Bhikaiji Cama: Mother of the Indian Revolution

On 22 August 1907, a Parsi woman stood up at a socialist congress in Stuttgart. She raised a flag that no government had approved.

She was Bhikaiji Cama. She spent about thirty years in exile, and she ran a revolutionary press from Paris.

1Who was Bhikaiji Cama?

She grew up rich and chose a hard road.

• She was born on 24 September 1861 in Bombay.
• Her family was large, rich and Parsi.
• Her parents were Sorabji Framji Patel and Jaijibai Sorabji Patel.
• Her father was a lawyer by training and a merchant by trade.
• She studied at Alexandra Girls’ English Institution.
• She was a diligent child with a gift for languages.
• She also played cricket well.
• On 3 August 1885 she married Rustomji Cama.
• He was a rich, pro-British lawyer who wanted a career in politics.
• The marriage was not happy.
• Her husband’s family was loyal to the British.
• She spent most of her time on charity and social work.

2How did the plague change her life?

Nursing the sick led her away from India.

• In October 1896 famine and then plague hit the Bombay Presidency.
• She joined a team of nurses working out of Grant Medical College.
• They cared for the sick and later inoculated the healthy.
• She caught the plague herself, but she survived.
• She was left very weak.
• Her illness pushed her towards a new life abroad.
• In 1902 she was sent to Britain for medical care.
• She meant to return to India in 1904.
• Instead she met Shyamji Krishna Varma in London.
• He was known for fiery nationalist speeches in Hyde Park.

3How did she join the London circle?

She became part of the early nationalist network abroad.

• Varma introduced her to Dadabhai Naoroji.
• Naoroji led the British Committee of the Indian National Congress.
• He strongly criticised British economic policy in India.
• She worked as his private secretary.
• She also campaigned with Bipin Chandra Pal, Lala Hardayal and V. D. Savarkar.
• In February 1905 she helped back Varma’s Indian Home Rule Society.
• She was warned that she could not return to India unless she stopped.
• She refused.
• She chose exile over silence.
• That same year she moved to Paris.

4What happened at Stuttgart?

She raised a flag of Indian independence on foreign soil.

• On 22 August 1907 she attended the Socialist Congress at Stuttgart, Germany.
• Hemchandra Kanungo went with her.
• She described the terrible effects of famine in India.
• She appealed for human rights, equality and freedom from British rule.
• She unfurled what she called the Flag of Indian Independence.
• She was the first person to hoist an Indian flag in a foreign country.
• Her flag was a change to the Calcutta Flag.
• Its green, yellow and red bands stood for Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism.
• It carried Vande Mataram, a crescent, a sun and eight lotuses.
• The eight lotuses stood for the provinces of British India.

5What did she do in exile?

She printed, smuggled and organised from Paris.

• In Paris she co-founded the Paris Indian Society.
• Her partners were S. R. Rana and Munchershah Burjorji Godrej.
• They published revolutionary papers in the Netherlands and Switzerland.
• The papers included Bande Mataram and, later, Madan’s Talwar.
• Britain and India banned them.
• They were smuggled into India through the French colony of Pondicherry.
• In 1909 Madan Lal Dhingra shot William Hutt Curzon Wyllie.
• Britain asked France to hand her over, but France refused.
• Britain then seized her inheritance.
• Lenin is said to have invited her to live in the Soviet Union, but she declined.
• In 1910 she spoke in Cairo and asked where the women of Egypt were.
• She believed women would win every right once India was free.
• In 1914 she was briefly arrested at Marseilles.
• She had tried to stir up Indian troops arriving there.
• She was made to leave Marseilles and moved to Arcachon, near Bordeaux.
• From January 1915 to November 1917 she was interned at Vichy.
• After release she had to report weekly to the police in Bordeaux.

6What are the exam traps?

Exams often confuse her flag with later ones.

• Her flag is not the final national flag.
• Pingali Venkayya’s design came decades later.
• The Stuttgart event was in Germany, not Bombay or London.
• She was a Parsi, and she worked with leaders of every faith.
• She came home in 1935, after petitioning to renounce seditionist activities.
• She reached Bombay in November 1935 and died on 13 August 1936.
• She was 74 and very ill after a stroke.
• She left most of her assets to the Avabai Petit Orphanage for girls.
• The Indian Coast Guard ship ICGS Bikhaiji Cama carries her name.
• India issued a stamp in her honour on 26 January 1962.
• Read about Pingali Venkayya and the national flag.
• Read about Sohan Singh Bhakna, another exile organiser.
• Read about the Swadeshi Movement of 1905.