Sucheta Kripalani

Sucheta Kripalani (née Majumdar; 25 June 1908[2] – 1 December 1974[3][4]) was an Indian
freedom fighter and politician. She was India's first female Chief Minister, serving as the
head of the Uttar Pradesh government from 1963 to 1967.
 Sucheta Kripalani

4th Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh

In office
2 October 1963 – 13 March 1967

Preceded by Chandra Bhanu Gupta

Succeeded by Chandra Bhanu Gupta

Member of Parliament (Lok Sabha)

In office
1967–1971

Preceded by N. Dandekar

Succeeded by Anand Singh

Constituency Gonda

MLA in Legislative Assembly of Uttar Pradesh

In office
1962–1967

Succeeded by Chandra Sekhar Singh

Constituency Menhdawal

Member of Parliament (Lok Sabha)

In office
1951–1961

Preceded by constituency established

Succeeded by Balraj Madhok

Constituency New Delhi

Member of Constituent Assembly of India

In office
9 December 1946 – 24 January 1950

Personal details
 Born 25 June 1908
Ambala, Punjab, British India
(present-day Haryana, India)

Died 1 December 1974 (aged 66)

New Delhi, India

Political party INC

Spouse(s) J. B. Kripalani[1]

Alma mater University of Delhi

Early life

She was born in Ambala, Punjab (now in Haryana) into a Bengali Brahmo family. Her
father Surendranath Majumdar, worked as a medical officer, a job that required many
transfers. As a result, she attended a number of schools, her final degree is a Master’s in
History from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi.

This was a time when the country’s atmosphere was charged with nationalist sentiments
and the freedom struggle was gaining momentum.

She was not born with a steely will and exemplary leadership qualities. Rather, she was a
shy child, self-conscious about her appearance and intellect, as she points out in her
book, An Unfinished Autobiography. It was the age she grew up in and the situations she
faced that shaped her personality. Sucheta recounts how, as a 10-year-old, she and her
siblings had heard their father and his friends talk about the Jallianwala Bagh massacre.
It left them so outraged that they vented their anger on some of the Anglo-Indian children
they played with, by calling them names.

Her exact words were- “I could understand enough to feel great anger against the British
[after hearing about the Jallianwala Bagh massacre]. We [Sucheta and her sister Sulekha]
vented out anger on some of the Anglo-Indian children who played with us, calling them
all kinds of names,”

Both Sucheta and her sister Sulekha were desperate to join India’s burgeoning
Independence movement. There is one particularly fascinating incident which Sucheta
narrates in her book. After the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, the Prince of Wales had visited
Delhi. Girls from her school were taken to stand near the Kudsia Garden to honour the
Prince of Wales. Despite wanting to refuse, both the sisters couldn't, and that left them
bitterly outraged at their apparent cowardice.

“This did not absolve our conscience from feeling shame. We both felt very small of our
cowardice,” she writes.[5]
Later, while a student of Kinnaird College in Lahore, her Bible class teacher had said some
disparaging things about Hinduism. Furious, Sucheta and her sister went home and asked
their father to help them out. He coached them on some religious teachings and, the next
day, the girls confronted their teacher with quotes from the Bhagavad Gita. The teacher
never referred to Hinduism in class ever again! [6]

She studied at Indraprastha College[7] and Punjab University before becoming a Professor
of Constitutional History at Banaras Hindu University.[8] In 1936, she married J. B.
Kripalani, a prominent figure of the Indian National Congress, who was twenty years her
senior. The marriage was opposed by both families, as well as by Gandhi himself,
although he eventually relented.[9]

Freedom movement and independence

Like her contemporaries Aruna Asaf Ali and Usha Mehta, she came to the forefront during
the Quit India Movement and was arrested by British . She later worked closely with
Mahatma Gandhi during the Partition riots. She accompanied him to Noakhali in 1946.
Mahatma Gandhi wrote on her -

" a person of rare courage and character who brought credit to

Indian womanhood"

She was one of the few women who were elected to the Constituent Assembly of India.
She was elected as the first woman CM of state of Uttar Pradesh from the Kanpur
constituency and was part of the subcommittee that drafted the Indian Constitution. She
became a part of the subcommittee that laid down the charter for the constitution of
India. On 14 August 1947, she sang Vande Mataram in the Independence Session of the
Constituent Assembly a few minutes before Nehru delivered his famous "Tryst with
Destiny" speech.[10] She was also the founder of the All India Mahilla Congress,
established in 1940.

Post-independence

Kripalani with (from left to right) Ulla Lindström, Barbara Castle, Cairine Wilson and Eleanor Roosevelt in 1949.
After independence, she remained involved with politics. For the first Lok Sabha elections
in 1952, she contested from New Delhi on a KMPP ticket: she had joined the short-lived
party founded by her husband the year before. She defeated the Congress candidate
Manmohini Sahgal. Five years later, she was reelected from the same constituency, but
this time as the Congress candidate.[11] She was elected one last time to the Lok Sabha in
1967, from Gonda constituency in Uttar Pradesh.[8]

Meanwhile, she had also become a member of the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly.
From 1960 to 1963, she served as Minister of Labour, Community Development and
Industry in the UP government.[8] In October 1963, she became the Chief Minister of Uttar
Pradesh, the first woman to hold that position in any Indian state. The highlight of her
tenure was the firm handling of a state employees strike. This first-ever strike by the state
employees continued for 62 days. She relented only when the employees' leaders agreed
to compromise. Kripalani kept her reputation as a firm administrator by refusing their
demand for a pay hike.

When Congress split in 1969, she left the party with Morarji Desai faction to form NCO.
She lost 1971 election as NCO candidate from Faizabad (Lok Sabha constituency). She
retired from politics in 1971 and remained in seclusion till her death in 1974.

References

1. "Sucheta Kripalani: Biography: Sucheta Mazumdar: Famous Sindhi Woman: Politician: Acharya
Kripalani | The Sindhu World" (http://thesindhuworld.com/sucheta-kriplani/) .
thesindhuworld.com. Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20180301225927/http://thesindhuw
orld.com/sucheta-kriplani/) from the original on 1 March 2018. Retrieved 1 March 2018.

2. S K Sharma (2004), Eminent Indian Freedom Fighters (https://books.google.com/books?id=pMfp

g66gIREC&pg=PA560) , Anmol Publications PVT. LTD., p. 560, ISBN 978-81-261-1890-8

3. "Archived copy" (http://www.sandesh.org/Story_detail.asp?pageID=1&id=48) . Archived (https://

web.archive.org/web/20110721153554/http://www.sandesh.org/Story_detail.asp?pageID=1&id
=48) from the original on 21 July 2011. Retrieved 20 October 2008.

4. "Archived copy" (https://web.archive.org/web/20120502201216/http://indiancoastguard.nic.in/in

diancoastguard/history/morehistory.html) . Archived from the original (http://indiancoastguard.
nic.in/indiancoastguard/history/morehistory.html) on 2 May 2012. Retrieved 6 June 2012.

5. "Meet India's First Woman CM" (https://www.thebetterindia.com/138291/india-first-woman-cm-fr

eedom-fighter-sucheta-kriplani/) . The Better India. 18 April 2018.

6. "Archived copy" (https://www.livehistoryindia.com/herstory/2019/01/08/sucheta-kriplani-crying-fr

eedom) . Live History India. Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20191203172524/https://w
ww.livehistoryindia.com/herstory/2019/01/08/sucheta-kriplani-crying-freedom) from the
original on 3 December 2019. Retrieved 19 June 2019.
 7. "Vital statistics of colleges that figure among India's top rankers" (http://indiatoday.intoday.in/stor
y/vital-statistics-of-colleges-that-figure-among-indias-top-rankers/1/233619.html) . India Today.
21 May 2001. Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20160807154130/http://indiatoday.intoday.i
n/story/vital-statistics-of-colleges-that-figure-among-indias-top-rankers/1/233619.html) from
the original on 7 August 2016. Retrieved 9 December 2014.

8. "Kripalani, Shrimati Sucheta" (http://164.100.47.132/LssNew/biodata_1_12/804.htm) . Lok

Sabha. Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20181225172433/http://164.100.47.132/LssNew/
biodata_1_12/804.htm) from the original on 25 December 2018. Retrieved 6 June 2012.

9. Usha Thakkar, Jayshree Mehta (2011). Understanding Gandhi: Gandhians in Conversation with
Fred J Blum. SAGE Publications. pp. 409–410. ISBN 978-81-321-0557-2.

10. "Constituent Assembly of India - Volume-V" (https://web.archive.org/web/20130904092038/htt

p://parliamentofindia.nic.in/ls/debates/vol5p1.htm) . Parliament of India. 14 August 1947.
Archived from the original (http://parliamentofindia.nic.in/ls/debates/vol5p1.htm) on 4
September 2013. Retrieved 18 January 2016.

11. David Gilmartin (2014). "Chapter 5: The paradox of patronage and the people's sovereignty". In
Anastasia Pivliavsky (ed.). Patronage as Politics in South Asia. Cambridge University Press.
pp. 151–152. ISBN 978-1-107-05608-4.

Political offices

Preceded by Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh Succeeded by

Chandra Bhanu Gupta 2 October 1963 – 13 March 1967 Chandra Bhanu Gupta

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