I suppose the it all started with a vision of a remarkable woman

Amodini Dasgupta was a beautiful Bengali woman with a most liberated mind, that lived within the confines of a traditional, conservative Hindu family. She was of the Baidya community, a small well defined group within Bengal's caste system. Baidyas are traditionally physicians and scholars, their origins lost in the mists of Time.
Amodini Dasgupta (nee Sen) came from the Bisharod family of Dhaka Bickrampur, in East Bengal (a region that is in current day Bangladesh). She was married to Anukul Chandra Dasgupta at the age of 12 years. Her mother having died early, leaving several small children, Amodini became a mother of sorts to her younger siblings, dealing with them as best as she could. As was the custom of those times, her marriage was arranged, with some reluctance on her father's part, as she was his favorite child, spirited and forthright.
Her father went on to marry again and have several more children. Eventually Amodini had 11 brothers and 3 sisters. And she was much loved (perhaps feared a bit) by all.
Even at the age of twelve, when she came of age and left to live in her husband's home,  denied a formal education, her quick mind absorbed, thought, solved problems and settled issues with great clarity and
precision. She was self taught and could tackle everything- from 'Chandipath to stitching shoes' (Reading sacred texts to cobbling shoes as a sign of extreme versatility is a Bengali adage)
As the years went by, she would decide that everyone of her daughters and her daughters in law, indeed every girl in her family, would be educated and be able to achieve self sufficiency in life.
No girl in her family would have to be at the mercy of any one. Every girl in the family should strive to have her own piece of property from which they could not be driven out, where the space from her footprints to the skies above, would be hers.


*Some say, Baidyas were Brahmins who were demoted from traditional Brahmanical duties of temple worship, because they chose to be healers of all, touching and mingling with the sick and the dying without regard to their customs of untouchability. Others would say that the Baidyas are the progeny of a Brahmin father and a Kayastha mother; the hybrid favoring the zeal of  Brahmanical learning coupling with the pragmatism of the business classes.
Whatever the origins, the Baidyas have, through time, remained a discreetly separate community with their share of free thinkers and reformers. Steadily, this circumscribed group has broken down barriers, assimilated other cultures, settled in other countries and have assumed new identities with just the characteristic few surnames as a reminder as to who they were and are.