Ellen Roy

From Philosopedia

Ellen Gottschalk Roy (1904 - 1961)

The second wife of M. N. Roy, Ellen Roy - a German by birth - was one of the leaders in India of a radical or secular humanism.

She wrote Radical Democracy and, with Sib Narayan Ray, In Man’s Own Image.

While Roy was in prison, she provided him with books, and his letters to her from jail, subsequently published as Letters From Jail (1943) reveal his thoughts during those years. After his release from jail on 20 November 1936, she joined him in Bombay in March 1937 and the two were married that month.

On a 1955 visit to New York City, she was entertained by New York University Professor George Axtelle, spoke of her editorship of the weekly The Radical Humanist, and confided that she regretted having been unable to have voted for Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic Party nominee for President, whom she admired for his philosophic outlook.

Roy, who broke a story about the Communist (Chinese) invasion, was murdered soon afterwards. At one time the Communists were an important radical force in the country, and some suspected she had been murdered by them. However, a police investigation ruled at the time that she was murdered by a common thief attracted by her artificial jewelry.

Correspondence

Roy wrote about humanism to Warren Allen Smith in New York City in the 1950s.