Subodh Roy (1916–2006) was the youngest participant (aged 14) in the Chittagong Armoury Raid in 1930, led by Surya Sen (Masterda). Affectionately called Jhunku, Roy took part in the famous battle on Jalalabad Hill, where the revolutionaries confronted the armed might of the British Empire. He was eventually captured, tortured, tried and sentenced, and was among the first batch of prisoners deported to the Cellular Jail in Port Blair in 1932.
In jail, he got introduced to Communist ideas and literature, and joined the Communist Party of India in 1939 after his release. When the CPI split in 1964, he went with the CPI(M), and became a member of the West Bengal State Committee.
Subodh Roy made a major scholarly contribution to the history of the communist movement in India, and is the editor of Communism in India: Unpublished Documents, 1934-45 (Calcutta 1976).
G.S. Jayasree is Reader in English and Director of the Centre for Women’s Studies at the University of Kerala, Thiruvananthapuram, and is Editor of Samyukta: A Journal of Women’s Studies.
Sarah Pinto is Professor of Anthropology at Tufts University, and author of Where There is no Midwife: Birth and Loss in Rural India (2008), and Daughters of Parvati: Women and Madness in Contempor
Jagtar Singh, journalist and author, is one of the foremost authorities on Punjab, its politics and society, and particularly the politics of the Shiromani Akali Dal and Shiromani Gurudwara Praband
Pradip Baksi (1948-), translator and editor of the first Bengali and English editions of these manuscripts (1994) and, of some texts of Rammohun Roy (1998), and of Karl Marx (1999) on India.
