14 Facts About Bhikaiji Cama

Bhikaiji Cama unfurled one of the earliest versions of flag of independent India on August 22,1907 and she was the first person to hoist an Indian flag in a foreign nation, at the International Socialist Conference at Stuttgart.

Bhikaiji Cama was born in Bombay in a large, affluent Parsi Zoroastrian family.

Bhikaiji Cama's husband was a wealthy, pro-British lawyer who aspired to enter politics.

Bhikaiji Cama joined one of the many teams of nurses working out of Grant Medical College, in an effort to provide care for the afflicted, and to inoculate the healthy.

Bhikaiji Cama was preparing to return to India in 1904 when she came in contact with Shyamji Krishna Varma, who was well known in London's Indian community for fiery nationalist speeches he gave in Hyde Park.

Together with Naoroji and Singh Rewabhai Rana, Bhikaiji Cama supported the founding of Varma's Indian Home Rule Society in February 1905.

That same year Bhikaiji Cama relocated to Paris, where, together with Rana and Munchershah Burjorji Godrej, she co-founded the Paris Indian Society.

Together with other notable members of the movement for Indian sovereignty living in exile, Bhikaiji Cama wrote, published and distributed revolutionary literature for the movement, including Bande Mataram and later Madan's Talwar.

Bhikaiji Cama sent revolvers concealed in Christmas toys to patriots in India.

On 22 August 1907, Bhikaiji Cama attended the second Socialist Congress at Stuttgart, Germany, where she described the devastating effects of a famine that had struck the Indian subcontinent.

Bhikaiji Cama continued to maintain active contacts with Indian, Irish, and Egyptian revolutionaries as well as with French Socialists and Russian leadership.

In January 1915, the French government deported Rana and his whole family to the Caribbean island of Martinique, and Bhikaiji Cama was sent to Vichy, where she was interned.

Bhikaiji Cama bequeathed most of her personal assets to the Avabai Petit Orphanage for girls, now the Bai Avabai Framji Petit Girls' High School, which established a trust in her name.

In 2004, politicians of the BJP, India's political party, attempted to identify a later design as the flag Bhikaiji Cama raised in Stuttgart.