"The immolation of a daughter of India": Bina Das’s murder attempt and the discourse on Indian womanhood

On the 6th of February 1932, Bina Das, a twenty-one-year-old student of the Calcutta University, attempted to assassinate the Bengal Governor Sir Stanley Jackson during the convocation ceremony in retaliation to a recent wave of colonial violence. Few days later, during her trial, Bina read out in court a statement in which she proclaimed herself guilty.
Bina Das’s statement has been broadly analyzed by historiography, which had addressed in particular Bina’s use of the traditional gender-related tropes of both the colonial and the nationalist discourses. Was it a way to counterbalance Bina’s transgression of the accepted bhadramahila boundaries with sexual conservatism, or to re-write her violent act into the traditional discourse on Indian womanhood?
By comparing Bina Das’s statement with her defence counselor’s argument, which too used similar gendered tropes, this paper will contend that her plea was a way for Bina to fully recover the agency of her act.