The Multiple Careers of Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay

Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay stands among very few freedom fighters who imagined 'Freedom' in transnational terms meaning to end exploitation everywhere and of every form. She espoused an expansive idea that will contribute to individual as well as collective growth and evolution. Very few Indians could match her in terms of her travels to countries across the world (England, Germany, Denmark, China, Japan, United States, Srilanka, etc), the relations she forged with leaders worldwide and the multiple fields she straddled in(nationalist politics, socialist politics, women’s movement, education, refugee rehabilitation, theatre, cinema, renewal of handicrafts). 

In this episode, I am in conversation with Nico Slate to talk about his recent biography ‘Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay: The Art of Freedom’. 

Nico Slate is a Professor of History and Head of the Department of History at Carnegie Mellow University. His research focuses on democracy and social movements in the United States and India. He is the author of six books: The Art of Freedom: Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay and the Making of Modern India (HarperCollins India and the University of Pittsburgh Press, 2024); Brothers: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Race (Temple University Press, 2023); Lord Cornwallis Is Dead: The Struggle for Democracy in the United States and India (Harvard University Press, 2019); Gandhi’s Search for the Perfect Diet: Eating with the World in Mind (University of Washington Press, 2019); The Prism of Race: W.E.B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, Paul Robeson and the Colored World of Cedric Dover (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); and Colored Cosmopolitanism: The Shared Struggle for Freedom in the United States and India (Harvard University Press, 2012).