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| Captain Lakshmi Sahgal in the uniform of INA |
A life for struggle
“The fight will go on,” said
Captain Lakshmi Sehgal one day in 2006, sitting in her crowded Kanpur
clinic where, at 92, she still saw patients every morning. She was speaking on
camera to Singeli Agnew, a young filmmaker from the Graduate School of
Journalism, Berkeley, who was making a documentary on her life.
Each stage of the life of this
extraordinary Indian represented a new stage of her political evolution – as a
young medical student drawn to the freedom struggle; as the leader of the all-woman
Rani of Jhansi regiment of the Indian National Army; as a doctor, immediately
after Independence, who restarted her medical practice in Kanpur amongst
refugees and the most marginalised sections of society; and finally, in post-Independence
India, her life as a member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the
All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA), years that saw her in
campaigns for political, economic and social justice.
“Freedom comes in three forms,” the
diminutive doctor goes on to say on camera in her unadorned and direct manner. “The
first is political emancipation from the conqueror, the second is economic [emancipation]
and the third is social… India
has only achieved the first.”
With Captain Lakshmi’s passing, India
has lost an indefatigable fighter for the emancipations of which she spoke.
First rebellion
Lakshmi Sehgal was born Lakshmi
Swaminadhan on October 24, 1914
in Madras to S. Swaminadhan ,
a talented lawyer, and A.V. Ammukutty, a social worker and freedom fighter (and
who would later be a member of independent India ’s
Constituent Assembly).
Lakshmi would later recall her
first rebellion as a child against the demeaning institution of caste in Kerala.
From her grandmother’s house, she would often hear the calls and hollers from
the surrounding jungles and hills, of the people who in her grandmother’s words
were those “whose very shadows are polluting.” The young Lakshmi one day walked
up to a young tribal girl, held her hand and led her to play. Lakshmi and her grandmother
were furious with each other, but Lakshmi was the one triumphant.
After high school in Madras ,
she studied at the Madras Medical
College Madras
socialite to an ardent Congress supporter, who one day walked into her daughter’s
room and took away all the child’s pretty dresses to burn in a bonfire of
foreign goods. Looking back years later, Lakshmi would observe how in the
South, the fight for political freedom was fought alongside the struggle for
social reform. Campaigns for political independence were waged together with
struggles for temple entry for Dalits and against child marriage and dowry. Her
first introduction to communism was through Suhasini Nambiar, Sarojini Naidu’s
sister, a radical who had spent many years in Germany .
Another early influence was the first book on the communist movement she read,
Edgar Snow’s Red Star over China .
Meeting Netaji
As a young doctor of 26, Lakshmi
left for Singapore
in 1940. Three years later she would meet Subhash Chandra Bose, a meeting that
would change the course of her life. “In Singapore ,”
Lakshmi remembered, “there were a lot of nationalist Indians like K. P. Kesava
Menon, S. C. Guha, N. Raghavan, and others, who formed a Council of Action. The
Japanese, however, would not give any firm commitment to the Indian National
Army, nor would they say how the movement was to be expanded, how they would go
into Burma , or
how the fighting would take place. People naturally got fed up.” Bose’s arrival
broke this logjam.
Lakshmi, who had thus far been on
the fringes of the INA, had heard that Bose was keen to draft women into the
organisation. She requested a meeting with him when he arrived in Singapore ,
and emerged from a five-hour interview with a mandate to set up a women’s
regiment, which was to be called the Rani of Jhansi regiment. There was a
tremendous response from women to join the all-women brigade. Dr. Lakshmi
Swaminadhan became Captain Lakshmi, a name and identity that would stay with
her for life.
The march to Burma
began in December 1944 and, by March 1945, the decision to retreat was taken by
the INA leadership, just before the entry of their armies into Imphal. Captain
Lakshmi was arrested by the British army in May 1945. She remained under house
arrest in the jungles of Burma
until March 1946, when she was sent to India
– at a time when the INA trials in Delhi
were intensifying the popular hatred of colonial rule.
Captain Lakshmi married Col. Prem
Kumar Sehgal, a leading figure of the INA, in March 1947. The couple moved from
Lahore to Kanpur ,
where she plunged into her medical practice, working among the flood of
refugees who had come from Pakistan ,
and earning the trust and gratitude of both Hindus and Muslims.
CPI(M) activist
By the early 1970s, Lakshmi’s
daughter Subhashini had joined the CPI(M). She brought to her mother’s
attention an appeal from Jyoti Basu for doctors and medical supplies for
Bangladeshi refugee camps. Captain Lakshmi left for Calcutta ,
carrying clothes and medicines, to work for the next five weeks in the border
areas. After her return she applied for membership in the CPI(M). For the 57-year
old doctor, joining the Communist Party was “like coming home.” “My way of
thinking was already communist, and I never wanted to earn a lot of money, or
acquire a lot of property or wealth,” she said.
Captain Lakshmi was one of the
founding members of AIDWA, formed in 1981. She subsequently led many of its
activities and campaigns. After the Bhopal
gas tragedy in December 1984, she led a medical team to the city; years later
she wrote a report on the long-term effects of the gas on pregnant women. During
the anti-Sikh riots that followed Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s assassination
in 1984, she was out on the streets in Kanpur ,
confronting anti-Sikh mobs and ensuring that no Sikh or Sikh establishment in
the crowded area near her clinic was attacked. She was arrested for her
participation in a campaign by AIDWA against the Miss World competition held in
Bangalore in 1996.
Presidential candidate
Captain Lakshmi was the
presidential candidate for the Left in 2002, an election that A. P. J. Abdul
Kalam would win. She ran a whirlwind campaign across the country, addressing
packed public meetings. While frankly admitting that she did not stand a chance
of winning, she used her platform to publicly scrutinise a political system
that allowed poverty and injustice to grow, and fed new irrational and divisive
ideologies.
Captain Lakshmi had the quality
of awakening a sense of joy and possibility in all who met her – her co-workers,
activists of her organisation, her patients, family and friends. Her life was
an inextricable part of 20th and early 21st century India
-- of the struggle against colonial rule, the attainment of freedom, and nation-building
over 65 tumultuous years. In this great historical transition, Captain Lakshmi
always positioned herself firmly on the side of the poor and unempowered. Freedom
fighter, dedicated medical practitioner, and an outstanding leader of the
women's movement in India ,
Captain Lakshmi leaves the country and its people a fine and enduring legacy.
Lakshmi Sehgal is survived by her
daughters Subhashini Ali and Anisa Puri; her grandchildren Shaad Ali, Neha and
Nishant Puri; and by her sister Mrinalini Sarabhai. (parvathi.menon@thehindu.co.in)
Source: The Hindu 24 July 2012 . p. 1,11
A
freedom fighter who never lost her zest for life
The year Lakshmi Sahgal was born,
the First World War had just begun and India
was years away from independence. When she died on Monday in a Kanpur
hospital aged 97, the world had seen yet another World War and India
had been a free nation for over 64 years.
Sahgal played her part in the
process that would eventually win India
freedom. But unlike many nationalist heroes she hitched her wagon to the
maverick Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. After qualifying as a medical doctor from Madras
in 1938, Sahgal, born Lakshmi Swaminathan to a lawyer father and a social
worker mother, took the unusual step of travelling to Singapore
to practice.
With war spreading to south-east Asia
in end-1941, Sahgal began treating wounded prisoners of war many of whom were
of Indian origin. She also became actively involved in the India Independence
League, which organized Indians in south-east Asia
against the British. Her life changed irrevocably with the arrival of Bose in Singapore
in 1943. Electrified by Netaji's message she took up the responsibility for
setting up the Rani Jhansi regiment, the women's brigade of the Indian National
Army. She was also inducted into the provisional cabinet of Azad Hind, the only
woman in that position. In the end-game before Indian independence she was
captured by the British in 1946 and brought back to India .
Her private and public life intertwined when she married Colonel Prem Sahgal,
also of the INA, in 1947.From then she was to be known as Captain Lakshmi
Sahgal.
After independence Sahgal settled
in Kanpur where she quietly kept
serving people by treating thousands of poor patients for free. In the
aftermath of the creation of Bangladesh
in 1971, when refugees began pouring into India ,
she spent several months in West Bengal working with uprooted
people. It was this experience that made her join the CPI(M). She was also a
founder member of the All India Democratic Women's Association. In 2002, she
ran unsuccessfully against APJ Abdul Kalam as the Left parties' candidate for India 's
presidency.
Sahgal often took up lost causes
such as campaigning against beauty contests, but win or lose she never lost her
zest for life. Even after she had a heart attack in July of this year she
continued to meet patients. It was this quality that endeared her to millions.
Source: The Times of India
24 July 2012 . p.13
‘She
was a true Communist’
Avishek G Dastidar
In 2002, when the four Left
parties nominated Captain Lakshmi Sehgal as their candidate against APJ Abdul
Kalam in the presidential election, they knew that she would not win. But, they
told Sehgal, who was then 87, that it was necessary to contest the poll for the
sake of a larger political fight.
Those who spoke to her then say
that she agreed only because when it came to defending what she stood for,
Sehgal — the only commander of the Rani Jhansi regiment in Subhash Chandra Bose’s
Indian National Army — never shied away from a fight.
“India
lost a very good opportunity to have an extraordinary woman as president then. But
she did not mind, because her politics was about serving people, which she was
doing and continued to do all her life,” says senior CPI(M) leader Brinda
Karat, who knew Sehgal closely.
Born in an affluent Tamil-Brahmin
family in Kerala in 1914, Sehgal realised early on that social service was her
true calling. Two years after obtaining a medical degree from the Madras
Medical College Singapore
to treat migrant labourers from India .
It was there that she got in touch with prominent leaders of the Indian
independence movement like K P Kesava Menon, S C Guha and N Raghavan .
But her life changed forever in 1943,
when Subhash Chandra Bose arrived in Singapore
and took over the reins of the INA.
Bose wanted to form a women’s
wing in his army, and entrusted the job to Sehgal (then Lakshmi Swaminathan). Owing
to her efforts, thousands of women joined the wing and she became became
Captain Lakshmi — as she came to be known for the rest of her life.
“All her life, she was a
passionate follower of Bose. At a seminar in Mumbai a few years ago, she
delivered a lecture on Bose, and I saw her getting extremely emotional while
speaking on him,” says Debabrata Biswas, general secretary of the All Indian
Forward Bloc, the Left party that Bose founded.
He recalls another incident when
Sehgal, while inaugurating a national conference of the Forward Bloc in Kanpur —
where she lived with her daughter and Communist leader Subhashini Ali — urged
the party leaders to focus more on mass movements. “We had a formal agenda, but
after listening to her speech, the party decided to focus more on countrywide
mass movements. That way she was a true Communist,” says Biswas.
Having been witness to the
orthodox practices in her community in her early years, Sehgal developed a deep
contempt for unfair conventions and discrimination on the basis of caste and
religion.
“She had a wry sense of humour. All
her jokes were aimed at age-old conventions and inequalities prevailing in the
Indian society,” says Karat.
But serving the people through
her original profession — as a doctor — remained her life-long passion.
After marrying fellow INA leader
Prem Kumar Sehgal barely five months before Independence
in 1947, Sehgal devoted her time as a doctor for the poor, especially the poor
women in Kanpur .
Following her nomination as a CPI(M)
Rajya Sabha member in 1971, she conducted medical relief camps in West
Bengal for refugees during the Bangladesh
war. She also co-founded the All-Indian Democratic Women’s Association — the
nationwide women’s wing of the CPI(M). In 1984, Sehgal led a medical team to Bhopal
after the gas tragedy, and worked in the streets of Kanpur
to restore peace after the anti-Sikh riots of 1984.
“She loved to serve people. And
through her life, she showed that to serve the country, one does not really
need to enter electoral politics,” says Karat.
Champion of women’s rights, had no personal ambition
Brinda Karat
It was sometime in the eighties. Capt
Lakshmi Sehgal, as the vice-president of the All India Democratic Women’s
Association, was in Jaipur to participate in a women’s rally against increasing
violence. She was addressing a press conference. Looking at her twinkling eyes
and the mischievous smile on her face, I knew something was up.
Without waiting for
introductions, she burst out: “You men think you have a nuclear bomb, don’t
you? Well, we women know how to dismantle it. A pair of sharp scissors will do
the trick, that’s all we need and you can be sure we know how to do it.”
There was a stunned silence from
the men, and cheers and approving laughter from the women. That was Capt
Lakshmi, saying it as it is, expressing her outrage at sexual violence against
women.
She died at the age of 98 in a Kanpur
hospital on Monday. This was the city she adopted when she and her husband,
Prem Sehgal, moved there after the tumultuous years when they fought shoulder
to shoulder for India ’s
independence. It was there that she fulfilled her dream of setting up a clinic
to serve the poor.
Her devotion to her patients was
extraordinary. Everyday, for over six decades, she went to her clinic where
queues of women would await her with the belief that their beloved “mummy”, as
she was called, would never turn them away. In fact, she was at the clinic even
the day before she had a heart attack, frail and weak, but not too ill to stay
away.
She was a rebel at heart,
scoffing at the convention of how young women belonging to an illustrious
family like hers should behave, to become an inspiring freedom fighter and a
Communist revolutionary committed to socialist ideals.
We would tease her about her
escapades as a student. She would smile and reply that she did all that before
she became serious. In fact, she was a brilliant student, one of the few women
in her class to get top marks in the MBBS exam.
In 1940, she shifted to Singapore ,
where she got the opportunity to develop her organisational skills, a glimpse
of which was evident when, as a young schoolgirl, she joined her mother in
burning foreign goods as a symbol against British rule.
She became an active member of
the India Independence League and it seemed only appropriate that when Subhash
Chandra Bose arrived in Singapore ,
he should invite Lakshmi to put together the first batch of women soldiers in
what became the legendary Rani of Jhansi brigade. Photographs of the time show
Lakshmi with shoulder-length hair, her soldier’s cap set on one side, in
military britches.
She displayed extraordinary
courage in the ill-fated battles fought by the Azad Hind Fauj against the
British. In 1946, she was captured by the British and brought back to India .
She often remembered those years with pride and a sort of longing.
But she was vocal and angry at
what she considered the betrayal of the dreams of the people by the leaders of
independent India .
It was perhaps because she never compromised on her principles and refused to
join the Delhi Durbar that she was denied the official recognition of being a
national heroine that she so richly deserved.
But Lakshmi had not an iota of
personal ambition. She commanded respect, never demanded it. She joined the CPI(M)
in the early seventies and was an extremely popular leader. She was a champion of
women’s rights and also worked with trade unions in Kanpur .
The last time I saw her, I asked
her how she remained young. “Never give in on something you know to be right,
that’s what will keep you going,” she replied. Her grandson, Shaad, brought out
his camera and said, “Nani give us a smile.” She sat up and smiled that
beautiful smile and gave us a salute, a closed fist and straight shoulders. “Lal
Salaam,” she said.
— The writer is a CPM Politburo
member.
Source: The Indian Express 24 July 2012 . p. 8
