The Revolutionary Life of Freda Bedi

by Vicki Mackenzie

  From this time on, Freda took on the added responsibility of becoming the main breadwinner for the family, a function she fulfilled the entire time she was with BPL. Her workload was always tremendous, as she managed the many tentacles of her career and political calling, along with her home life and motherhood. She wrote book reviews, was a contributor to All India Radio, and became a consultant on a woman’s magazine, Modern Girl.

  She loved journalism. It fulfilled two primary functions—getting her message across (in this case, educating young Indian women about modern ideas) and her deep-seated desire to champion the female sex in general. Inspired by the suffragette movement and Marxism (which was against the exploitation of anybody), Freda was in the vanguard of the feminist movement, long before the term even existed.

  In between times, Freda also published Rhymes for Ranga, a children’s book with Indian themes, which also incorporated subtle political propaganda about the nobility of the peasant and about Gandhi and won a national prize for children’s verse.

  “Writing gives me and a lot of other people joy. It’s amazing that forty years on, some of the articles I wrote are still remembered,” she said.

  To obtain extra cash, she took a job as the head of the English department at the Fateh Chand College, the first nationalist school for women. She found the work repetitive and boring. “I always hated teaching and still do, but I am glad to do it, because I get in contact with the girls and manage to make them a bit more radical. I hope it bears fruit in the future,” she said.

  The hours were long and the pay was low, but Freda was a successful teacher in spite of her reservations. Her students grew from twenty-six to six hundred. “There was an insatiable thirst for education among the girls. Their families realized that unless they educated their daughters, their boys would continue to get married abroad and bring home foreign wives,” said Freda pragmatically.

  To solve the problem of finding somewhere to live, they came up with the novel idea of moving to the newly developed Model Town, on the outskirts of Lahore, designed by Dewan Khem Chand on the ideals of sound ecology and the virtues of community living. As they could not afford one of the houses, they took an acre of land behind the residences (freely given by the landlord, a sympathizer) and proceeded to build a complex of straw-and-mud huts. They moved in together with Bhabooji and three-year-old Barrinder, an orphan of a near-relative. It was basic, back-to-nature living—the simple life advocated by Gandhi. Freda was in heaven.

  “Under the trees we built reed huts with thatched roofs and plastered-mud floors, which were extremely beautiful. And we didn’t have to pay rent. Our living accommodation consisted of one big hut comprising a dining room, sitting room, and bedroom combined. There was another hut where Bhabooji and the children slept, and a kitchen hut presided over by our great cook, Gut Singh, who stayed with us for about fifteen years. All around us were mustard fields. A stream ran through our land, and we had a buffalo that provided us with milk and freshly churned butter. We cultivated vegetables and I grew a rose garden. Looking back, it had a certain magical, paradisiacal quality, which our visitors never failed to notice.”

  Ranga, now eighty and living in Bangalore with his artist wife Umi, happily recalls his days in the Hut System. “It was a gorgeous life. I used to run around barefoot, playing with paper boats in the stream and swinging from an eighteen-foot tree, which afforded a huge pendulum arc. Of course, there was no electricity—I can still hear the hiss of the kerosene Ditmar lamps. I had all the pets in the world. There was a pony, which I used to ride for hours every day, two wonderful shepherd dogs called Pug and Smug, which grew so big they presented a massive fighting team against any marauding animals. Later came Rufus, the Great Dane—Papa only liked big dogs. Mummy loved animals too, but feeding them . . . She held the purse strings!

  “We had rabbits, guinea pigs, and of course chickens, to satisfy Papa’s craving for fresh eggs. The buffalo was my source of milk. Bhabooji would get me up at five in the morning to milk the buffalo and squirt the warm, slightly salty milk directly into my mouth. I was perfectly fine with that. It was getting up at five a.m. that was the pain! Nearby was one of the biggest bungalows with a boy who had a room just for his toys, but even though my life was rustic, I never felt deprived.”

  Freda became pregnant again and their second son, Tilak Zaheer, was born on November 28, 1935, when Ranga was eighteen months old. Both parents were delighted.

  “Tilak was one of the most famous Indian nationalists, and so with Zaheer as his second name he should be a pretty good revolutionary. He is a very serious young man, quite different from Ranga, who has smiled almost since birth,” Freda wrote to Olive.

  The surroundings may have been utopian, but all was not well in the Hut System. Ranga did not get any real schooling, due to lack of funds, and he contracted typhoid from contaminated hand-pumped water. A doctor strongly advised Freda not to keep the children under such conditions, but as was her wont, she had set her goals and was single-mindedly moving toward them.

  The worst happened. Baby Tilak died of dysentery during an epidemic that was sweeping the Punjab. He was just a few months old. Compounding the tragedy, at the time of his death Freda was away campaigning for independence in the countryside, leaving Tilak in the hands of his doting grandmother. On the surface she put a remarkably stoic face on it.

  “You must have heard about Tilak,” she wrote to Olive. “It was a big shock, but then I am philosophical about these things. I see too much of life not to believe that such troubles are ‘all in a day’s work,’ and that I must leave it. The best consolation is that Ranga is a healthy, high-spirited child, and a joy to us all.”

  Beneath Freda’s most unusual detachment, however, lay a real sense of guilt, as Ranga testified: “Mummy never forgave herself for Tilak’s death, because she was not there to look after him. She vowed then not to have another child until Independence was achieved.” It was a heavy price to pay in the two-way pull she felt between her deep-seated need to care for “the people” and the equally deep need to care for her own children.

  What The Huts lacked in the way of modern conveniences and hygiene was compensated for by the fact that life around Freda and BPL was never dull. The Bedis had an open home, and a constant stream of fascinating visitors were always dropping by and staying, encouraged by the “come on in, sit down, and have a meal” welcome. The majority were the leading left-wingers of the time—artists, poets, and politicians, including Gyani Zail Singh (the first Punjabi to become president of India), I. K. Gujral (thirteenth prime minister of India), Hafeez Jullandhri (poet and composer of the Pakistani national anthem), and Balraj Sahri (the noted film and stage actor). And not least was the mighty Sheikh Abdullah, self-styled “Lion of Kashmir,” three times president, who was later to play such a prominent role in their destiny.

  “Our home became a center for so many seekers of the truth,” said Freda. But life was becoming increasingly tense, both outside and inside The Huts, as the push for a free India gathered pace. And BPL and Freda were thrust into the very forefront.

  Circa 1900. The tiny watchmakers shop on Monk Street, Derby, England where Freda Houlston was born. Pictured are her grandfather and father. “As attractive as the Old Curiosity Shop.” (Courtesy Pauline Watson.)

  Circa 1910. Freda’s father, Frank Houlston, who was killed in battle a few weeks before the end of World War I. “His death overshadowed my entire childhood.” (Courtesy Pauline Watson.)

  The dates listed here are approximate.

  1919. Young Freda, always a bookworm, with her mother Nellie, an accomplished dress-maker, and her brother John, whom Freda adored. (Bedi family archives.)

  1932. Freda with Baba Phyare Lal Bedi (BPL), the sixteenth direct descendant of Guru Nanak, founder of the Sikh religion, whom she met and married at Oxford, amid much scandal. “You will have to spend our marriage waiting outside jail walls,” he told her. (Bedi family archives.)

  1932. The young,
in-love Freda in heady, Oxford days. Taken by her fiancé BPL. (Bedi family archives.)

  1935. Freda as a new bride in India wearing the wedding gift of a sari. She would never wear Western clothes again. (Bedi family archives.)

  1935. Freda in Lahore, Pakistan, a week before second son, Tilak, was born. He died a few months old, while Freda was away campaigning for Indian independence. (Bedi family archives.)

  1935. Freda dressed completely in khadi, the homespun cloth of devoted Gandhi followers. She was imprisoned for his cause. (Bedi family archives.)

  5

  Freedom Fighter

  HER HOME and working life established, Freda threw herself wholeheartedly into her mission to free India from imperialism and to bring justice and equality to the poor and downtrodden. She traveled all over the Punjab by foot, often taking Ranga with her, going from village to village, absorbing the land and its people, raising their consciousness about the struggle for freedom. She stayed in their huts, ate their food, learned their songs, and heard their problems. Now, rather than being confined to merely looking in and talking as she had as an Oxford undergraduate, she was in a position to act.

  This intimacy heightened her love of India and whetted her revolutionary zeal. “India is in a very bad way and constitutions, for all the fuss made over them, are not going to help at all. It will need something more radical. When you get into the homes of the peasants—unbelievable poverty! They live on three paisa per day—one penny, at a liberal estimate—everything inclusive. They are just ground down by starvation and the moneylender,” she wrote to Olive. Later, she added, “India has harrowed me with her festering poverty, her dirt, and her despair, and I have become a unit of the ragged army that fights against it.”

  Freda’s compassion and admiration for the peasants never wavered. In her eyes they were noble souls, living a truer existence, in harmony with the soil and the rhythms of the seasons, unsullied by materialism. “Modern people would probably put security at the top of the list of what makes them happy, but the peasant is humbler and simpler in the face of the inevitable insecurities of nature and of life. The villagers, the ‘illiterates’ of India, have got that genius of simple people; they judge not from words but from the heart, from feelings, from gestures, from instinct. It is we who have been blunted by words, not they who are dull.”

  Again her affinity with women—especially mothers—was strong. “Many times I have been confronted with a village woman and her child and she has given one look at me and my little boy, and we have been friends from that minute. There is something in the understanding of a woman and a woman, of a mother and a mother, which is far beyond language or skin. It is a feeling often ‘too deep for tears,’ born of common hopes, and prayers, and sufferings.”

  Her agenda was twofold: to urge “the warrior peasants of the Punjab” to agitate for land reform and fairer land revenues, and to demand their civil liberties, especially against the heartless Indian police officers, who regularly beat them. She would then bring this terrible treatment to the attention of the authorities.

  Word quickly spread of the Englishwoman, dressed in a sari, and her audiences grew from a few stragglers to vast crowds, curious to see and hear this phenomenon for themselves. “When I say that in those days I addressed not just thousands but hundreds of thousands of villagers, I am not telling an untruth. It became part of my way of life. The Punjab peasant became not only familiar to me but a friend.”

  A far greater challenge was addressing the students and nationalists in Lahore, but BPL urged her to do it. “He said it was nothing, that I should think of it as if I were addressing the debating society at Oxford. The first time I spoke, I was petrified. There were twenty-four thousand people waiting. And these twenty-four thousand people had very definite opinions about what they should and shouldn’t listen to. If they didn’t like the speaker, they were well known for beating the ground with shoes and sticks.

  “I stood on the platform like a martyr awaiting execution and decided to speak very loudly into the loudspeaker. I can still hear the shock that went through the whole mass of twenty-four thousand heads when this rather slight, Western-looking woman suddenly bellowed at them. I found out I could go on speaking and not be drummed out of existence by sticks and shoes.” Freda had well and truly found her voice—an unusual thing for any woman of any era. She was extremely accomplished in her native tongue and loved words, but to give a speech in Hindi (albeit with a British accent) was a remarkable accomplishment. The audience was rightly mesmerized by this woman of the Raj and the wife of one of the biggest landowners of the Punjab, who was urging them on to rebellion. Decades later, people could still recall the power of her oratory. After her inaugural speech there was thunderous applause and cries of, “We want freedom.”

  Her speeches especially resonated with the women, who took courage from Freda’s own example. Freda records how the women of Srinagar ran out in the streets, rattled stones, and frightened the soldiers’ horses. “The women became the heroines. Village women would take a club on their shoulder and stride at the head of the village ‘armies.’ There was nothing dynamic or fiery in their timid faces. But I knew inside me this was woman’s shell. When the time came, these women would be on the streets again, never faltering, throwing their powerhouse of energy into another great movement of the people. Women put their proverbial patience to many uses. They know how to wait.”

  Inevitably, the authorities reacted. Everyone in The Huts lived in a constant state of tension and anxiety. The Huts were constantly threatened with demolition; Freda and BPL (and those who associated with them) were under constant surveillance and were frequently harassed by the police.

  “Being a socialist in India is no joke. We all of us live on the edge of jail, and however careful you are, nothing much can be done if you do get arrested, since legal rights are rather pre-Cromwell. It is very difficult to present a picture of these terrifying days,” Freda wrote to Olive.

  Ranga still remembers the tension that surrounded them all. “Mummy was trailed by plainclothed policemen all the time. In order to get her removed from her job, Fateh Chand College was subjected to all sorts of harassment and sudden inspections, but the school never submitted. It was extremely brave of them, as harboring a political activist was a punishable act. No other college dared employ her, even though a master’s degree from Oxford was no mean qualification for a woman in India.

  “They even questioned the sweepers to see if she was teaching sedition! Once, when a sweeper was taken down to the police station and manhandled, my mother marched off with me in tow and took the police inspector to task. She then insisted on making a notation in the complaint book. That evening a British police officer visited the college and threatened to arrest her. She wrote to the police hierarchy in Lahore and sent copies to the newspapers. Mummy was absolutely fearless at all times!”

  It was the threat of prison, however, that most unnerved Freda. All the A-list agitators, including of course Nehru and Gandhi, were constantly being hauled before judges and jailed. BPL was no exception. He was first arrested in 1937 for some provocative speech at an outdoor meeting, and Freda soon became reconciled to the pattern. It was part of the deal they had signed up for, and what they actually wanted in order to promote their cause. As he had warned as part of his marriage proposal, Freda spent a lot of time visiting him behind bars. Once again she was stoic.

  “It is not unduly oppressive and often there are some enlightened Indian officers in charge who are nationalists at heart, and so don’t give the prisoners a hard time. Of course, imprisonment is imprisonment, and it’s a suffering not be allowed to go out and lead a normal life. But BPL is cheery and philosophical, and usually has one or two good friends in jail with him. My mother-in-law, because of her age and generation, suffers even more than I do about this. We are great friends, and her loving presence makes a great difference.”

  By 1939, the revolution was heating up, and under Bose’s influen
ce, freedom fighters were favoring violence as the means to achieve their goal. This was too much for Freda, who promptly turned her attention totally to Gandhi and his peaceful approach of civil disobedience. BPL, however, jumped right in with added fervor and was promptly arrested for dangerous political activity and sentenced to four years in Deoli Prison (infamous for coining the term doolally, signifying “crazy”).

  Deoli was grim, situated in the middle of the Rajasthan desert, miles from anywhere, and enclosed within three layers of barbed wire and numerous watchtowers. An escapee would have to walk days before reaching the nearest village.

  It was the longest sentence BPL had been given and the hardest for Freda to bear, not only because she was left alone without moral and physical support from her husband but also because she rightly knew that BPL would continue to agitate behind bars. She lived in a constant state of worry and fear for him.

  Now unable to live independently in The Huts because it was too dangerous, she got permission to move into one of Fateh Chand College’s hostels, taking Ranga with her. Children were not allowed into the hostels, but Freda was popular with students and staff alike, having won their admiration and respect. Again, the college bravely agreed. With plenty of staff only too happy to look after (and spoil) Ranga, Freda was free to continue her full teaching program and carry on with her own revolution.

  Wracked with anxiety about BPL in Deoli, Freda constantly badgered the prison authorities for the right to visit him. After much string pulling from two barrister friends practicing in the Punjab High Court, Freda finally got a permit for a “family” visit. She took Ranga with her. It turned into a saga of high comic drama.

  Ranga recalled, “Mummy and I set off in the blistering heat traveling by train, third class, as she always insisted. It took days, with us staying at small wayside hotels, eating at bus stops and having to report to various police stations along the way. All the time Mummy was harassed so that she would abandon the trip. Finally we were put down beside a dirt track and, after an hour’s walk, arrived at Deoli Detention Camp, which was run by the army, not the police. They had no information regarding our visit and were visibly put out by the sight of Mummy in Indian clothes, the British wife of a dangerous political criminal.