Sarala Devi: The Forgotten Firebrand Who Still Lights the Way for India

Parambrahma Tripathy 

On August 9th, as India observes Kranti Divas commemorating the Quit India Movement, another revolutionary birth demands our attention – Sarala Devi, the iron-willed daughter of Odisha who redefined what it meant to be a woman in colonial India. Born in 1904 when women were confined to the shadows, Sarala blazed trails that still glow bright 120 years later. Her story isn't just history – it's a mirror reflecting our unfinished battles for equality, justice, and true freedom.  

This was a woman who shattered every glass ceiling of her era with the sheer force of her intellect and courage. At a time when most Indian women needed permission to step outside their homes, Sarala became Odisha's first female satyagrahi, its first woman legislator, and arguably India's first thoroughbred feminist writer. What makes her legacy explosive today is how contemporary her struggles remain – the fight against child marriage, the crusade for women's education, the demand for economic independence, and the battle to make politics inclusive. In an age when we debate women's safety and representation, Sarala's life offers not inspiration but a challenge – how far have we really come?  

Spinning thread into revolution

Sarala's journey began with small rebellions that would define her character. As a child in early 1900s Odisha, she refused to cover her head with her sari, a radical act that shocked her conservative zamindar family. Her sharp mind rebelled against religious dogma that declared women "the gateway to hell." Married at 14 to a progressive nationalist, she turned her home into a hub of freedom struggle, proving that the personal was always political. When Gandhi called for non-cooperation in 1921, Sarala didn't just join – she became the first Odia woman to wear khadi as a deliberate political statement, spinning thread into revolution.  

Her defining moment came during the Salt Satyagraha of 1930. While history remembers Gandhi's Dandi March, few recall that Sarala led Odisha's salt protests at Inchudi, facing British lathis and later imprisonment. Becoming Odisha's first female political prisoner wasn't just bravery – it was strategy. She understood the power of symbolic acts, how a woman defying the Raj would strike harder than any manifesto. Her six months in Vellore jail became a political education, where she taught herself languages and studied revolutionary texts, emerging more determined than ever.  

Political freedom is nothing without social revolution

What set Sarala apart was her razor-sharp understanding that political freedom meant nothing without social revolution. As the first woman elected to Odisha's legislative assembly in 1937, she didn't just occupy a seat – she weaponized it. Her fiery speeches pushed through bills against child marriage and dowry decades before these became national conversations. She fought for Odisha's first high court and university, knowing education was the real key to liberation. When appointed to Nehru's Planning Commission and Radhakrishnan's education committee, she brought the perspective of women who were being left out of India's development story.  

But Sarala's most enduring legacy lies in her pen. At a time when women's writing was limited to devotional poetry, she authored explosive feminist texts like "Narira Dabi" (Women's Rights) in 1934 – a book that discussed marital rape and economic independence with a clarity that would be radical even today. Her "Biswa Biplabini" profiled revolutionary women worldwide, creating a blueprint for Indian feminism. These weren't academic exercises – every word was a political act, a conscious effort to create what we now call "feminist consciousness."  

National freedom with gender justice

The tragedy is how much of Sarala's story remains forgotten. Her books are out of print, her political contributions reduced to footnotes, her name absent from mainstream feminist discourse. This erasure matters because Sarala represents a unique model of activism we desperately need today – one that combined grassroots mobilization with intellectual rigor, that linked national freedom with gender justice, that understood politics as both protest and policy-making.  

As we face new versions of old battles – regressive gender norms, shrinking spaces for dissent, tokenistic representation – Sarala's life asks tough questions. Would she accept an India where women are still unsafe in public spaces? Where political parties use women as props? Where education remains unequal? Her brand of feminism wasn't about privilege but power – the power to think, to dissent, to govern.  

On her 120th birth anniversary, we don't need hollow tributes but a serious engagement with her ideas. Reprinting her works. Teaching her in schools. Studying how she negotiated patriarchy within the freedom movement. Most importantly, recognizing that the revolution she began remains incomplete. The true measure of our progress won't be in hashtags but in answering one question: Would Sarala Devi recognize the India we're building as the one she fought for?  

The fire she lit still burns – in every girl who demands education, every woman who enters politics, every writer who challenges the status quo. Sarala Devi wasn't just ahead of her time – she's exactly what our time needs.

Parambrahma Tripathy is an author and Communication for Development professional with over 18 years of experience. He has worked with organizations like BBC Media Action, Landesa, The Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago, IPE Global, and Coceptual Media. He has been recognized with several awards, including the prestigious Laadli Media and Gender Sensitivity Award in 2022 and 2023, Best Lyricist of the Year in 2022, Dr. Radhanath Rath Fellowship for Journalism, Kalinga Literary Youth Award, Timepass Bestseller Award, Srujan India Youth Award, Utkal Sahitya Samaj Felicitation and Odia Yuva Stambha Samman(2023)