Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay (1903\u0026#8211;1988) was a prominent socialist, anticolonial and antiracist activist, champion of women\u0026#8217;s rights, and advocate for the arts and crafts. Defying the borders of gender, nation, and race, her efforts spanned social movements and played a leading role in the creation of modern India and the development of the Global South. In \u0026lt;i\u0026gt;The Art of Freedom\u0026lt;/i\u0026gt;, Nico Slate showcases new archival materials to document Kamaladevi\u0026#8217;s campaign to become the first woman elected to provincial office; her confrontation with Gandhi that helped open the salt protests of 1930 to women; her leadership of the All India Women\u0026#8217;s Conference and the Congress Socialist Party; her pioneering work with refugees during the Partition of India in 1947; the major impact she had on the arts in postcolonial India; and her own career on the stage and screen. Slate also draws upon underexplored details from her personal life, providing new context for her experiences as a child widow, her remarriage to the mercurial actor/poet Harin Chattopadhyay, and her divorce (among the first civil divorces in modern India). Taken as a whole, Kamaladevi\u0026#8217;s life offers a uniquely revealing vantage point on the making of modern India\u0026#8212;a vantage point that centers the interconnections between struggles often seen as distinct, and that reminds us of the full promise of Indian democracy.
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