Leila Kabir
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A brief biography
Rahul Ramagundam, May 18, 2025: The Times of India
New Delhi : On the morning of July 22, 1971, to the tune of “Amar Sonar Bangla,” the immortal song by Rabindranath Tagore that would later become the national anthem of the newly created Bangladesh, Leila Kabir and George Fernandes were pronounced husband and wife by a Quaker couple. In the evening, they held a reception for their guests. Mainstream editor Nikhil Chakravartty, who couldn’t attend the reception due to medical reasons, sent a gift: a book titled “Poems by Faiz.” It was a collection of poems about love. The strange thing about love is that you often know nothing of it until you possess the object of your affection
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On Thursday, curtains fell on the life story of the unusual couple as Leila succumbed to cancer at the age of 88. George, a firebrand trade unionist who later became a Union minister, had passed away in January 2019.
She was the only daughter of Humayun Kabir, a man of many parts: educationist, writer and minister in the Nehru and Shastri governments. Her mother Shanti Dasgupta was a Tagore disciple and a Brahmo. In her younger days, Leila had been deprived of the warmth of a home, given her parents’ excessive involvement with social and political causes. But she grew up to be a warm person and a sensitive soul.
Leila Kabir studied nursing at Oxford and taught it at the College of Nursing, Delhi University. She would later join the Red Cross and would get involved with the refugees pouring out of East Pakistan. After the marriage, Leila was keen to give up her Red Cross job. George was keen as well to keep her engaged, and she was brought in as the publisher of Pratipaksh, a journal he had recently founded.
Leila and George spent two 10-year periods together, separated by a 25-year estrangement. The first decade after their wedding was marked by George’s political activism, which was defined by his rebellious streak. She bore the brunt of his activism and was often unhappy in her marriage, regularly expressing her frustration. She was particularly discontented with George going underground during the Emergency, feeling he was unconcerned for their toddler.
To protect herself and their child, she left for the USA where her brother lived. But once George was caught by the police in June 1976, she took up the gauntlet for him, travelling to European capitals and canvassing support for her husband. She emerged as an indomitable woman who appeared as a witness before the US Congress, which was discussing human rights violations in India. She presented with a heavy heart ‘my husband’s case which is intertwined with the destiny of India’.
The second decade that they spent together was more poignant, as when she brought him forcefully to her to live cloistered in her house, he had been taken over by the Alzheimer’s, had lost his memory. It was to be the last decade of his life, that he mostly spent bedridden, being watched through a close-circuit TV by Leila. They were finally together, ironically as strangers.
Their only child, Sean, is an investment banker in the US. He was by his mother’s side when she passed away. ( Rahul Ramagundam is the author of the biography, The Life and Times of George Fernandes )
