A note found on the body of Pritilata Waddedar who attained martyrdom on 24th September 1932 read, “There are still many among my countrymen who may be shocked to learn how a woman brought up in the best tradition of Indian womanhood has taken up such a horrible deed as to massacre human lives...... If sisters can stand side by side with the brothers in a Satyagraha movement, why are they not so entitled in a revolutionary movement?” Both Mahatma Gandhi and Subhash Chandra Bose had called upon women to participate in the freedom movement. But Indian women had been crossing the lakshman rekha ever since Sita led the way. The price was sometimes heavy though. Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi and Rani Avantibai of Ramgarhhad laid down their lives in 1857, long before the idea of India had crystallized.
Begum Hazrat Mahal of Awadhhad valiantly defended Lucknow and later escaped to Nepal where she died in 1879. Earlier, in 1829, the brave Kittur Rani Chennamma had died in a British prison. These women warriors were essentially resisting British attempts to annexe their principalities. But the women revolutionaries of the early 20th century had a loftier ideal – they wanted to free India from Britain’s clutches - and they were willing to make the ultimate sacrifice.
Born in a village in Chittagong district (now in Bangladesh) PritilataWaddedar was educated in Dhaka and Kolkata. On 24th September 1932 she led a daring attack on the European Club at Pahartalialong with a small group of volunteers. She was hit by a bullet and consumed cyanide. Kalpana Datta was sentenced in 1933 to transportation for life in the Chittagong Armoury Raid case. (She was lucky. Surjya Sen and Tarakeswar Dastidar were hanged on 12th January 1934.) Kalpana was released in 1939, married communist leader P C Joshi in 1943 and relocated to India after partition.
Captain Lakshmi
On 6th February 1932, Bina Das fired at the Bengal Governor Stanley Jackson in the Convocation Hall of the Kolkata University. She served a long sentence but never revealed the name of Kamala Dasgupta, another revolutionary, who had procured the revolver for her. Both Bina Das and PritilataWaddedar had graduated with honours from Kolkata University but the British government had withheld their degrees. In 1938, Accamma Cherian led a massive rally from Thampanoor in Trivandrum to the Kowdiar Palace demanding that the Maharaja revoke the ban on the Congress. When the police threatened to fire on the crowd, she shouted, “I am the leader. Shoot me first.” (Narendra Modi’s near identical rhetoric pales into insignificance in the face of this woman’s courage.) Her sister Rosamma Punnoose also spent time in jail with her.
On September 1942, the 73-year-old Gandhian Matangini Hazra was shot dead by the British Indian police as she led some six thousand volunteers, mostly women, to storm the Tamluk police station in the erstwhile Midnapore district. She held aloft the tricolour and chanted VandeMataram until her last breath. So did 17 year old Kanaklata Barua of Assam, a member of the Mrityu Bahini suicide squad, who was shot dead at Gohpur police station as she led a group of unarmed villagers. The Quit India Movement had its share of women martyrs, who chose the path of passive defiance. Aruna Asaf Ali (nee Ganguly) succeeded in hoisting the Indian flag at Gowalia Tank maidan in Bombay during that phase.
Begum Hazrat Mahal
Later in 1946 she offered support for the Munity by the seamen of the Royal Indian Navy (RIN), a move that attracted sharp criticism from the Mahatma. Not all women freedom fighters were pacifists.The INA led by Subhash Chandra Bose had Captain Lakshmi and her women’s regiment. The Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA) was another revolutionary organization with plenty of women members. ShaheedBhagat Singh had women accomplices such as DurgaBhabi and SusheelaDidi. The Gujarat-born Susheela joined the HSRA in 1926. She arranged a hideout for Bhagat Singh in Kolkata while he was wanted in the Lahore Conspiracy case. DurgaBhabi posed as his wife and facilitated his daring escape by train from Lahore to Kolkata along with ShivramRajguru. On 1st October 1931 she tried to kill Lord Hailey at Lamington Road, Bombay. Hailey escaped but several others died and Durga was jailed for three years.
On December 14th 1931 a pair of teenage girls, Shanti Ghosh and SunitiChoudury, shot and killed Stevens, the District Magistrate of Comilla (now in Bangladesh). Vallabhai Patel declared, “It is a heinous crime and unbecoming of the traditions of Indian womanhood.” The girls spent years in jail. Bhikaiji Cama, a Bombay-born Parsi, was a woman revolutionary in exile in London and Paris. In August 1907 at a conference in Stuttgart, Germany, this gutsy woman made history by unfurling a flag of India for first time. It had green at the top with white lotuses, saffron at the bottom with sun and crescent moon and in the middle the words VandeMataram in Hindi. Madam Cama made a clarion call for India’s freedomlong before Gandhi’s return from South Africa. She procured weapons and funds for the revolutionaries in India.
She produced revolutionary literature titled Bande Mataram and Madan’s Talwar (named after Madanlal Dhingra who had been executed for the daring assassination of William Curzon Wyllie in London on 1st July 1909). The weekly publications were smuggled into India through Pondicherry. She travelled to the United States making speeches and organizing support for India’s independence. She also advocated women's equality and universal suffrage. In a 1910 speech in Cairo she told the gathering, "I see here the representatives of only half the population of Egypt. May I ask ‘where is the other half’? Sons of Egypt, where are the daughters of Egypt?” Was India’s freedom won by Gandhi and Nehru and their followers adhering to the non-violent path of humble resistance? Or did the fire-brand revolutionaries and the women of India play a significant part? You be the judge.
(Pushpa Kurup is a writer and IT professional)
