Background
Nilima was born on 11 January 1921 in Bagerhat, Khulna to Zamindar Prafulla Roy Chowdhury and Kusum Kumari Devi.
Nilima was born on 11 January 1921 in Bagerhat, Khulna to Zamindar Prafulla Roy Chowdhury and Kusum Kumari Devi.
University of Calcutta. University of Dhaka; Scottish Church College.
She is well known for her scholarship on Bengali literature but even more so for her depiction of raped and tortured women in the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War in her book Ami Birangona Bolchhi (I, the heroine, speaks). Nilima passed her school leaving examination and entrance level examinations from the Khulna Coronation Girl"s School in 1937 and from the Victoria Institution in Calcutta in 1939. Later she earned bachelor"s degrees in arts and teaching from the Scottish Church College, which was followed by an Master of Arts in Bengali literature from the University of Calcutta in 1943.
She would also earn a doctorate in Bengali literature from the University of Dhaka in 1959.
Nilima was a career academic. She taught in respectively the Khulna Coronation Girl"s School, Loreto House, the Victoria Institution, and finally at the University of Dhaka, where she was appointed as a lecturer in 1956, and as a professor of Bengali in 1972.
She also served as the chairperson of the Bangla Academy, and as the Vice Chairperson of the World Women"s Federation"s South Asian Zone.