WOMEN'S MOVEMENT 61
from the organization whose dominant membership was made up of male students, So, the first girl students' committee was set up within the Bengal Provincial Students' Federation (BPSF) with Kanak Dasgupta (now Mukherjee) as its secretary. This committee consisted of girls from the Communist Party, M N Roy's group and from the Soumyen Tagore group, reflecting the different trends within the student movement at that time. The girl students held an all-India meeting in 1940 at Lucknow, the first of its kind. This led to the formation of the Girl Students' Association, after which girl students' committees were formed in parts of Bengal, Bombay and Punjab. At the time of Patna conference of the Students' Federation in 1941, the Girl Students' Association had 50,000 members. Militant members of the Association laid the foundation of the women's movement in Bengal. In October 1942, soon after the legalization of the Communist Party, the Bengal Provincial Women's Front of the Communist Party was formed.
The Japanese attack led to the formation of a broad-based women's organization, the Mahila Atmaraksha Samiti (MARS) in Bengal. Mahila samitis (women's groups) which had already sprung up in towns and villages came together to form the MARS. Fighting against tremendous odds in the form of social barriers and anti-communist propaganda, communist women campaigned on the issues of food scarcity, protection from Japanese bombings and the defence of the country. Area mahila committees were formed through house-to-house visits and through the staging of dramas, baithaks (closed-door group meetings), and prabhat pheries (early morning singing groups). The MARS soon became a mass organization of women representing the peasantry, the working class and the middle class. It worked in cooperation with other committees like the People's Relief Committee and the Janaraksha Food Committee. The women's movement, at that time, was thus based on three issues—the defence of the country, the formation of a national government and protection of the people from starvation and death. Added to these were the problems of famine, and communal harmony. The organization was now spread over Barisal, Pabna, Sherpur, Calcutta, Chittagong, Dacca, Rajshahi, Howrah and Sylhet (Assam). Since the communist women were in the forefront, they often faced political attacks and hostility from the AIWC members of the Congress Mahila Sangh.
In September 1942 communist women started famine relief work among the working class and rural poor women in Calcutta, Pabna, Rangpur, Barisal and Dinajpur. This period also saw the first of the marches to the Assembly on the issues of food scarcity and