Born in 1911 to a middle-class Bengali Baidya family, Waddedar’s path to militancy was paved with academic excellence. A brilliant student who topped the Dhaka Board during her intermediate years, she later moved to Bethune College in Calcutta to study philosophy. It was within the politically charged atmosphere of Calcutta’s campuses that her nationalist sentiments crystallized. Influenced by trailblazing women like Leela Nag and Bina Das, she realized that the liberation of the motherland was a duty that transcended gender. Upon returning to Chittagong as a headmistress, she entered the inner circle of Surya Sen’s Indian Republican Army. Despite initial skepticism from male comrades regarding the inclusion of women in armed combat, Waddedar proved her mettle through her logistical expertise and nerves of steel, often exploiting the fact that colonial authorities were less likely to search women.
The strategic importance of Waddedar’s role peaked following the 1930 Chittagong Armoury Raid, which had left the British administration on high alert. When the decision was made to attack the Pahartali European Club, Surya Sen specifically chose Waddedar to lead the mission—a deliberate move intended to humiliate the British by showing that Indian women were now at the vanguard of the revolution. Dressed in the disguise of a Punjabi man, Waddedar led her team under the cover of darkness, setting the club ablaze and engaging in a fierce firefight with armed British officers. During the chaotic retreat, she sustained a bullet wound. True to her revolutionary oath and determined to avoid the degradation of capture and interrogation, she consumed a pre-prepared dose of potassium cyanide. Police reports later confirmed that while she had been wounded by gunfire, it was the poison that claimed her life, making her one of the movement's first female martyrs.
In the pocket of her lifeless body, authorities discovered leaflets that served as her final manifesto. She wrote that her leadership was meant to signal to the world that Indian women were no longer lagging behind in the struggle for dignity. While her name has occasionally been relegated to the footnotes of mainstream history textbooks, her legacy remains etched in the physical and cultural landscape of both India and Bangladesh. From the bronze statues in Kolkata and Chittagong to cinematic portrayals on the silver screen, her story continues to inspire. The ongoing movement to transform the site of her final stand—the Pahartali European Club—into a museum reflects a broader effort to reclaim spaces of colonial humiliation and transform them into monuments of resistance. Pritilata Waddedar’s life was brief, but her refusal to yield to a racist empire remains a powerful testament to the role of women in the foundational architecture of Indian freedom.
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