Mala Sen was a famous human rights activist and Bengali-Indian-British writer born on 3 June 1947. She was a great personality known for the civil rights and race relations system in London during the 1960s and 1970s. She was part of the British Black Panthers and British Asian movements, but later on, she became one of India’s famous Women’s Rights activism.
She has been popularly known for a book written by her named ‘India’s Bandit Queen: The true story of Phoolan Devi.’ Later on, a film was also made on this book. She had also abolished Death by Fire in the year 2001 against the oppression of women in rural India.
Mala Sen was a daughter to Lt-Gen Lionel Prateep Sen and Kalyani Gupta. Due to personal issues, her parents ended up with a divorce, and she was brought up by her father. Sen was bred in Bengali culture. She did her schooling at Welham Girl’s School located in Dehradun after she had studied home sciences from Mumbai at Nirmala Niketan College. After some years till she completed her studies there, she was taken to England for her further studies at Cambridge University.
When she arrived in England, she started working as a seamstress, which helped her to pay her bills. Gradually, she had an interest in race relations, so she fought for many Indians over there. She found how much discrimination was there in the East End of London. So she, along with her husband and some other activists, developed a Bengali Housing group, where all the Indians and Bangladeshis could live with their family safely.
As she was in London with Farrukh Dhondy, she had been an active member of the British Black Panthers movement. She wrote many books like ‘Here to Stay, Here to Fight-A Race Today,’ an anthology which was edited by Paul Field, Robin Bunce, Margaret Peacock, and Leila Hassan.
Mala Sen died at the age of 63 on 21 May 2011 at Tata Memorial Hospital situated in Mumbai. She was undergoing an operation of oesophageal cancer. At the time when she was dying, she was working on a new book about HIV in India. A prestigious moment was held for her in London only at the Nehru Centre in the month of July and the year 2011.