Ilina Sen

Ilina Sen was a human rights, trade union and feminist activist, as well as a teacher and author associated with the women's movement in India. She died on 9 August 2020, at the age of 69 after battling cancer for several years.

Career In 2004, Ilina started teaching at the Mahatma Gandhi Antarashtriya Hindi Vishwavidyalya in Wardha, where she joined as faculty in 2007. While at Wardha, she was the organising secretary of the Indian Association of Women's Studies (IAWS) conference in 2011 and then in Guwahati in February, 2014,

In 2009, Ilina Sen went back to academics and taught at the Mahatma Gandhi Antarrashtriya Hindi Vishwavidyalaya in Wardha, Maharashtra before moving to Mumbai to teach at the Advanced Centre for Women’s Studies at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences. She was a Senior Fellow in the Nehru Memorial Library from July 2013 to July 2015. Initially, Sen was involved with sustainable development to ensure the preservation of seed and rice varieties.

The couple spent many years working in rural Madhya Pradesh and were associated with an independent union of workers in the iron ore mining belt of the then Madhya Pradesh, called the Chhattisgarh Mines Shramik Sangatan (CMSS). who was sentenced to life imprisonment by a trial court of Chhattisgarh on the charges of sedition and assisting Maoists or Naxalites. She is also remembered for her work at the NGO, Rupantar which became a role model of alternative healthcare in remote areas. on women's participation in people's movements. She followed that with two books on Chhattisgarh, Inside Chhattisgarh – A Political Memoir and The Migrant Woman of Chhattisgarh.