Autobiographies and Women Activists: A New Perspective of Open and Distance Learning

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Autobiography is more than a literary genre. It is no longer dedicated to record the lives of great men and events but turns out to be effective in exploring the perception of ordinary individual whose voices remained unnoticed and left for oblivion in mainstream history. It assumes particular significance in feminist studies which is committed to bring to light, the otherwise unheard voices of the other' that was obscured in the private domain and left in the dark, for years. With the slogan of 'Personal is Political', since the second wave feminist movement, efforts to highlight women in history and break away from the so called public- private divide gained a momentum thereby inaugurating a new era of research in social sciences.

Autobiographies and Women Activists is one such attempt where the personal narratives of the women members of the communist party unfurl a version that helps us to analyse the history of their time as a distinct frame of reference deviating from the dominant one.

Autobiographies are not mere reflection of memories or recollection of one's life. It becomes evident particularly for the women communists who guided by their strong sustained belief that their lives could not be secluded from the greater society and is tied by it to a great extent. So the influence of their political life outshine their personal entity and in doing so struggles to find a new meaning to life, politics and above all the communist party which to them, was an integral part of their soul, the very reason for their existence.

Based on primary data gathered through in- depth unstructured interview of some of the women activists, unpublished diary, party documents, pamphlets, memoirs, Governmental data, Assembly records, newspaper data etc. attempts have been made to redefine the conventional understanding of the communist discourse. Thus employing some of the feminist research methods Autobiographies and Women Activists makes an introspection into the 'other' version of the communist movement of Bengal through a gender lens.

Barnana Guha Thakurta (Banerjee), is an Assistant Professor of Political Science, in School of Social Sciences, Netaji Subhas Open University. After her graduation from Presidency College, she attained her post-graduate degree from University of Calcutta. She obtained her doctoral degree in the year 2013 from Rabindra Bharati University and the title of her thesis was Women in the Communist Movement of Bengal 1942-64. Her area of interest includes Gender Studies, Political Theory and Communist Movement.

Women, for long, have been neglected in mainstream history. Efforts have been given by the feminist school to bring the story of the 'silent other' so that a more comprehensive understanding of history is possible thereby enabling us for a better knowledge of reality.

The honest intention of feminism has been rewarded over the years, as, there has been much discussion and scholarly research on gender. One of the ways to enrich the research on gender is by relocating their voices through their personal account. Autobiography is one of the means to do so. In this respect endeavour initiated by Dr. Barnana Guha Thakurta (Banerjee) in her Autobiographies and Women Activists: A New Perspective of Open and Distance Learning is highly appreciated not only for its academic relevance but for the contemporary generation to know and cherish the achievement of the past, which in a way has changed the present conditions of women. Grants received from the UGC-DEB, New Delhi has been utilised to meet the cost of this publication.

New ideas on contemporary issues tend to shape and strengthen the mode of Open and Distance Learning. Gender, in this respect, is no exception. The need to integrate gender and open and distance learning has been strongly felt as it is required to achieve the much aspired equity in higher education. Both gender and open and distance learning break away from the conventional system in terms of challenging the hierarchies of knowledge thereby, accommodating more categories and adopting a flexible approach - more inclusive in nature.