Kanaklata Barua Led an Unarmed Procession of About 5,000 People to Hoist the National Flag at Gohpur Police Station on 20 September 1942, and the Indian Coast Guard Has Named Two Patrol Vessels After Her

On 20 September 1942, Kanaklata Barua led an unarmed procession of about 5,000 people to the Gohpur police station in Darrang district, Assam, to hoist the national flag during the Quit India movement. She is usually put at 17. Police fired on the procession and she was killed. The Indian Coast Guard commissioned a fast patrol vessel, ICGS Kanaklata Barua, at Kolkata on 30 September 2020, and Assam observes 20 September as Swahid Diwas, the day of the martyrs.

The record is thinner than the fame. The fullest official text is her entry in the Ministry of Culture’s Dictionary of Martyrs. The Government of India’s own report on Assam for September 1942 survives mainly through a historian’s summary, and the rest is newspapers and two papers by college teachers. Where they disagree about her age, the flag and the death of Mukunda Kakati, each version is named below.

A farmer’s daughter, orphaned at 13

Kanaklata Barua was born on 22 December 1924 at Barangabari village in the Gohpur sub-division, to Krishna Kanta Barua and Karneshwari Barua, according to ThePrint and The Better India. Her father farmed. Gohpur was then in Darrang district. The Dictionary of Martyrs and ThePrint place it in Sonitpur, and the Sentinel put Barangabari in Biswanath district in 2020.

Guptajit Pathak of Kanya Mahavidyalaya in Guwahati writes in a 2016 paper that her mother died when she was five and her father when she was 13. She left school after the third standard to look after her younger siblings.

Assam in September 1942

The All-India Congress Committee passed the Quit India resolution in Bombay on 8 August 1942, and the national story is told in our account of the movement. In Assam, Siva Nath Pait of Silapathar College writes, Congress leaders including Gopinath Bordoloi and Siddhinath Sarma were arrested, and hartals (shutdowns of shops and offices), strikes and demonstrations followed in every district.

Arun Chandra Bhuyan’s 1975 study, which draws on the government’s fortnightly reports, lists what the crowds did through August: railway track removed between Kampur and Jamunamukh and at Puranigudam, post offices and railway stations attacked, road bridges damaged. On 18 September police fired on a meeting at Berampur near Nowgong. Bhuyan counts three dead there, and Pait four.

Two volunteer corps ran alongside the protests. The Shanti Bahini, the Peace Force, guarded villages at night and kept order at demonstrations, according to Live History India. The Mrityu Bahini, which ThePrint translates as a death squad, was made up of volunteers ready to be shot while hoisting the flag at police stations. Accounts differ on who organised it. The Better India credits Pushpalata Das, Live History India credits Jyoti Prasad Agarwala, and Pait lists Chandraprova Saikiani, Pushpalata Das and Amalprova Das as the leaders of its women’s wing.

ThePrint and The Better India report that the Bahini admitted members aged 18 and over, and that Barua was taken in although she was younger and was made leader of its women’s cadre.

The procession to Gohpur thana

The procession was bound for the thana, the police station, at Gohpur. ThePrint and The Better India put the crowd at nearly 5,000. Bhuyan’s summary of the government’s report for the fortnight also gives five thousand, and says the crowd made an assault on the station. Pait says it set out from Chaiduar.

The Dictionary of Martyrs gives the fullest account of what followed. It says Barua, with ten girls, was at the head of the procession carrying the Tricolour. When the officer in charge stopped them, she asked that the women alone be let into the compound to hoist the flag and leave. He refused and warned, “If you advance one step more, we will fire.” The procession went on, and a single shot, fired at once, hit her in the chest. As she fell, the entry says, she told the police that she would do her duty and they should do theirs.

ThePrint and The Better India place that exchange earlier, as her reply to the officer before she marched on. Pathak, Live History India and The Better India name the officer as Rebati Mahan Som.

Bhuyan’s summary of the report counts two dead at Gohpur, including a girl. ThePrint and Pathak add that a villager, Mukunda Kakoti, took the flag from her and was shot in turn. The Dictionary’s entry for Mukundaram Kakati, as it spells his name, does not mention a handover. It says the first shot killed a young girl and the second went through the shoulder of Khargeswar Baru and struck Kakati’s head. Pait adds a third casualty, Hemkanta Barua, who was seriously injured and died later.

What the Dictionary says about Mukunda Kakati

The Dictionary says Kakati did not die on the spot. It says the people carrying him were stopped on the road by Mr Munroe, the manager of the Daflagarh tea estate, who had them bring Kakati back a mile on foot and then drove him in his car to the garden. It adds that the local board doctor, who was present at the firing, gave no first aid and disappeared when people went to call him. The entry concludes that Kakati died more from wilful neglect than from the bullet wound, and it cites archive files for the account. Pait also says Kakati died later.

Dhekiajuli, the same day

Dhekiajuli, in Sonitpur district, had its own firing on 20 September. Bhuyan’s summary of the government report says a crowd of two thousand tried to hoist the Congress flag on the police station there, and that police fired, killing eight and injuring twelve, three of the dead being women. The Dictionary’s entry for Tileswari Koch, one of those killed there, says processionists had slipped in and hoisted the flag on the thana before the firing. The Sentinel and DY365 call her Tileswari Barua, and DY365 reports her age as about 12.

Later counts of the dead are higher than the 1942 report’s. The Sentinel gave 13 and DY365 gave 15, both in reports of September 2026.

Where the accounts differ

On her age, the Dictionary says 16, ThePrint, Pathak and Live History India say 17, and Pait says 18. A birth date of 22 December 1924 makes her 17 on 20 September 1942, a little over three months short of her 18th birthday, which fits the middle figure. Pathak gives her birth as 22 December 1926 but also calls her 17, and the two do not agree.

Live History India says the volunteers knew of the hanging of Kushal Konwar. The Dictionary dates his arrest for the train derailment at Sarupathar to 9 October 1942 and his hanging in Jorhat jail to 16 June 1943, and Pait gives 15 June. Both dates come after Gohpur.

A Coast Guard ship and a memorial day

The Coast Guard has named two vessels for her. NorthEast Now and ThePrint report that an earlier fast patrol vessel of the name was decommissioned in 2017 after 20 years. NorthEast Now adds that the Coast Guard names its ships after women freedom fighters.

The second ship was delivered by Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers, the Kolkata yard that also launched INS Shreyas in October 2026, on 9 June 2020, the yard’s 105th warship, according to its release. The Ministry of Defence’s Additional Secretary commissioned it by video link on 30 September 2020. It is the fifth and last in a series of five, after ICGS Priyadarshini, Annie Besant, Kamala Devi and Amrit Kaur. The yard gives its length as 50 metres, its displacement as about 308 tonnes, its top speed as 34 knots and its endurance as more than 1,500 nautical miles, with a 40/60 gun as main armament. It was designed in-house by the yard.

Two other women of 1942 have their own accounts on tuput: Matangini Hazra, shot while carrying the Congress flag at Tamluk on 29 September, and Aruna Asaf Ali, who raised it at Gowalia Tank on 9 August.

On Sunday 20 September 2026, the 84th anniversary of the firings, the Gohpur Co-District Administration lit lamps at the joint statues of Barua and Kakati on the bank of the Borpukhuri and at her statue at Barangabari, where saplings were planted in her memory, according to the Sentinel. DY365 reports that her family also lit lamps at her cottage in Gohpur, where a glass she drank from and the riha, the traditional Assamese garment, she wore are still kept.