Communist Leader Geeta Mukherjee Was an Early Champion of the Women's Reservation Bill

This article is part of a series by The Wire titled ‘The Early Parliamentarians’, exploring the lives and work of post-independence MPs who have largely been forgotten. The series looks at the institutions they helped create, the enduring ideas they left behind and the contributions they made to nation building.

Veteran communist leader Geeta Mukherjee was a prominent parliamentarian and social worker, respected for her lifelong commitment to peasants’ and women’s rights.

Mukherjee’s political career spanned about five and a half decades, and she was in the limelight for her role in campaigning for a Bill which proposed 33% reservation for women in the Lok Sabha and state assemblies. As chairperson of the Joint Select Committee on one-third reservation of seats for women in the Lok Sabha and assemblies (1996–1997), she is credited with pioneering work. This Joint Parliamentary Committee drafted the Women’s Reservation Bill.

Her frail constitution, compounded by open-heart surgery in the mid-1980s, did not prevent her from taking an active role in securing 33% reservation for women in elected bodies. She headed the CPI’s commission on women’s reservation, which proposed the legislation for it.

Popularly known as Geetadi, Mukherjee was elected to the Lok Sabha seven times from the Panskura constituency in West Bengal, serving from 1980 until her death in 2000, winning every election during that period.

She was the secretary of the Bengal Provincial Students’ Union from 1947 to 1951. She married Biswanath Mukherjee, the legendary communist leader from Bengal, in 1942.

Mukherjee participated in the freedom struggle and was imprisoned several times for participating in mass movements during both the pre-independence and post-independence periods. Later, she moved to Tamluk in the Midnapore district, where she worked tirelessly for the peasants’ cause. She was elected to the state assembly for the first time in 1967 and again in 1972.

Mukherjee was born on January 8, 1924, in Calcutta. She completed her Bachelor of Arts in Bengali Literature from Ashutosh College, Calcutta. While studying at Ashutosh College, she joined the freedom struggle as a student activist with the All India Students’ Federation and became a member of the CPI at the age of 15.

She began her political career as a student leader in Jessore (now in Bangladesh) in the early 1940s and was the general secretary of the Bengal Provincial Students’ Federation. She was first elected as a Member of the State Council of the CPI in Bengal in 1946. She remained the secretary of the Bengal Provincial Students’ Federation from 1947 to 1951. From 1978 onward, she was a member of the CPI’s National Council. Three years later, she joined its National Executive Committee. She also became the deputy leader of the party in the Lok Sabha.

Mukherjee actively participated in the post-war students’ and workers’ upsurge against the British during the barricade fighting in the city on Rashid Ali Day. She also took part in the Posts and Telegraph strike in 1946 and addressed a rally in Calcutta when she was barely 22 years old.

When the CPI was banned by the Congress government in 1948, she and her husband Biswanath were arrested and detained without trial for six months in Presidency Jail. After her release, she went underground for about three years and resurfaced when the court declared the ban ultra vires.

Mukherjee was elected as an MLA four times from Panskura Purba, serving from 1967 to 1977 as a CPI candidate. She also served as president of the National Federation of Indian Women, the women’s wing of the CPI.

She was a member of the National Commission on Rural Labour, the National Commission on Women, the National Children’s Board, the Press Council, and the vice-president of the National Federation of Women. Additionally, she was a secretariat member of the Women’s International Democratic Federation in Berlin.

Beyond politics, Mukherjee wrote a few books for children, including Bharat Upakatha (Folktales of India), Chotoder Rabindranath (Tagore for Children) and He Atit Katha Kao. She also translated Bruno Apitz’s 1958 classic Naked Among Wolves into Bengali.

On her death on March 4, 2000, following a heart attack, CPI(M) leader Somnath Chatterjee, while paying tribute, fondly remembered her and said, “It is almost impossible to believe that Geetadi is no longer with us and that she will not be sitting here. What she has done for the cause of women’s empowerment should be written in letters of gold. She made the country aware of the needs of women. Her attempts to get the Women’s Reservation Bill passed in this House and in the Parliament of India were not merely political decisions. She genuinely believed, as many of us do, that the Bill, if passed, would give women in our country a real opportunity to come forward and take greater and more active interest in political life, which would result in a better India and a better future for us.”

The president, prime minister, vice-president, and Lok Sabha speaker were among the many leaders who mourned her death and paid rich tributes to her memory. They recalled her affable personality, simplicity, honesty, commitment and sincerity.

Then leader of the opposition Sonia Gandhi, in her tribute, said: “With the passing away of Shrimati Geeta Mukherjee, the country has lost a most respected figure in national politics and Parliament has lost one of its most active, loved, and admired members. Her dedication, commitment, and personal integrity have been an inspiration to this House for the past 20 years. A petite figure, she housed an indomitable spirit, a spirit of remarkable courage and determination evident even in her early years when she participated in the struggle for freedom and was arrested and imprisoned several times. Her passionate belief in secularism, her crusade for social justice, her fight against poverty, and her commitment to women’s causes were hallmarks of her work, both in West Bengal, where she served in the Legislative Assembly for ten years, and later in Parliament. The fact that she never lost an election is an eloquent tribute to the exemplary manner in which she served her party and her constituency.”

Her senior colleague and veteran parliamentarian Indrajit Gupta also paid glowing tributes, saying, “She was my sister. Over all these years we worked together, I find it difficult to think of her only as a politician or leader. She was a heart patient. She had undergone major heart surgery, and recently, doctors were pressing her to return to the hospital for a proper check-up. But she never listened, and we could not persuade her. So, this fatal disease overtook her. My party has suffered a grievous blow, and the House has suffered a grievous blow. But death is inevitable; none of us can escape it. We should all try our best to live up to the standards she set in this House.”

Mukherjee is still remembered for her austerity, simplicity and deep commitment to her constituency, which she regularly visited and nurtured, often ignoring doctors’ advice. Even after being elected MP seven times, she lived in a modest two-room flat in Kolkata and Delhi’s Vitthalbhai Patel House.

Qurban Ali is a trilingual journalist who has covered some of modern India’s major political, social and economic developments. He has a keen interest in India’s freedom struggle and is now documenting the history of the socialist movement in the country.