Bhikaji Rustom Cama

A day late wishing a happy birthday to Bhikaiji Rustom Cama! Also known as Madam Cama, Bhikaiji (1861 –1936) was one of the prominent figures in the Indian independence movement, as well as a staunch feminist and supporter of religious pluralism.

Bhikaiji Cama was born in Bombay (now Mumbai)to a large, affluent Parsi Zoroastrian family. Her  father Sorabji—a lawyer by training and a merchant by profession—was an influential member of the Parsi community so the family was well known in Bombay.

Like many Parsi girls of the time, Bhikhaiji attended Alexandra Girls' English Institution, where she proved a conscientious, disciplined pupil with an aptitude for languages.

On 3 August 1885, at the age of 24, she married Rustom Cama, a wealthy, pro-British lawyer who aspired to enter politics. Unsurprisingly given their opposing ideologies, it was not a happy marriage, and Bhikhaiji spent most of her time and energy on philanthropic activities and social work.

In October 1896, the Bombay Presidency was hit first a double blow of famine and bubonic plague. Bhikhaiji joined one of the many teams working out of 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 amazingly survived. However, she was left severely weakend and was sent to Britain for medical treatment in 1902. 

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Cama was preparing to return to India in 1904 when she met Shyamji Krishna Varma, who was well known amongst London's Indian community for his fiery nationalist speeches. He introduced her to Dadabhai Naoroji, then president of the British Committee of the Indian National Congress, and for whom she came to work as private secretary. Alongside Naoroji and Singh Rewabhai Rana, Cama supported the founding of Varma's Indian Home Rule Society in February 1905. Consequently, she was told that she would not be allowed to return to Indian unless she signed a contract promising not to engage in nationalist activity. She refused.

Instead, Cama relocated to Paris, where—together with Rana and Munchershah Burjorji Godrej—she co-founded the Paris Indian Society. Together with other notable exiled members of the movement for Indian sovereignty, Cama wrote, published (in the Netherlands and Switzerland) and distributed revolutionary literature for the movement. Her writings were then smuggled into India through the French colony of Pondichéry. 

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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 for autonomy from Great Britain, she unfurled what she called the "Flag of Indian Independence". Cama's flag would later serve as one of the templates from which the current national flag of India was created. The flag she raised 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. The flag Cama raised – misrepresented as "original national Tricolour" – has an (Islamic) crescent and a (Hindu) sun, which the later design does not have. This not only shows Cama’s celebration of the religious diversity in pre-independence India, but attempts to erase this earlier template are also symptomatic of the BJP’s Hindu-centric nationalism and relentless Islamophobic policy.

In 1909, following Madan Lal Dhingra's assassination of William Hutt Curzon Wyllie, an aide to the Secretary of State for India, Savarkar was one of several key activists arrested in Britain. In 1910, Savarkar was ordered to be returned to India for trial. When the ship Savarkar was being transported on docked in Marseilles harbour, he squeezed out through a porthole window and jumped into the sea. Reaching shore, he expected to find Cama and others who had been told to expect him. However, they unfortunately arrived late and he was instead picked up by the local constabulary instead. Unable to communicate his predicament to the French authorities without Cama's translation skills, he was returned to British custody.

The British Government requested Cama's extradition, but the French Government refused to cooperate. In return, the British Government seized Cama's inheritance. It is reported that Lenin  invited her to stay in the Soviet Union, but she did not accept. 

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Bhikhaji was an ardent supporter of gender equality, and was greatly influenced by Christabel Pankhurst and the Suffragette movemen. At a speech in Cairo in 1910, she asked, "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? Where are your mothers and sisters? Your wives and daughters?" Cama's stance with respect to the vote for women was, however, secondary to her position on Indian independence; in 1920, upon meeting Herabai and Mithan Tata, two Parsi women vocal on the issue of female suffrage 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.'" While its arguable that she was proved wrong, she was right that a country must be free to make its own rules before it can pass ones that will liberate everyone.

At the outbreak of World War I in 1914, France and Britain became allies, and all the members of Paris India Society except Cama and Singh Rewabhai Rana left the country. She and Rana remained, against their comrades advice, and 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 near Bordeaux. In January 1915, the French government deported Rana and his whole family to the Caribbean and Cama was sent to Vichy, where she was imprisoned. 

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'India must be free, India must be a republic, India must be united'

In bad health, Cama was released in November 1917 and permitted to return to Bordeaux on the condition that she report weekly to the local police. After the war, Cama returned to her home in Paris.

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

As a testament to her dedication to gender equality, Bikhaiji Cama bequeathed most of her personal assets to the Avabai Petit Orphanage for girls (now an all-girls high school) so her legacy of female empowerment lives on. Several Indian cities have streets and buildings named after Bhikhaiji Cama, or Madame Cama as she is also known. On India's 11th Republic Day, a commemorative stamp was issued in her honour.

 

Cama is not only a great example of the key role of women in the Indian independence movement, but also of the way that Indian nationalists since then have rescripted and rewritten the history of the country and the movement to prove her goals. She is also to be remembered for her commitment to advancing women’s rights and calling out the colonialism and patriarchal governance that can only ever damage a nation.