Bhikaiji Cama

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Madam Cama
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Madam Bhikaji Cama
Born(1861-09-24)24 September 1861
Navsari, Bombay Presidency, British India
(present day Gujarat, India)
Died13 August 1936(1936-08-13) (aged 74)
Bombay, Bombay Presidency, British India
(present day Maharashtra, India)
Organisation(s)India House,
Paris Indian Society,
Indian National Congress
MovementIndian independence movement
Spouse
Rustom Cama
​
(m. 1885)​
British India. The words in the middle are in Devanagri script and read Vande Mataram "[We] Bow to thee Mother [India]", the slogan of the Indian National Congress.
The design was adopted in 1914 as the emblem of the Berlin Committee (later known as the Indian Independence Committee). The original "Flag of Indian Independence" raised by Cama in Stuttgart is now on display at the Maratha and Kesari Library in Pune
.

Bhikaiji Rustom Cama[n 1] (24 September 1861 – 13 August 1936) or simply as, Madam Cama, was one of the prominent figures in the Indian independence movement.

Bhikaiji Cama was born in Bombay (now

Zoroastrian family.[1] Her parents, Sorabji Framji Patel and Jaijibai Sorabji Patel, were well known in the city, where her father Sorabji—a lawyer by training and a merchant
by profession—was an influential member of the Parsi community.

She unfurled one of the earliest versions of flag of independent India on August 22, 1907 and she was the first person to hoist an Indian flag in a foreign nation, at the International Socialist Conference at Stuttgart.[2]

Like many Parsi girls of the time, Bhikhaiji attended Alexandra Girls' English Institution.[3] Bhikhaiji was by all accounts a diligent, disciplined child with a flair for languages.

On 3 August 1885, she married Rustom Cama, who was the son of

K. R. Cama.[4]
Her husband was a wealthy, pro-British lawyer who aspired to enter politics. It was not a happy marriage, and Bhikhaiji spent most of her time and energy in philanthropic activities and social work.

Activism

In October 1896, the

Grant Medical College (which would subsequently become Haffkine's
plague vaccine research centre), in an effort to provide care for the afflicted, and (later) to inoculate the healthy. Cama subsequently contracted the plague herself but survived. As she was severely weakened, she was sent to Britain for medical care in 1902.

She was preparing to return to India in 1904 when she came in contact with

Singh Rewabhai Rana, Cama supported the founding of Varma's Indian Home Rule Society in February 1905. In London, she was told that her return to India would be prevented unless she would sign a statement promising not to participate in nationalist activities. She refused.[dubious – discuss][citation needed
]

That same year Cama relocated to Paris, where—together with

Pondichéry.[citation needed
]

On 22 August 1907, Cama attended the second Socialist Congress at Stuttgart, Germany, where she described the devastating effects of a famine that had struck the Indian subcontinent. In her appeal for human rights, equality and autonomy from Great Britain, she unfurled what she called the "Flag of Indian Independence".[n 2]

It has been speculated that this moment may have been an inspiration to African American writers and intellectuals W. E. B. Du Bois in writing his 1928 novel Dark Princess.[6] Cama's flag, a modification of the Calcutta Flag, was co-designed by Cama, and would later serve as one of the templates from which the current national flag of India was created.

In 1909, following Madan Lal Dhingra's

Lenin reportedly[7]
invited her to reside in the Soviet Union, but she declined.

Influenced by

Parsi women outspoken on the issue of the right to vote, Cama is said to have sadly shaken her head and observed: "'Work for Indian's freedom and [i]ndependence. When India is independent women will not only [have] the right to [v]ote, but all other rights.'"[8]

Exile and death

With the outbreak of

M.P. Tirumal Acharya). She and Rana were briefly arrested in October 1914 when they tried to agitate among Punjab Regiment troops that had just arrived in Marseilles on their way to the front. They were required to leave Marseilles, and Cama then moved to Rana's wife's house in Arcachon, near Bordeaux. In January 1915, the French government deported Rana and his whole family to the Caribbean island of Martinique, and Cama was sent to Vichy, where she was interned. In bad health, she was released in November 1917 and permitted to return to Bordeaux
provided that she report weekly to the local police. Following the war, Cama returned to her home at 25, Rue de Ponthieu in Paris.

Cama remained in exile in Europe until 1935, when, gravely ill and paralyzed by a stroke that she had suffered earlier that year, she petitioned the British government through Sir Cowasji Jehangir to be allowed to return home. Writing from Paris on 24 June 1935, she acceded to the requirement that she renounce seditionist activities. Accompanied by Jehangir, she arrived in Bombay in November 1935 and died nine months later, aged 74, at Parsi General Hospital on 13 August 1936.[9]

Legacy

Bust of Bhikaiji Cama with Flag of Indian Independence at kranti van Vadodara, Gujarat
Cama on a 1962 stamp of India

Bikhaiji Cama bequeathed most of her personal assets to the Avabai Petit Orphanage for girls, now the Bai Avabai Framji Petit Girls' High School, which established a trust in her name. Rs. 54,000 (1936: £39,300; $157,200) went to her family's

Mazgaon, in South Bombay.[10]

Several Indian cities have streets and places named after Bhikhaiji Cama, or Madame Cama as she is also known. On 26 January 1962, India's 11th Republic Day, the Indian Posts and Telegraphs Department issued a commemorative stamp in her honour.[11]

In 1997, the Indian Coast Guard commissioned a Priyadarshini-class fast patrol vessel ICGS Bikhaiji Cama after Bikhaiji Cama.

A high-rise office complex in the posh location of South Delhi which accommodates major Government Offices and companies such as

SAIL, GAIL, EIL
etc. is named as Bhikaji Cama Place in tribute to her.

Following Cama's 1907 Stuttgart address, the flag she raised there was smuggled into

British India by Indulal Yagnik and is now on display at the Maratha and Kesari Library in Pune. In 2004, politicians of the BJP, India's political party, attempted to identify a later design (from the 1920s) as the flag Cama raised in Stuttgart.[12]
The flag Cama raised – misrepresented as "original national Tricolour" – has an (Islamic) crescent and a (Hindu) sun, which the later design does not have.

Further reading

Notes

  1. ^ Bhikhai- (with aspirated -kh-) is the name as it appears in the biographies. Another common form is Bhikai- (with unaspirated -k-), as it appears on the postage stamp. The name is also frequently misspelled 'Bhikha-' (with missing -i-), which is a male name (unlike the feminine Bhikhai-).
  2. ^ "This flag is of India's independence. Behold, it is born. It is already sanctified by the blood of martyred Indian youth. I call upon you, gentlemen, to rise and salute the flag of Indian independence. In the name of this flag, I appeal to lovers of freedom all over the world to cooperate with this flag in freeing one-fifth of the human race."
  1. ISBN 978-0-14-400038-8
    .
  2. ^ Pal, Sanchari (24 September 2016). "The Untold Story of Bhikaji Cama". The Better India.
  3. ^ Darukhanawala, Hormusji Dhunjishaw, ed. (1963), Parsi lustre on Indian soil, vol. 2, Bombay: G. Claridge.
  4. ISBN 978-0-19-151350-3
    . Retrieved 19 August 2013.
  5. ISBN 81-269-0639-1
    .
  6. S2CID 162273702
    .
  7. ISBN 81-7023-894-3
  8. ISBN 0-521-65377-0
  9. ISBN 1-58567-593-8
  10. ^ Dastur, Dolly, ed. (1994), "Mrs. Bhikaiji Rustom Cama", Journal of the Federation of Zoroastrian Associations of North America, 4.
  11. ^ India Post (1962), Bhikaiji Cama, Indian Post Commemorative Stamps, New Delhi{{citation}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  12. ^ Guha, Ramachandra (26 September 2004), "Truths about the Tricolor ur", The Hindu, archived from the original on 21 February 2011, retrieved 1 July 2020{{citation}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link).

Further reading

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Bhikaiji Cama.
  • Gupta, Indra (2003), India's 50 Most Illustrious Women, New Delhi: Icon Publications,
    ISBN 81-88086-19-3
    .
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