I had a different novel excerpt in mind today, one which involves how difficult it was to publish something in India, and involves a description of a press raid.
But I saw this excellent series of tweets about Madam Bhikaiji Cama, commemorating her birthday today, and realized I needed to share the parts I’d written about her.
I’d been trying to collate every account possible about this badass woman. She was an elegant fighter who used money, politics and social savvy in support of Indian independence. While her activities are decently documented, there’s very little about how she was on a personal level.
We like to think of anyone associated with Indian independence as being some sort of pious Gandhian who led a very austere life. That’s what our textbooks like to make us think, and the rest of society, including anyone who’s even vaguely patriotic likes to pile on to that. Even her pictures tend to show her in a Parsee saree with her head covered, and the grayscale of the image probably doesn’t do justice to her clothes. But it looks incredibly unlikely that Madam Cama was anything like austere.
She was from a wealthy Bombay family, and married into another wealthy Bombay family. She had differences with her husband and moved to London, and then Paris to facilitate the fight for freedom. She was constantly traveling to meet with revolutionaries, between India, Europe, and America. And probably different parts of the British Empire and Southeast Asia as well. She was a fixture in Paris high society, and wore beautiful sarees everywhere she went, and given France is France, and Paris was then a hub of former royalty in exile, you couldn’t gain a foothold without being a stylish, elegant person with fine clothes, at the least. And you probably had to entertain with taste.
Her apartment was on the Champs-Elysees, a prominent avenue in Paris. That is far from slumming it. Even if she was estranged from her husband, he would probably not want her embarrassing him by slumming it.
And she was the personal secretary of Dadabhai Naoroji, the first British MP of Indian origin. He was an incredibly rich man, and I’m sure he compensated his personal staff very, very well.
It’s easy to assume with our present-day bias that she was some stick-in-the-mud khadi-wearing Gandhian, because she wore sarees everywhere instead of getting with the times and dressing Western, because that’s what the elite did. But we would probably be wrong. Rich people wear whatever the heck they want, because they aren’t trying to impress anyone. And they usually wear it well. Also, she was active on this scene way before Gandhi even took a train in South Africa.
So here, I’m trying to imagine what a rich, elegant woman with a keen interest in Indian self-rule and the brazenness to actually execute on it would seem like. Like I’ve said here before, it’s frustrating to have the only image of a freedom fighter as being incredibly stuffy with superhuman levels of austerity and selflessness, and it’s exciting having to think of an alternative way of being.
In this scene, Tatya’s brother has had every single publisher in Bombay Province refuse Tatya’s manuscript, because the publisher who dared to publish it had his press raided and his staff threatened. So instead of sending it back to Tatya, who was being surveilled, he sends it to Madam Bhikaji Cama, hoping that she might be able to get it published in France.
The Excerpt
Bhikhaji Cama was exhausted as she sauntered in the door of her Champs-Elysees apartment. It had been a long evening at the gala at the Theatre Marigny, shaking hands, air-kissing, and making small talk. And the wine. So much wine! And such good wine, too. She used to enjoy this kind of thing, didn’t she? When she still lived with Rustom, she would have killed for a glass of Chateau Lafite, but now it just made her sleepy. She was growing old, she thought, as she sank on to her plush chaise.
She caught her reflection on her polished living room table. She still looked elegant, didn’t she? Her inky blue saree and neatly coiffed hair had received a lot of compliments, as it should. They used to consider her sarees exotic, but as she had worked her way into being a fixture in the Paris social scene, and she was now known for her chiffons and Chinese silks. It was getting much easier to get Gara prints on Chinese silks these days, given that now there were little enclaves in China that felt almost like Navsari.
Paris was beginning to feel like home. She still missed Bombay, but being married to Rustom and all the stifling life that came with it was not meant for her.
It had been an interesting evening. She had discussed provisions for shipping items to India through Pondicherry with a prominent exporter. He was young, bubbling with anarchist fervour. He seemed open to shipping packages for her along with his machine tools. But she would need to work on him a little more to make sure he wouldn’t lose his nerve.
Her butler had retired for the night. But there was a fat package he had put away in the mail tray. What was this?
Her name and address were on the package, written in neat, curving letters. The last name on the ‘from’ address made her smile. Tatya’s brother. Smart of him to send things to her. Tatya was being watched like a hawk.
She slit it open with the little silver letter-opener her mother had given her for Nowroz, along with several other little treasures. She liked the peacock at the edge of it. Today it even matched her saree. There was a letter inside with a large package.
“Dear Madam Cama,
Trust you are doing wonderfully. Tatya mentions you a lot in his letters. Thank you for watching out for our Tatya in a foreign country. While he is a capable young man, he does have a knack of angering the powers that be, and the company of well-grounded good friends like yourself are important to keeping him from being carried away.
Please find enclosed Tatya’s manuscript he must have told you about. While I found a brave man who wanted to publish this wonderful book, they made an example of him. While he got away relatively unscathed, every other publisher in the entire province has taken the warning and always seem to be away when I visit them, or are called away on urgent work just as I broach the topic.
I trust Paris, with its values of liberty, egalite, and fraternity would be a much easier place for this book to see the light of day. I hope you have much better luck with this than I have had.
Yours respectfully,
Babarao.”
Bhikhaiji sighed loudly. Poor Tatya.
She’d help.
But first, she’d need a favor.