Danbury, Connecticut, July 15: Leela Chitnis, a pioneer of early Indian cinema who used her roles to challenge India`s caste system, is dead. She was 93. An early star in Bollywood, Chitnis moved to the United States in the 1980s. She had lived for years at a Danbury nursing home, where she died of complications from a fall, her son said. Chitnis faced social disapproval when she took up acting in the 1930s to support her four children, her eldest surviving son, Manavendra Chitnis, told the news-times of Danbury. ``She was a feminist before the word was popular,`` Chitnis said.


``At the time, any Indian woman who went on the stage was considered a prostitute. But she was very defiant, very strong-willed.``


With her trademark arched eyebrows, Chitnis rose to fame in movies produced by Bombay Talkies, one of the country`s earliest Hollywood-style film studios. Many of the films were controversial, challenging aspects of Indian society. ``She was less a glamour actress than an intellectual one,`` said Jyotirmoy Datta, arts editor for the New York-based News-India Times. ``She often played an aristocratic matron in white widow`s clothes, so snobbish that she would barely acknowledge those of lesser station.``


In the 1930s and early 1940s, Chitnis costarred in a series of films opposite legendary actor Ashok Kumar.


Bureau Report