Bhikaiji Cama
Bhikaiji Cama Rustam, 1861-1936, political worker and revolutionary. Daughter of Sorabji Framji Patel and Jijibai, an affluent Parsi family of Bombay, she was originally named Bhikaji Patel. She was married on 3 August 1885 to Rustam Cama, the son of the orientalist Khursheclji Rustamji Cama. The marriage, however, did not prove a success because of the political differences between the two. In 1902 she went to London where she came in contact with Dadabhai Naoroji. She designed the first national flag which she unfurled at the Socialist Congress at Stuttgart, West Germany, in 1907. She also met many Indian revolutionaries in Europe including Savarkar, Hardyal, and Chattopadhya, a brother of Sarojini Naidu. In 1909, she shifted her headquarter to Paris, and continued to work for Indian independence and to snuggle arms and revolutionary literature into India before World War I. When France joined England in the war against Germany, Cama was sent to prison where she remained for three y ears till the end of hostilities. She was not allowed to return to India after the war, and it was only in 1935 when she was 74 and ill that she was allowed to come back. She died in a Bombay hospital. A postage stamp, in her honour, was issued on the Republic Day 1962.
