gaining the trust and adulation of poor villagers.
Matangini soon started following Gandhi.
By the turn of the 20th century, the Nationalist movement began gaining traction across the subcontinent and Gandhi travelled extensively across the length and breadth of the region, raising awareness about the freedom movement.
Matangini Hazra was among the thousands who fell for the charisma and message of the Mahatma, and joined the freedom struggle whole-heartedly. In his book Code Name God (2005), Indian-American scientist and author Mani Bhaumik, who grew up in Tamluk, wrote: “Matangani’s love for Gandhi was so great that she became known in our village as Gandhiburi, the old Gandhian woman…”
She was arrested a number of times.
At the age of 61, she was arrested for taking part in the Civil Disobedience Movement in 1930. In fact, her participation in the Movement led to several short stints in prison. It was during this time that she became an active member of the Indian National Congress, and started spinning her own khadi in Gandhi’s footsteps.
Bhaumik describes a scene from Hazra’s life: “One blazing afternoon (in 1933), a freedom march was held in the district capital. Its destination was the palace of the Governor… Matangini marched in the parade’s vanguard, holding the freedom movement’s flag high. As they reached…. directly in front of the governor’s balcony, she suddenly broke through the bayoneted cordon, brandishing her banner, and screamed, “Go back, lat sahib” before the stunned soldiers could take her down.”
That afternoon, British police assaulted Hazra. She was arrested and sentenced to six months of hard labour. While weakened by the harsh sentence, Hazra went back to her social work immediately after her release.
She died holding the Indian flag high.
Her involvement with the freedom struggle intensified during the Quit India Movement launched by Gandhi in August 1942. In September that year, a 73-year-old Hazra led a large procession of around 6,000 protesters, mostly women. The procession marched with the aim to take over the Tamluk police station from British authorities.
In the skirmish that followed between protesters and the police, Hazra stepped forward to appeal to the police to not shoot at the procession. Her pleas went unheard and British police personnel shot at her thrice. According to government archives, despite her wounds, Hazra continued to march on, chanting ‘Vande Mataram’, until she finally collapsed and died on the street.
Her death made her a martyr for many, inciting revolutionaries to establish their own parallel government in Medinipur, which functioned till 1944, when it was disbanded at Gandhi’s request.
In 1977, the first statue in the Kolkata Maidan dedicated to a woman revolutionary was that of Matangini Hazra.
