Also known as Sana Wangol, M. K. Binodini Devi was born on February 6, 1922, the youngest of the five daughters of Maharaja Sir Churachand Singh, KSCI, CBE, and Maharani Dhanamanjuri Devi of Manipur. As the first child born after the coronation of Maharaja Churachand, M.K. Binodini Devi held a pre-eminent status among all the children of the royal household.

She was the first female graduate of Manipur. Her education was the result of being the daughter of Manipur’s first Western-educated monarch of Manipur and his queen, Maharani Dhanamanjuri, who assigned her English companion, Mrs. E. M. Jolly, as her daughter’s first English teacher. M. K. Binodini Devi got her formal English education at Pine Mount School and St Mary’s College, Shillong; became fluent in Bengali at Vidyasagar College, West Bengal; and was the first Manipuri woman to study art at Tagore’s Viswa Bharati University in Santiniketan.

As a writer with leftist leanings, M.K. Binodini Devi was close to the Communist leader Hijam Irabot, a cousin by marriage. She was essentially a writer of the people, a princess brought up in traditional court life who became a voice for the common man.

The vast majority of her literature is about the lives of common people and of the ordinary Manipuri. There is little hint, besides the grace and elegance of her prose, of her privileged upbringing in the understanding and empathy for ordinary people that come through in her collection of short stories called Nung'gairakta Chandramukhi (1965). She wrote over 50 song lyrics that became popular hits, many of them on patriotic themes, such as Lairabini Hainei Ima Nangbu Mina, Kanada Sinnani Phiral Ase and Sukna Mamla Guha Nungda. Her Nasunglangini He Ima became the anthem of the June 18 Uprising of 2001. Her 15 radio plays, like Imagi Ningthem which later was made into the internationally acclaimed film by Aribam Syam Sharma, and the plays in her collection Asangba Nongjabi (1966), are among the most loved of All India Radio’s broadcasts.

Imasi Foundation published her song lyrics as Isei Binodinigi (2014) and her radio plays On AIR: Khonjel Lila Binodinigi (2016) posthumously as part of its archival mission.

In her writing and in her arts and social activism, M. K. Binodini Devi is recognized as a pioneer of a non-doctrinaire thinking in Manipur that borrows little from conventional modernism and is rooted deeply in Manipur’s own traditions. Her works are notable for their strong, unconventional female characters and young women authors especially look to M. K. Binodini Devi, whom they call Imasi or Royal Mother, as a role mode. As a President and Founder of Leima Khorjeilol (LEIKOL), the women writers' circle of Manipur, she was also the guiding spirit for its publication of Nachom (2003), an anthology of women writers on love.

M.K. Binodini Devi was a writer whose literature was not just popularized by the people who read her books. A major active presence in the social sphere, she wrote prolifically in the daily newspapers of Manipur. Even her memoir essays on her elevated life in the palace, later collected and published as Maharaj Churachandgi Imung, made their first appearance in the daily newspaper Poknapham between 2002 and 2007. These essays and others like Bhasker Manisana: The Last Saheb,about an Anglophone cousin, Yaiskul Yai, a series of portraits of colorful characters in her neighborhood, and her essays on her international travels, later published as O Mexico! Travel Tales (2004) were avidly read by the public when they were serialized in the dailies.

M. K. Binodini Devi never ceased to write articles and numberless letters to the editors on contemporary events around her, from crimes against women and ransom kidnappings to the state of local rivers.

Few know that she had close personal relationships with the Governors and Chief Ministers and other ministers of the state and often made personal phone calls or wrote private letters to them on issues she felt needed addressing but were too delicate to be aired publicly.

Her concerns and interests went beyond her own Meitei community. She contributes articles to publications of the Nepali Sahitya Parishad of Manipur. Her essays on the Kabui Nagas of her father’s court, boldly broke the flow of her elegant prose to list all the names of the musicians of Keisamthong and Moirangkhom khuls lest they should be forgotten by future generations.

She has also held elected office as was a Member of the Legislative Assembly in Manipur and founded micro-financing for women in Manipur with the formation of Manipur’s first women’s cooperative bank in 1973.

As the first Secretary of the Jawaharlal Nehru Manipur Dance Academy, M.K. Binodini Devi pioneered the incorporation of the Manipuri martial arts called Thang-Ta into the canon of classical Manipuri Dance and drew traditional maibis into its teaching faculty.

An elegy to the brow-antlered deer, the essay was the basis for her script for Keibul Lamjao (1984), a dance-drama she wrote when she ran the Jawaharlal Nehru Manipuri Dance Academy. It was based on Thoibidu Warou’houee, her 1972 essay on the state’s wetlands and wildlife that ignited environmental awareness in Manipur. Her The Nong’goubi Project was a series of community actions taken in 2002 to clean up the Nambul River.

In 2016, Imasi Foundation revived her Loktak Isei (Ballad of Loktak, 1991), a dance-drama on the wetlands of Manipur, as part of its archival mission.