Name Benita Roy | ||
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Rajmata Benita Roy was a Bangladeshi aristocrat, litterateur, diplomat and minister. She was the forty-ninth Rani of the Chakma Circle in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. Roy served as the Rajmata during the kingship of Tridev Roy and Debashish Roy. She was a member of Bangladesh's first delegation to the UN General Assembly in 1972. She was a minister in the Bangladeshi government from 1975 to 1978.
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Family and the arts
Benita Sen was born in Calcutta to Barrister Saral Sen and Nirmala Devi Sen. Her father was a leading lawyer in the Bengal High Court in British India. She married Raja Nalinaksha Roy and became the forty-ninth Queen of the Chakma Circle. Benita was a close associate of Rabindranath Tagore, under whose patronage she launched the first literary magazine in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. Named Garika, it was the first publication of its kind to feature Chakma language poetry.
Liberation War and government
During the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971, Roy opened up the Rangamati Palace as a shelter for civilians.
In 1972, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman appointed her as a member of Bangladesh's first delegation to the UN General Assembly. The Pakistani government at the time sent a counter delegation led by her son Tridev Roy, who sided with the Pakistani establishment in the liberation war.
During the political and constitutional crises of the mid 1970s, Roy served in the Bangladeshi government as Minister of Land Administration and Land Reforms (1975-1976) and Minister of Relief and Rehabilitation (1976-1978).