In Retrospect: War-time Memories and thoughts on Women’s Movement

Vidya Munsi was born on the 5th of December 1919, in Bombay in a Gujarati family, to a lawyer father and a social activist mother. She ranked first among girls and third among all students in her matriculation examination under the Bombay University, and studied up to Intermediate science at the Elphinstone College, Bombay. In 1938, she travelled to England to study medicine but discontinued her studies after three years and became a full-fledged activist with the communist movement and became the Secretary of the Federation of Indian Students' Societies in Great Britain and Ireland. She attended the first foundation conferences of the World-Federation of Democratic Youth in London, and the Women's International Democratic Federation in Paris and returned to India in 1948, as a representative of the World Federation of the Democratic Youth, on the Preparatory Committee of the South East Asia Youth Conference held in Calcutta, in February, the same year. She has been a member of the National Council of the Communist Party of India. She was President of the Pashchim banga Mahila Samity and a member of the Executive Committee of the National Federation of Indian Women. She worked as a member of the State Social Welfare Advisory Board for several years and was a member of the West Bengal Commission for Women for its first nine years. The book is a selective compilation of her writings over the last sixty years.