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| Madam Bhikhaji Rustom Cama |
Bhikhaji Cama
Great Indian Woman
Madam Bhikhaji Rustom Cama was born on 24 September 1861 in Mumbai as Bhikai Sorab Patel in a wealthy, large Parsi family. Her parents were Sorabji Framji Patel (father) and Jaijibai Sorabji Patel (mother). Her father, Sorabji was a notable lawyer by training and a merchant by profession who was a prominent member of the Parsi community.Most Parsi girls living in Mumbai during the colonial rule went to the same school as Bhikhaiji, called Alexandra Native Girl's English Institution. She was an excellent, disciplined and hardworking student who enjoyed learning new languages.
On 3rd of August 1885, she married Rustom Cama, a wealthy British lawyer who was keen on entering politics. The marriage was a short and unhappy one, because of this Bhikaji preferred to involve herself in philanthropic activities.
In the year 1896, Bombay was hit first by a famine, and soon thereafter by bubonic plague. Bhikhaji volunteered to assist the Grant Medical College to provide care for the afflicted, and to vaccinate the healthy. She later contracted the plague herself, but survived and had to leave for Britain for medical care in 1901.
She was going to return to India in 1908, when she met Shyamji Krishna Varma. He was a popular figure and gave motivational speeches in Hyde Park. Through him, she met Dadabhai Naoroji, then president of the British Committee of the Indian National Congress, and for whom she came to work as private secretary. Together with Singh Rewabhai Rana and Naoroji, Bhikaji supported the establishment of Varma's Indian Home Rule Society in 1905. In London, she was given a choice that if she wanted to return to India, she would have to sign a treaty that would prevent her from participating in nationalist activities, Cama refused.
Bhikaji decided to move to France that year where she along with Singh Rewabhai Rana and Munchershah Burjorji Godrej co-founded the Paris Indian Society. Together with other prominent members of the Indian movement who were exiled, Cama wrote Bande Mataram ( wrote in response to the Crown banning the original poem Vande Mataram) and later Madan's Talwar (in response to Madan Lal Dhingra’s execution)published in the Netherlands and Switzerland. These writings were smuggled weekly into India through the French colony of Pondicherry.
When Bhikaji Cama was in Paris (France) she happened to come across a number of remarkable leaders of the Indian Nationalist Movement. Bhikaji along with other leaders had secretly published and circulated the revolutionary articles for the Nationalist Movement in Holland. The British Rule had her books extradited, but the French Government did not allow and refused to cooperate. In response to this, the Britishers seized Madame Cama's legacy.
Bhikaji was an influential orator and her strong attacks on the British made her a target and several attempts were made to assassinate her. She moved to France in her early year and continued her fight against the British rule in India. She wrote many books on Indian revolutions and imported journals and articles from Germany and France on Indian revolutionaries. She wrote a book on India's first revolt for Independence (1857) was banned even before its publication. But the book managed to come out through underground channels and it was reprinted and distributed by great freedom fighters like Bhagat Singh and Subhashchandra Bose. During the First World War, she persuaded Indian soldiers to not fight for the British who have enslaved their homeland. She was immediately declared as a persona non grata and was ordered to return to India. Bhikhaiji bravely ignored and defied it, becoming nation’s pride and role model for revolutionaries in several countries like China, Turkey and Ireland.
Bhikhaji Cama being a true patriot wanted to spend her last years in her beloved India. She finally reached Bombay after 34 years of hectic campaigns for India, but unfortunately she had to be moved to the hospital after arriving to Mumbai. The brave and heroic revolutionary breathed her last on August 13, 1936 at the age of 75.
Legacies-
• Bhikhaji Cama donated most of her personal possessions to the Avabai Petit Orphanage for girls, which later on established a trust in her name.
• She also gave Rs. 54,000 (1936: £39,300; $157,200) to her family's temple, the Framji Nusserwanjee Patel Agiary in South Bombay.
• There are several Indian cities have streets and places named after Madame Bhikhaji Cama, or just simply Madame Cama as she is famously known. On 26th January 1962, it was India’s 11th Republic Day, and to commemorate the day, the Indian Posts and Telegraphs Department issued an honouring stamp.
--By Varallika Mehta
