[6] Karat was born on 17 October 1947 in Calcutta, West Bengal, India to Oshrukona Mitra, and Suraj Lal Das.

Theirs was an inter-community marriage fraught with familial opposition; Mitra’s father’s brother imposed a social ban on attending the wedding.

In response, she approached her mother’s family, and finally the ceremony took place at Indian nationalist Subodh Chandra Mallik’s home.

Later, she enrolled in the Welham Girls’ School in Dehradun, where she demonstrated strong athletic skills that helped her secure admission into New Delhi’s Miranda House at 16.

The Air India headquarters finally agreed with her and ever since then women working for the airline in London can exercise a choice of whether to wear a saree or a skirt as their uniform.

[9] At the same time, anti-war movements across Europe and the Atlantic were on the rise to protest the intervention of the United States in Vietnam.

For Karat, this was the turning point; “There was a whole range of questions,” she mentioned in 2005, “Why should a poor country like Vietnam be attacked by a big power like America?

She familiarised herself with Marxist literature, and began ideating ways to “bring back home that awareness in the Indian context.”[7] In 1971, she decided to leave her job and return to Calcutta.

[12] Karat is a prominent campaigner for gender issues and has fought within the party for adequate representation for women in its leadership.