Bhikaji Cama, a hero of India's freedom struggle, was the first to unfurl the tricolour on foreign soil.
Bhikaji Cama Place, Madam Cama Road -- some of India's best well-known landmarks are named after a Parsi lady who was the first to hoist an early version of the Indian flag on foreign soil in 1907.
Bhikaji Cama, born into an affluent family in Bombay on September 24, 1861 [165 years ago] was a relentless advocate for India's independence.
At 35, she joined teams of nurses tending to plague patients when the epidemic swept through Bombay Presidency in 1896.
Thousands died and half the city's population fled to nearly villages.
Her selfless care-giving led her to contracting the dreaded disease, but fortunately she was among the survivors.
An important aside: One of the results of the epidemic was the setting up of the Haffkine Institute for plague research by microbiologist Russian-Jewish Dr Waldemar Haffkine who developed the vaccine for cholera and plague.
The institute is today a teaching institution in the field of biomedical sciences affiliated to the University of Mumbai.
Severly weakened by the disease, Madam Cama went to England in 1901 for medical treatment and recuperation. In better health by 1904, she planned her voyage back to India, but changed her plan after meeting Indian revolutionary Shyamji Verma, the Oxford graduate famous for scathing anti-British speeches in Hyde Park.
Through him she met Dadabhai Naoroji, president of the British Committee of the Indian National Congress. She worked as his secretary and co-founded the Indian Home Rule Society.
She later moved to Paris and co-founded the Paris Indian Society which was a hub of revolutionary activities and refuge to Indian revolutionaries on foreign soil.
She would then spend the next 34 years abroad -- mostly in exile because by then the British were well aware of her anti-British activities and a return to India risked arrest.
She continued to relentlessly promote the cause of India's freedom in various countries -- the USA, England, France, Germany and worked with Indian revolutionaries in exile.
She was in contact with Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, Bipin Chander Pal, Senapati Bapat and Lala Hardyal.
It was because of her efforts that Savarkar's banned book was smuggled back into India. She wrote and translated scores of revolutionary literature highlighting British oppression, and edited Bande Mataram, a newspaper that called for Indian independence.
A tireless fighter, she co-designed the tricolour with Savarkar and Shyamji Krishna Varma, and unfurled it at the International Socialist Congress in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1907.
That tricolour was the precursor to the Indian national flag.
She then delivered a fiery speech:
'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.'
The flag had three horizontal stripes in red, yellow and green and is now preserved in the Maratha and Kesari Library in Pune.
An ardent supporter of female rights, at an event in Cairo, she looked at the gathering and said, '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?'
In the last years of her life, she suffered a stroke and took seriously ill. She was then allowed by the British to return to India and arrived in Bombay in November 1935.
She died nine months later at 74.
Madam Cama bequeathed her wealth to the Avabai Petit Orphanage which later would become the Avabai Petit School in Mumbai.
Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff
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