Devika Rani Choudhuri, usually known as Devika Rani, was an Indian actress who was active in Hindi films during the 1930s and 1940s. Widely acknowledged as the first lady of Indian cinema, Devika Rani had a successful film career that spanned 10 years.
Clark Blaise, OC is a Canadian-American author. He was a professor of creative writing at York University, and a writer of short fiction. In 2010, he was named an Officer of the Order of Canada.
Bharati Mukherjee was an Indian American-Canadian writer and professor emerita in the department of English at the University of California, Berkeley. She was the author of a number of novels and short story collections, as well as works of nonfiction.
Syama Prasad Mukherjee was an Indian politician, barrister and academician, who served as India's first Minister for Industry and Supply in Jawaharlal Nehru's cabinet. After falling out with Nehru, protesting against the Liaquat-Nehru Pact, Mukherjee resigned from Nehru's cabinet. With the help of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, he founded the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, the predecessor to the Bharatiya Janata Party, in 1951.
Sister Nivedita was an Irish teacher, author, social activist, school founder and disciple of Swami Vivekananda. She spent her childhood and early youth in Ireland. She was engaged to marry a Welsh youth, but he died soon after their engagement.
Helen Ann Richardson Khan, known mononymously as Helen, is an Indian actress and dancer. She has appeared in over 700 films, making her a prolific performer in Hindi cinema. She is known for her supporting, character roles and guest appearances in a career spanning seventy years.
Madhabi Chakraborty is an Indian actress. She won the National Film Award for Best Actress for her performance in the Bengali film Dibratrir Kabya. She has acted in some of the most critically acclaimed films in Bengali cinema and is considered one of the great actresses of Bengali cinema.
Bagha Jatin or Baghajatin, born Jatindranath Mukherjee, was an Indian independence activist.
Nabaneeta Dev Sen was an Indian writer and academic. After studying arts and comparative literature, she moved to the USA where she studied further. She returned to India and taught at several universities and institutes as well as serving in various positions in literary institutes. She published more than 80 books in Bengali: poetry, novels, short stories, plays, literary criticism, personal essays, travelogues, humour writing, translations and children's literature. She was awarded the Padma Shri in 2000 and the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1999.
Iti Mrinalini is a 2011 Indian drama film directed by Bengali filmmaker Aparna Sen. Sen collaborated with Ranjan Ghosh to write both the story and the screenplay. The film was produced by Shrikant Mohta and Mahendra Soni of Shree Venkatesh Films Pvt Ltd. Some critics consider it to be among her best work, ranking with Mr. and Mrs. Iyer and 36 Chowringhee Lane.
Kalpana Datta, also Kalpana Joshi, was an Indian independence movement activist and a member of the armed independence movement led by Surya Sen, which carried out the Chittagong armoury raid in 1930. Later she joined the Communist Party of India and married Puran Chand Joshi, then General Secretary of the Communist Party of India in 1943.
Sudipta Sengupta is a professor in structural geology in Jadavpur University, Calcutta, India, and a trained mountaineer. She is one of the first Indian women to set foot on Antarctica. She is also popularly known in India for her book Antarctica in Bengali and numerous articles and television interviews on geosciences. She has published extensively in international peer-reviewed journals of structural geology. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded her the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards for her contributions to Earth, Atmosphere, Ocean and Planetary Sciences in 1991.
Renuka Ray (1904–1997) was a noted freedom-fighter, social activist and politician of India.
Suniti DeviCIE was the Maharani of the princely state of Cooch Behar, British India.
Geeta Mukherjee was an Indian politician and social worker and a four times MLA from Panskura Purba, from 1967 to 1977. As a Member of Parliament, she was elected seven times from the Panskura constituency, from 1980 to 2000, in the Indian state of West Bengal being a Communist Party of India (CPI) candidate. She also remained the president of National Federation of Indian Women, women's wing of Communist Party of India. She led the demand for the legislature of 1/3rd reservation for women in parliamentary elections in India.
Everard Charles Cotes was an English-born entomologist who worked at the Indian Museum in Calcutta. He later became a journalist after marrying the famous Canadian journalist, novelist and playwright Sara Jeannette Duncan. He published a number of scientific books and papers on entomology as well as two more journalistic books resulting from his travels.
Alka Saraogi is an Indian novelist and short story writer in the Hindi language. She is a recipient of the 2001 Sahitya Akademi Award for Hindi for her novel Kalikatha: Via Bypass.
Ramkrishna Mukherjee was a scientist at the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, President of the Indian Sociological Society (1973–75) and recipient of the Indian Sociological Society's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005.
Perin Bharucha Chandra was an Indian author, communist, freedom fighter and peace activist. She played an integral role in promoting peace and peaceful conflict resolution throughout the Cold War era. She was born in Chaman, Balochistan to a Parsi family. Her father was Lt. Colonel Phiroze Byramji Bharucha, a British Indian Army Doctor and later Surgeon General of Lahore. A believer in Scientific Socialism, she married Romesh Chandra, a former chairman of the World Peace Council. Her son, Pheroze, is a journalist and her daughter-in-law, Chandita Mukherjee is a documentary filmmaker and activist.
Hema Malini: Beyond the Dream Girl is a biography by the journalist and film director Ram Kamal Mukherjee, edited by Nooshin Mowla. Divided into 23 chapters, it chronicles Hema Malini's life and career. The book describes her background and personal life, including her birth in Ammankudi in 1948, her early years in New Delhi, her studies in Madras, and her marriage to the actor Dharmendra—with whom she has two daughters —in 1980. Her 50-year-long acting, dancing, filmmaking, magazine editing, and political career are also detailed. The book was published by HarperCollins on 10 October 2017.
