Vidya Munsi

Vidya Munshi (née Kanuga; 5 December 1919 – 8 July 2014) was a journalist and leader of Communist Party of India. She has been called, arguably, the first woman journalist of India.

Early life Vidya Kanuga, later Munshi, belonged to a Gujarati family. She was born in Bombay (Mumbai) on 5 December 1919, to a lawyer father and social activist mother. She stood first among women in the school-leaving exams, and then joined the I.Sc. course in Bombay's Elphinstone College. She decided to set off for England alone to study medicine in 1938.

In 1943 while in England she and her colleagues held their first poster exhibition in Sheffield. The exhibition highlighted the trauma of the people of famine-affected Bengal. The money collected was sent to India for the victims of Bengal famine. It was attended by delegates from 67 countries. India was represented by Vidya Kanuga, Ketayun Boomla and AH Sader. M Raschid was observer. They attended on behalf of the FEDIND. Vidya Kanuga was the secretary of the commission on Participation of Youth in the Construction of a Stable and Lasting Peace at the WFDY conference.

The first Council meet of WFDY (19 July – 5 August 1946) held in Paris, formed a colonial Bureau. Vidya Kanuga was charged with responsibility of the Bureau. It decided to run a campaign that food should be sent to India as a first priority.

Vidya also attended the founding conference of Women's International Democratic Federation (WIDF) in Paris in 1945 along with Ela Reid, general secretary of Mahila Atma Raksha Samiti (MARS). She was asked to edit a Bengali paper ‘Chalar Pathe’ even when she did not know the language well. She had to learn it hard and quick.

She worked as the Calcutta correspondent of the weekly journal of Bombay the , from 1952 to 1962. She has been, arguably, called the first woman journalist of India.

She headed the board that published the CPI's mouthpiece, Kalantar for several years. and was an active member of the party. She headed State Women's Commission until 2000. She documented her life, the political upheavals and the shaping of women's movements of her time in great detail in a memoir, In Retrospect. War-time Memories and Thoughts on Women's Movement.