page_title: Pritilata Waddedar
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: Pritilata Waddedar / Early life
caption_attribution_description: English: Scanned image of Pritilata's matriculation certificate from Dr. Khastagir Girl's high school
context_page_description: Pritilata Waddedar was a Bengali revolutionary nationalist from the Indian subcontinent who was influential in the Indian independence movement. After completing her education in Chittagong and Dhaka, she attended Bethune College in Kolkata. She graduated in philosophy with distinction and became a school teacher.
  Pritilata joined a revolutionary group headed by Surya Sen. She is known for leading fifteen revolutionaries in the 1932 armed attack on the Pahartali European Club, during which one person was killed and eleven injured. The revolutionaries torched the club and were later caught by the British police. To avoid arrest, Pritilata consumed cyanide and died.
context_section_description: Pritilata was born in a middle-class Vaidya (Baidya) family on 5 May 1911 in Dhalghat village in Patiya upazila of Chittagong (now in Bangladesh). Waddedar was a title conferred to an ancestor of the family who originally had the surname Dasgupta. Her father Jagabandhu Waddedar was a clerk in the Chittagong Municipality. Her mother Pratibhamayi Devi was a housewife. The couple had six children– Madhusduan, Pritilata, Kanaklata, Shantilata, Ashalata and Santosh. Pritilata was nicknamed Rani.
  Jagabandhu tried to arrange best possible education for their children. He got Pritilata admitted in Dr. Khastagir Government Girls' School of Chittagong. Pritilata was a meritorious student. A teacher in the school, whom students affectionately used called Usha Di, used stories of Rani Lakshmibai to inspire nationalism in her students. Kalpana Datta, a classmate of Pritilata, writes in the biography Chittagong Armoury Raiders– "We had no clear idea in our school days about our future. Then the Rani of Jhansi fired our imagination with her example. Sometimes we used to think of ourselves as fearless...". Arts and literature were Pritilata's favourite subjects. She passed out of Dr. Khastagir Government Girls' School in 1928 and in 1929, got admitted to the Eden College, Dhaka. In the Intermediate examinations, she stood first among all students who appeared in that year's examination from the Dhaka Board. As a student in Eden College, she participated in various social activities. She joined the group Sree Sangha, headed by Leela Nag, under the banner Deepali Sangha (Dipali Sangha).
caption: Matriculation examination certificate of Pritilata
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "150", "Image YResolution": "150", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS4 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2010:09:19 11:59:13", "Image ExifOffset": "164", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "302", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "5905", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "837", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "618"}