Devika Rani Choudhuri (30 March 1908 – 9 March 1994), usually known as Devika Rani, was an Indian actress who was active in Hindi films during the 1930s and 1940s. She was the first recipient of the Dadasaheb Phalke Award. Widely acknowledged as the first lady of Indian cinema, Devika Rani had a successful film career that spanned 10 years.
Born into a wealthy, anglicized Indian family, Devika Rani was sent to boarding school in England at age nine and grew up in that country. In 1928, she met Himanshu Rai, an Indian film-producer, and married him the following year. She assisted in costume design and art direction for Rai's experimental silent film A Throw of Dice (1929). Both of them then went to Germany and received training in film-making at UFA Studios in Berlin. Rai then cast himself as hero and her as heroine in his next production, the bilingual film Karma, made simultaneously in English and Hindi. The film premiered in England in 1933, elicited interest there for a prolonged kissing scene featuring the real-life couple, and flopped badly in India. The couple returned to India in 1934, where Himanshu Rai established a production studio, Bombay Talkies, in partnership with certain other people. The studio produced several successful films over the next 5–6 years, and Devika Rani played the lead role in many of them. Her on-screen pairing with Ashok Kumar became popular in India.
Following Rai's death in 1940, Devika Rani took control of the studio and produced some more films in partnership with her late husband's associates, namely Sashadhar Mukherjee and Ashok Kumar. As she was to recollect in her old age, the films which she supervised tended to flop, while the films supervised by the partners tended to be hits. In 1945, she retired from films, married the Russian painter Svetoslav Roerich and moved to his estate on the outskirts of Bangalore, thereafter leading a very reclusive life for the next five decades. Her persona, no less than her film roles, were considered socially unconventional. Her awards include the Padma Shri (1958), Dadasaheb Phalke Award (1970) and the Soviet Land Nehru Award (1990).
Background and education
Devika Rani was born as Devika Rani Choudhury on 30 March 1908 in Waltair near Visakhapatnam in present-day Andhra Pradesh, into an extremely affluent and educated Bengali family, the daughter of Col. Dr. Manmathnath Choudhury by his wife Leela Devi Choudhury.
Devika's father, Colonel Manmatha Nath Chaudhuri, scion of a large landowning zamindari family, was the first Indian Surgeon-General of Madras Presidency. Devika's paternal grandfather, Durgadas Choudhury, was the Zamindar (landlord) of Chatmohar Upazila of Pabna district of present-day Bangladesh. Her paternal grandmother, Sukumari Devi (wife of Durgadas), was a sister of the nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore. Devika's father had five brothers, all of them distinguished in their own fields, mainly law, medicine and literature. They were Sir Ashutosh Chaudhuri, Chief Justice of Calcutta High Court during the British Raj; Jogesh Chandra Chaudhuri and Kumudnath Chaudhuri, both prominent Kolkata-based barristers; Pramathanath Choudhary, the famous Bengali writer, and Dr. Suhridnath Chaudhuri, a noted medical practitioner. The future Chief of Army Staff, Jayanto Nath Chaudhuri, was Devika's first cousin: their fathers were brothers to each other.
Devika's mother, Leela Devi Choudhury, also came from an equally educated family and was a niece of Rabindranath Tagore. Thus, Devika Rani was related through both her parents to the poet and Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore. Her father, Manmathnath Choudhury, was the son of Sukumari Devi Choudhury, sister of Rabindranath Tagore. Devika's mother, Leela Devi Chaudhuri, was the daughter of Indumati Devi Chattopadhyay, whose mother Saudamini Devi Gangopadhyay was another sister of the Nobel laureate. Thus, Devika's father and maternal grandmother were first cousins to each other, being the children of two sisters of Rabindranath Tagore. Nor was this all: Two of Devika's uncles (Chief Justice Sir Ashutosh and Pramathanath) were married to their first cousins (mother's brother's daughters), the nieces of Rabindranath Tagore: Prativa Devi Choudhury, wife of Sir Ashutosh Choudhury, was the daughter of Hemendranath Tagore, and Indira Devi Choudhury, wife of Pramathanath Choudhury, was the daughter of Satyendranath Tagore. Devika thus had extremely strong family ties to Jarasanko, seat of the Tagore family in Kolkata and a major crucible of the Bengali Renaissance.