Matangini Hazra

Matangini was a poor widow from a small Bengali village who could not read or write. But when Mahatma Gandhi called for the Quit India movement in 1942, this 73-year-old grandmother put on a white sari, picked up the tricolour flag, and joined a huge march to the police station in Tamluk.

When British police opened fire, she kept walking forward with the flag held high, shouting 'Vande Mataram!' Even after being shot three times, she would not let the flag touch the ground.

Matangini Hazra (1870–1942), affectionately called 'Gandhi Buri' — 'Old Lady Gandhi' — was a peasant woman from Hogla village in Midnapur district, Bengal. Widowed at 18 and living in poverty, she was drawn to Gandhi's movements from the 1930s onwards.

She joined the Salt Satyagraha, was arrested for breaking colonial forest laws, and stopped wearing foreign cloth.

During the Quit India movement of August 1942, revolutionaries in Tamluk planned to seize local police stations. On 29 September 1942, Matangini led a procession of about six thousand supporters, most of them women, towards the Tamluk police station.

As British Indian police opened fire she pressed forward with the tricolour, was shot three times, and died shouting 'Vande Mataram,' still clutching the flag. Independent India honoured her with the first statue of a woman erected in Kolkata's Maidan (1977) and a stamp in 2002.