A Revolutionary Life: Memoirs of a Political Activist

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In 1940, Lakshmi Sahgal left for Singapore to work as a doctor, and came into contact with a group of expatriate Indians who would form the core of the future Indian National Army. In July 1943, Netaji called upon her to participate in the formation of the Rani Jhansi Regiment, the first and only all-woman regiment in modern Indian history. Trained in warfare and weaponry, this regiment participated actively in the INA's struggle for freedom till 1946, when it was disbanded, only to be remembered as the Forgotten Army. In 1956, Malayala Manorama published a long piece on Lakshmi Sahgal and her Rani Jhansi Regiment in their magazine, Manorama. The first time she wrote of her experiences in the INA was at the behest of Comrade Namboodiripad in the late 60's. This was translated into Malayalam and published in Chinta, the CPM magazine. The original manuscript was stashed in a trunk where it remained for the next 25 years. It reappeared briefly in a Hindi translation in 1938, then disappeared again. Here, at last, is Lakshmi Sahgal's autobiography in its original form, as she wrote it decades ago. One of the few first-person accounts of the time, it is a document of immense political and historical value, and offers a unique perspective on women in armed struggle and the freedom movement.

Captain Lakshmi Sahgal of the Rani Jhansi Regiment, was born into a highly political, nationalist family. She had her early political education at home, when the family boycotted English goods and spoke only Malayalam and Tamil. She was politically active in Madras University, but did not agree with Gandhi's call to students to give up their education and join the Civil Disobedience Movement.

Lakshmi Sahgal was vice president of the All India Democratic Women's Association and president of the U.P. state unit of the Janwadi Mahila Samiti.

She passed away in 2012, and is survived by two daughters.

A few lines in history books, a faded photograph of women in uniforms, a cryptic caption, are generally all we know of India's one and only all-woman regiment, the Rani Jhansi Regiment of the Indian National Army. The INA itself has been quite successfully elided from our nationalist historiography. Apart from brief mention in notable biographies of the "brothers against the Raj" and the efforts of the Netaji Research Bureau in Calcutta, little has been done to keep the INA and the role it played in the Independence movement alive in public memory and in the historical record. There is equally little to remind us of the Ranis and the part they played in the INA's war of liberation.

Nineteen ninety-seven marks the Golden Jubilee of India's independence and, in one of history's curious and unexpected turns, there has been a sudden "revival" of interest in Subhas Chandra Bose, if not the INA-billboards in the capital city, Delhi, celebrated his birthday on January 23, 1997 and there was a gathering of ex-INA officers and office-bearers to mark the commencement of the Netaji Birth Centenary celebrations at Red Fort. The very fact that the Red Fort was the venue indicates the INA's "reinstatement", as it were, in the annals of the freedom struggle.

Nineteen ninety-seven also marks the first publication of Captain Lakshmi Sahgal's (of the Rani Jhansi Regiment) autobiography, in English, the language in which it was originally written in the late 1960s. It flags off Kali's Fifty Years of Freedom Specials, a series of books that will examine the period, 1947-1997, from a gender perspective. Like the rest of Kali's list these books will range from autobiographies and memoirs to oral history, fiction and the social sciences. The question of the invisibility of women, generally, in history has been a concern of both the women's movement and women's studies, worldwide. The importance of restoring women to history and restoring their history to women, is now recognised as a serious political and theoretical objective. Geraldine Forbes' essay, which follows, explores and elaborates this academic enterprise in greater detail; our purpose is to provide a brief publishing history of A Revolutionary Life, and its appearance in its present form.

In the closing pages of her autobiography Lakshmi Sahgal tells us that while in captivity in Burma she had very little to do and decided to occupy herself with some writ-ing. She had nothing to write on, and so made notes on any scrap of paper she could lay her hands on. She wrote about the Ranis, the INA and their historic march towards Imphal and the rest of India in 1945.

The he Indian National Army, assembled in Southeast Asia from Indians domiciled in Malaysia, Burma and Singapore, and soldiers taken prisoner by the Japanese, has been called "The Forgotten Army"¹ in India's "Untold War of Independence". The INA had a women's regiment, over 1,000 strong, named the Rani of Jhansi Regiment after the famous military heroine of the rebellion of 1857. Not only was this India's first and only women's regiment, it is one of the first conscious attempts in world history to integrate women into the military as a fighting force. The historian Peter Fay, author of The Forgotten Army, focuses on Lakshmi Swaminadhan, the medical doctor who commanded the Rani of Jhansi regiment, but the regiment it-self is allocated less than 20 pages in his 563 page volume. Amitav Ghosh, who wrote "India's Untold War of Independence", mentions neither Lakshmi nor the Ranis (al-though Lakshmi appears, unnamed, in a group photo of former members of the INA), and only briefly mentions the formation of this regiment: "It was Bose who conceived of a woman's regiment an idea that met with both ridicule and opposition from the Japanese". This omission of women's role in the INA, especially in the work of historians committed to writing more inclusive history, is trou-bling at the end of the twentieth century.

Since the 1970s women throughout the world have been involved in projects to place women in history while transforming the discipline to make it represent the diversity of human experience. We have made headway in creating the new and vibrant sub-discipline of Women's His-tory-cheering news, but it is disturbing to realise we have made so little impact on the historical craft. One of the problems, as I see it, is embedded in the debate about the social construction of gender versus the essentialism of sexual difference, which remains at the heart of our multi-faceted and sometimes contradictory efforts to include women in history and historicise women's lives.

If women are fundamentally the same as men, then difference can be explained by cultural institutions. Following this logic, women raised unconventionally may see themselves capable of performing roles not traditionally assigned to women and behave, and perhaps even think, like men. Those historians who re-examine the records find many women whose deeds and accomplishments can be measured by the familiar rules of history. When these women are inserted in the revised texts, the narrative is more inclusive but remains conventional history, privileging public deeds and neglecting the mundane and the personal. Such an approach, satisfying and rewarding as it may seem, is deeply flawed.