Abala Basu O Sei Samay by Damayanti Dasgupta [Hardcover]

She was not just the wife of Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose; beyond that, "Lady" Abala Bose had a distinct identity that has often been overlooked by today’s Bengali society. One hundred and fifty years ago, when it was a rare event for girls to attend school in this country, she went to Madras from Kolkata to study medicine. She was the first Bengali woman to pass the First L.M.S. (Licentiate of Medicine and Surgery) course. Under her leadership, the Brahmo Girls' School became one of the best educational institutions in undivided Bengal. She founded the Women’s Education Society to promote girls' education in the towns and villages of Bengal, and also established Vidyasagar Bani Bhavan to make destitute and widowed women self-reliant. Through her active initiatives, many educational centers were set up across undivided Bengal. The most enlightened segment of contemporary Bengali society, the Brahmo Samaj, honored her by appointing her as the first female president. The wife of the absent-minded scientist Jagadish Chandra, this woman was an inseparable part of the 19th-century Bengali Renaissance and the women’s liberation movement. The life story of this remarkable woman, who was also the elder sister-in-law of Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das and another "Bouthan" (sister-in-law) of Rabindranath Tagore, is depicted within the golden period of Bengali history.