FROM http://www.kamat.com/kalranga/itihas/cama.htm
"This flag is of Indian Independence! Behold, it is born! It has been made sacred by the blood of young Indians who sacrificed their lives. I call upon you, gentlemen to rise and salute this flag of Indian Independence. In the name of this flag, I appeal to lovers of freedom all over the world to support this flag." -- B. Cama , Stuttgart, Germany, 1907
These were the emotional words of a frail Indian lady, with fire inside and indomitable confidence and patriotic feeling for motherland, India. The year was 1907 and the time, 3rd week of August. The Indian independence was 40 years away, and the world was not fully aware of the burning patriotism of hundreds and thousands of young Indians who were ready to lay down their lives for the sake of freedom for their country. The British were trying their best to put down the revolutionaries by bringing in ordinances, bans and arrests for life on the basis of treason. Treason was the greatest "crime" of the Indian which ensured a minimum of six years of black waters (kalapani) or deportation to Andaman and harsh punishment.
It was hence, no mean achievement of Madam Cama, when she unfurled the first National Flag at the International Socialist Conference in Stuttgart (Germany) in 1907. A thousand representatives from several countries were attending. An Indian lady in a colorful sari was a rare phenomena in those days and her majestic appearance and brave and clear words made everybody think that she was a Maharani or at least a princess from a native state.
She excelled many Maharanis (queens) of her time in her poise and demeanor. She fought for freedom till the last in her own way, and helped innumerable revolutionaries with money and materials across the sea as she has settled down in London/Paris at the beginning of this century. Her life and mission make a fascinating reading, showing the important role she played in the early years of freedom struggle.
Madam Cama was born on 24th September, 1861 of rich Parsi parents. Her father was Sorabji Framji Patel, a famous merchant and man of means, had a large family. Parsis by then were in the forefront of business, education, and industry (when permitted by British) and no less in philanthropy. Young Bhikaji received good English education, but from the beginning she was a rebel, and a nationalist. She had good flair to learn languages and became proficient in arguing her country's cause in different circles at a young age.
She was married to Rustom K. R. Cama, a rich handsome social worker and lawyer. But ideologically they were poles apart. Mr. Cama adored British, loved their culture and thought they had done a lot of good to India. Madame Bhikaji, now a full fledged nationalist, always believed that British had fleeced India, and practiced worst form of imperialism. She had thousand and one reasons to present how India was kept in abject poverty by the British to help themselves to become the most powerful country in the world of that period.
Their marriage proved to incompatible. Madam Cama meanwhile plunged in several social activities. Plague broke out in Bombay Presidency at that time and she was in the forefront of voluntary team which strive to save plague victims. in the end she herself caught the deadly disease, but was save miraculously. She was left very weak and was advised to go to Europe for rest and recuperation. She left in 1902 for London which was to become her home for the rest of life.
She served as private secretary to Dadabhai Navaroji, a great Indian leader in the forefront of national movement. she came in contact with several patriots students and European Intellectuals who were sympathetic to Indian cause during this brief period. Later she herself played a dominant part in promoting freedom struggle.
The tricolor-flag Madam Cama unfurled had green, saffron, and red stripes. Red represented strength, saffron victory, and green stood for boldness and enthusiasm. there were eight lotuses representing the eight provinces and flowers represented princely states. "Vande Mataram" in Devanagari adorned central saffron stripe which meant "salutation to Mother India." The sun and the moon indicated Hindu and Muslim faiths. The flag was designed by Veer Savarkar with the help of other revolutionaries. After Stuttgart, Madam went to United States. She traveled a lot and informed Americans about Indians struggling for Independence. She told about British efforts to smother the voice of educated Indians who protested against tyranny and despotism of British who always boasted themselves as "mother of parliamentary democracy" over the world! She could be called "Mother India's first cultural representative to USA."
After returning to London she started publishing booklets on patriotic literature. Though believer in nonviolence she urged to resist unjustified violence. Tyrannical foreign rule was unjustified and she stood for Swaraj or self-rule. "March forward! We are for India. India is for Indians!" She declared. She fought for unity of Hindus and Muslims. She continued financing revolutionaries in and out of India. British were not happy with her activities and there was a plot to finish her off. Getting the wind she sailed for France.
Her Paris-home became a shelter for world revolutionaries. Even Lenin, the father of Russian revolution visited her house and exchanged views. Savarkar got all encouragement in writing the history of 1st Indian War of Independence from Cama. She helped its printing in Holland as no English publisher came forward to publish it. It was banned book but found its was to India. Smuggled ingeniously with "Don Quixote" covers! She became publisher of "Vande Mataram" a revolutionary magazine and was a distributor as well, an extremely difficult task in the days of British Espionage. Another magazine "Madan's Talwar" was also started in memory of Madanlal Dhingra who had laid down his life for the country. Both the magazines were outlawed in India and England. Madam Cama somehow found ways to send them to Indian revolution going and for self-defense.
Madam Cama also fought for the cause of women. Speaking at National Conference at Cairo, Egypt in 1910, she asked, "Where is the other half of Egypt? I see only men who represent half the country!" She stressed the role of women in building a nation.
Her attempts to save Savarkar who jumped into the ocean from the ship "Morena" near Marseilles are well known. A few minutes delay saw the famous revolutionary back into chains, a fact which Madam Cama, came to regret for life.
When First World War broke out in 1914, Madam Cama took anti-British stand and tried her best to bring in awareness among Indians about the harm brought in by fighting imperialist forces.
The British had banned her entry in India being afraid of her revolutionary past and confirmed nationalistic outlook. But the lioness was getting old and 35 years fighting on foreign land and taken its toll. She decided to return to motherland but was very ill. After reaching Bombay, she was hospitalized and died on the 13th of August 1936. A fearless woman, she brought in awareness of Indian struggle for independence in Europe and America and was instrumental in helping several revolutionaries, with finances and publishing.
FROM http://www.vandemataram.com/biographies/patriots/bcama.htm
Madam Bhikaji Cama, nee Bhikaji Patel, was born on 24 September 1861 in Bombay. Her father Sorabji Framji Patel and mother Jijibai belonged to a prosperous Parsi business family. This is evident from the fact that he had left 13 lakhs to each of his sons and created a trust of lakh for each of his eight daughters. Very little is known of this affluent family besides that fact that it contributed the first Indian woman revolutionary to fight for India’s freedom from alien rule. She had her education, both primary and secondary, in the Alexandra Girl’s School, then as now, recognised as one of the best educational Institutions for girls in India.
The atmosphere in which she was brought up could by no means be called placid. She was married on 3 August 1885, the very year when the Indian National Congress held its first session in Bombay under the presidentship of W. C. Bonnerji. The atmosphere was alive with a new spirit of defiance and independence which was to blossom into secret societies and evolutionary ardour under the leadership of Aurobindo in Bengal and Tilak in Maharastra.
For a person of young Bhikaji’s temperament, this new spirit became a strong influence in shaping her future. It is not surprising that she found the views of her husband Rustomji Cama too sober. He was an orientalist and as such his interest in politics could hardly be called active. The marriage was not a happy one, largely due to difference of opinion about the conduct of the nationalist movement.
In 1902 Madam Cama left for London for medical treatment. There, her political aspirations received fresh impetus from the Grand Old Man Dadabhai Naoroji whose electioneering she did with great enthusiasm . Before she began her activities, she decided to travel in Europe and America . She visited Germany, France, Scotland and U.S.A. In 1907 she attended the socialist Congress at Stuttgart and unfurled the flag of Indian freedom to the applause of an enthusiastic audience.
In 1908 she went to London to meet Bepin Chandra Pal. During her stay in London and her travels she met other revolutionaries, Shyamji Krishna Varma, Veer Savarkar, Sardar Singh Rana, Mukund Desai and Birendranath Chattopadhyaya, all as concerned and anxious to win the freedom of Indian as Madam Cama. Later she also came into touch with Russian revolutionaries and corresponded with Lenin, although she was not able to accept Lenin’s invitations to visit Moscow after the revolution.
It is fascinating to watch Madam Cama's evolution from social work to evolutionary activity. She began her public life as a social worker and was deeply impressed by the “72 Good Indians” who formed the National Congress. Her intense patriotism and her impatience with things in general made her a militant nationalist. This facet of her life was considerably influenced by Shyamji Krishna Varma and his colleagues. Their ‘India House’ in London soon became the nerve-centre of patriotic extremism.
Madam Cama regularly addressed meetings at the Hyde Park, explaining her patriotic mission of freeing India from British domination. These speeches which attracted large crowds were characterised by deep sincerity and intense patriotism. This naturally drew the attention of Whitehall and she was threatened with deportation. Before that happened, she left for Paris.
From 1909, Paris was her headquarters and the meeting place of young terrorists and revolutionaries like Hardyal, Shaklatvala and others. From here she published passionate appeals to her countrymen to wake up and rebel against foreign rule. Madam Cama was very clear in her mind as to what she had in view. She was convinced that revolutionary methods alone could achieve the end. In her speeches she pointed out that Indians were and had always been a peace loving people, not habituated to violence, but, she said, the condition of her people left in her mind no doubt as to the method she should adopt to achieve freedom. This feeling grew in strength as a result of her contact with Continental and Russian revolutionaries.
Her passion for freedom was so intense that violent revolutionary methods seemed natural to her. In her appeals and speeches, she drew vivid pictures of the misdeeds of the Government, the sad plight of her people and the urgent need for a national uprising against the British. All attempts to prevent the entry of this fiery literature, by interception at the custom, did not dishearten her. She found other means of smuggling revolutionary literature through Pondicherry which at that time was the refuge of revolutionaries who came under the adverse notice of the Indian Government.
Whatever Madam Cama tried to do, she did it with both thoroughness and courage. When she accepted violence as an inescapable method of ousting foreign rule, she organised the training of young revolutionaries for makings bomb. She travelled in Europe and America to appraise the people of the conditions in India and gain their support. When she attended the Socialist Conference at Stuttgart she was not content with only making, or listening to, speeches. She took the opportunity to unfurl the first Indian National Flag, which was indeed the parent and precursor of the flag of independent India, the only difference in color being the change of red into orange.
The legend on the Flag with symbols of sun and moon, the seven stars and lotus and with Vandemataram on the centre white portion, will give some idea of her imagination and nationalism. It was at this conference that she declared her resolve to fight for independence with all her might. She was also the moving spirit in the ‘Abhinav Bharat’ activity of the Indian residing in Europe. These young persons, many of them revolutionaries, had a clear picture of their goal. She declared that India would be Republic and Hindi would be the national language and Devnagari the national script.
Madam Cama was a person of remarkable courage and integrity. Along with the Sardar Singh Rana, she was smuggling revolutionary literature and explosives into India; when Shyamji Krishna Varma and Rana were suspected for smuggling, she went straight to the authorities and confessed that she was responsible for sending weapons to India. When Savarkar was arrested on the French soil she moved heaven and earth to get him released and the result was that socialist papers wrote editorials on this issue.
Her activities for the freedom of her motherland continued unabated till World War I., when England and France become allies and pressure was brought to bear on the French Government to arrest and imprison her. She was in prison for three years till the end of the War. She lived in Paris for 30 years, Nursing to the end of the hope that India’s freedom would be realised in her life time. Her attempts to get back to India did not succeed till authorities were assured that she could not be a threat to get their continuance.
In 1935, at the age of 74, she returned to India and a year after, this great patriot and pioneer revolutionary breathed her last in the Parsi Hospital, unwept, unsung an unhounered. Yet in the minds and hearts of those who love India and the fighters for freedom, her memory will live as an ineffaceable symbol of true sacrifice. A street in Bombay bears her name and a birthcentenary stamp in her honour was issued after much haggling, and belatedly on 26 January 1962 (Republic Day) .
It showed how indifferent we are in honouring those who blazed the trail for Indian freedom. At a Time when women did not participate in public life at all, Madam Cama dedicated herself to revolutionary activity without fear or favour, with only one thought, one aim, that India should become a free republic. She was completely free from any regional or parochial feeling and thought of her country as her home and the people as her kinsfolk.
FROM http://www.zav.org.au/pages/heroes/madame.htm
Born on September 24 th. 1861 into a wealthy Bombay Parsi business family, Bhikaiji went to the Alexandra Girls’ School, well known for its high educational standards, for both her primary and secondary education. Not much else is known of her early years, or of her parents Jijibai & Sohrabji Framji Patel, or their family, from these official sources.
However, born four years after the great Indian mutiny of 1857, and married in 1885, the year of the first session of the Indian National Congress, Bhikaiji grew up in “an atmosphere ... alive with a new spirit of defiance and independence” (Menon in Sen ed. 1972-1974).
Bhikaiji was married to Rustumji Cama, himself an orientalist, (and a son of the famous orientalist Kharshedji Rustumji Cama). Bhikaiji and Rustumji disagreed about the importance and method of the struggle for independence, and largely because of this, the marriage was not a happy one. Madame Bhikaiji Cama began her public life as a social worker. With her own independent fortune, she traveled to Europe and the USA.
In 1902 Bhikaiji went to London for medical treatment, and while there, joined Dadabhai Naoroji in his electioneering. There she met other revolutionaries from all over the world, including Russia (corresponding with Lenin, but later unable to accept his invitation to visit Moscow after the revolution). Bhikaiji attracted large crowds to her speeches at Hyde Park, London. She was the moving spirit of the ‘Abhinav Bharat’ (Indians in Europe) group. India House in the Strand, London, more recently a haven for Indians visiting England, was then a hot bed of the group’s revolutionary activities.
In 1907 she attended the Socialist (International) Congress in Stuttgart where she unfurled for the first time an “Indian” flag*, which she had either designed herself or at least had a good part in designing, also declaring there that independent India would be a Republic, that Hindi would be its language and Devanagari its script. This was an act of heroic defiance against the British Government. [The flag* used today, is very close to her design. Her flag was the original tricolour (a possible French influence) with red where it is orange now. She had the sun, and moon, in the two lower corners, and a row of eight lotus buds in the top portion. In the central part, instead of the chakra, she had the words “Vande Mataram” (I Bow to Thee My Country) in the Devanagri script completing the legend. The inclusion of seven stars in the flag, is mentioned by Menon.
All these activities drew the attention of Whitehall and Bhikaiji was threatened with deportation. She preempted this by moving her headquarters to Paris in 1909. Extremely distressed by the plight of her country, she made passionate appeals to her countrymen to wake up and rebel, her speeches smuggled into India via Pondicherry. She organized the training of revolutionaries. Her “remarkable (personal) courage and integrity” were evident in the acts of rescuing her fellow revolutionaries by taking the blame on herself for the offences (like sending weapons to India) that they were charged with, and securing the release of those threatened with imprisonment, at great risk to herself.
In 1914, at the outbreak of World War I, England persuaded France, her new ally, to arrest and imprison Bhikaiji, which France did for the next three years, till the end of World War I. After the war, released from prison but still not free to return to India, Bhikaiji, remained in Paris for another seventeen years. In 1935 aged 74, she was allowed to return to India, when “the authorities were assured of her lack of “threat to their continuance (in ruling India).” A year later “this great patriot and pioneer revolutionary” died in the Parsi General Hospital, “unwept, unsung and unhonoured” (Menon in Sen ed. 1972-1974)
Yet, she will always live on in “the hearts and minds of those who love India”. “ A street in Bombay bears her name, and a birth centenary stamp in her honour was issued “..(Menon in Sen ed. 1972-1974) on Republic Day, 26 th January 1962.
FROM http://www.the-south-asian.com
Parsis - the Zoroastrians of India
by
Sooni Taraporevala
Pioneers of modern India
Modern India owes a large debt to the visionary Jamsetji Tata who had the foresight to lay a firm foundation that would allow India to be economically independent.
His descendant JRD Tata, took over the running of Tata Sons and expanded the business empire even further. A keen aviator, JRD was the first Indian to start a national airline (Tata Airlines) that later became Air-India.
Parsis also established the first cotton mills in India, the first newspaper, the first Indian owned bank. In the navy we had Admiral Jal Cursetji, in the airforce Air Marshal Engineer and the Indian army was commandeered by another Parsi-Field Marshal Sam Maneckshaw. The late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi's father Feroze Gandhi also came from the community. And of course there is Zubin Mehta who belongs collectively to every Parsi mother.
Fifty-three years after Independence, we have nothing to fear but ourselves. We are the only community in fertile India that has a diminishing birthrate. We intermarry amongst ourselves, marry late, have few children and have so confused religion and race, that many would like to lay down laws that prohibit anybody from ever becoming either a Parsi or a Zoroastrian. In a political climate where religions vie with each other to gain converts, we zealously try to keep them out.
As we enter the Millennium, Parsis continue to live in several centuries simultaneously, inhabit several identities. Out of these diverse elements we have created a culture that is uniquely our own. Fifty years from now, will we still be around? Will Zarathustra's Good Religion be a living faith, or will the world's first messianic prophet having survived four thousand years, finally be relegated to the history books?
Madame Bhikaji Cama
(1861-1936)
Our radical firebrand, was exiled from India and Britain and lived in France. Bhikaiji was a tireless propagandist for Indian Independence. Russian comrades used to call her India's Joan of Arc. Lenin reportedly invited her to reside in Russia but she did not accept the invitation.
In 1907, she addressed an audience of 1,000 Germans at the Stuttgart Conference. After her impassioned speech she unfurled a flag, a tricolour, which became, with some changes, India's national flag forty years later. As her activities grew more radical the British requested the French to extradite her. The French refused. In 1936, alone and seriously ill, wishing to die in her own country she petitioned the British government to be allowed to return home. Her request was granted, provided she sign what she had refused to all her life; a statement promising she would take no part in politics. She returned to Bombay and after an illness of eight months, died lonely, forgotten and unsung in the Parsi General Hospital.
