Lolita Roy

Indian suffragists on the Women's Coronation Procession of 1911, including Lolita Roy on the left.

Lolita Roy (born in 1865), who played an active role in the social life of Indians in London, as well as in campaigns for women's suffrage in Britain and India.

Life Lolita Roy was born in Calcutta, India in 1865. in Calcutta, in about 1886, and the couple went on to have six children: Leilavati, Miravati, Paresh Lal, Hiravati, Indra Lal, and Lolit Kumar. and a member of the committee of the National Indian Association (founded by Mary Carpenter in 1870). organised a Women's Coronation Procession, using the coronation of King George V to demand the vote. Jane Cobden and Roy gathered a small Indian contingent in advance of the procession, Dr. Sumita Mukherjee, a historian of the British Empire and the Indian Subcontinent, has sought to challenge 'pre-existing ideas surrounding the suffrage movement particularly in relation to the public commemoration in 2018 of the Centenary of the Representation of the People Act which, in 1918, gave some women the right to vote in the UK'. She argues that 'Western popular beliefs have largely ignored the roles of women of colour in bringing about this change'.