Author:

Illora Sharma

State-Aided College Teacher
Sonada Degree College
Darjeeling,West Bengal,India

Email: illorasharma@gmail.com

Abstract: Maya Devi Chhetry was the first female Member of Parliament from Bengal to be elected to the first Rajya Sabha in post independent India. This paper reflects on the life and times of Maya Devi Chhetry from Kurseong, then an obscure town in West Bengal, who married at a tender age of thirteen and became a mother at an age of fifteen and how she made a foray into politics at a young age and her rise in the ranks of the Congress party and eventually representing her party in the first Rajya Sabha in 1952. She achieved all this even though the hill society was patriarchal and culturally, socially and politically backward at that time. This paper will be focused on the struggles faced by her being a woman in a society dominated by men, her involvement in the freedom movement, her contribution for the upliftment of the Gorkha society and her political achievements.

Key Words:Achievements, Congress Party, Politics, Society,Struggle, Woman etc.