Hannah Sen

Hannah Sen (born 1894 ; died 1957 ) was an Indian lawyer, teacher, psychologist and women's rights activist of the Jewish faith .

Life

Hannah was the daughter of Abhijit Guha, a Hindu lawyer who had converted to Judaism in Calcutta , and his wife, who came from a Baghdadi Jewish family. Like her sister Regina, Hannah was raised in the Jewish faith.

Even as a young woman she was noticed by the dean of the University of Calcutta, who supported her and enabled her to study law, which Hannah graduated with honors. However, she then chose a career as a teacher and, from 1922, became the first local woman to head a high school for girls in Bombay .

After marrying the Hindu doctor Sen, Hannah Sen came to London, where she received her teaching diploma, did research in psychology and came into contact with British women's organizations. She gave public speeches and lectures on the situation of women in the Indian caste system and campaigned for understanding for the freedom movement in India. This culminated in 1929 in the Indo-British Mutual Welfare League, which she founded . Sens's support for the Indian national idea was rejected by her Baghdadi family and those around them.

In 1932 she returned to India and founded the Lady Irwin College of Home Science in New Delhi , which she headed until 1947, and where she endeavored to build up Indian homeland and folklore. When the Indo-Pakistani War broke out, she started working in the refugee camps for the Ministry of Refugees, where she took care of uprooted women and children. After the end of the war in 1949 she represented India at international conferences, at UNESCO and the UNCSW .

Still associated with the Jewish community, she took part in the construction of the synagogue in New Delhi.

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b ^c Baghdadi Jewish Women in India
↑ Jael Silliman: Jewish Portraits, Indian Frames: Women's Narratives from a Diaspora of Hope , 2001.
↑ ^a ^b Antonius Lux (ed.): Great women of world history. A thousand biographies in words and pictures . Sebastian Lux Verlag , Munich 1963, p. 431.
↑ According to Lux (see above) it was the X-ray researcher Dr. SC Sen ; according to Silliman (see above) around Dr. Arun Sen
^ Mrinalini Sinha: Suffragism and internationalism: The enfrachisement of British and Indian women under an imperial state. In: Women's Suffrage in the British Empire: Citizenship, Nation and Race , 2000. page 233.

personal data
SURNAME	Sen, Hannah
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Indian suffragette
DATE OF BIRTH	1894
DATE OF DEATH	1957

[jwa-1] Baghdadi Jewish Women in India

[2] Jael Silliman: Jewish Portraits, Indian Frames: Women's Narratives from a Diaspora of Hope , 2001.

[Lux-3] Antonius Lux (ed.): Great women of world history. A thousand biographies in words and pictures . Sebastian Lux Verlag , Munich 1963, p. 431.

[4] According to Lux (see above) it was the X-ray researcher Dr. SC Sen ; according to Silliman (see above) around Dr. Arun Sen

[5] Mrinalini Sinha: Suffragism and internationalism: The enfrachisement of British and Indian women under an imperial state. In: Women's Suffrage in the British Empire: Citizenship, Nation and Race , 2000. page 233.