Person · revolutionary exile · France

Bhikaiji Cama

Date

1861–1936

Function

Military & resistance

Confidence

Not assessed

Location

48.857, 2.352

Worth knowing

At the International Socialist Congress at Stuttgart in 1907 she unfurled a flag of green, saffron and red with Vande Mataram across it and asked the delegates to salute it — the first time a flag for an independent India was raised abroad.

About the place

Placed at Paris, where she lived in exile for over thirty years and ran the Indian revolutionary press. She was born in Bombay and was allowed home only in 1935, paralysed, and died there nine months later.

Connections (2)

• Alternative toSri Aurobindo

  Cama in Paris and Aurobindo at Pondicherry both used somebody else's empire to escape British law, and both were connected to the same Bengal revolutionary network — Aurobindo's brother Barin ran the Manicktolla bomb factory, and Cama's Paris circle sent literature and, on at least one occasion, bomb manuals home in French colonial mail. Aurobindo abandoned politics for yoga in 1910; Cama kept the press going for thirty more years.

• AnalogueChittagong armoury

  The Chittagong group and the Paris circle are the two ends of the Bengal revolutionary movement — the propaganda run from exile where the censor could not reach, and the armed action at home. Chittagong's participants included Pritilata Waddedar, who led an attack on a European club and took cyanide rather than be captured, and Kalpana Datta, who stood trial with Surya Sen. Both ends were destroyed by the mid-1930s.

On these journeys

• The armed movement and the exiles

Sources

Wikipedia, “Bhikaiji Cama”. Bhikaiji Cama’s Bande Mataram (Geneva) and Madan’s Talwar; India Office Political and Secret files on the Paris Indian Society.

• Wikipedia — Bhikaiji Cama