The Revolutionary Life of Freda Bedi

by Vicki Mackenzie

  “Mrs. Bedi was a very fine woman, striking-looking, very modest, and very well known throughout the valley in Kashmir,” said Pran Nath Jalali, a fellow sister in the Women’s Self-Defence Corps, who counted the Bedis among her friends. “BPL was a very funny character, a happy-go-lucky type. I never saw him brooding. You could approach him anytime, and you were welcome.”

  The Bedis’ house, with its beautiful gardens bordering on Dal Lake and its open-door policy, became a magnet for many business-people, international holidaymakers, educators, and journalists alike, including the celebrated American photojournalist Margaret Bourke-White, of Life magazine fame. “She was an elderly lady, yet she hung on telegraph poles to get her story,” remembered Ranga.

  In spite of her extraordinary workload, her husband, and her children, Freda still pursued her spiritual quest, trying to find a path that would fulfill all her deepest yearnings for ultimate Truth and Freedom. Her search was exceptionally meticulous. Following her nonsectarian bent, she decided to take one religion at a time and study it thoroughly. For one year she practiced Islam, praying five times a day and observing the feast days. When a Canadian Jewish professor and his wife visited Kashmir, she studied Judaism with a green-leather-bound Torah that they gave her. Then she observed the Hindu fasts and studied the gods; Shiva, Ganesh, Krishna—all were equally important to her. And, of course, she became thoroughly acquainted with Sikhism, the religion of her husband’s forefathers.

  One day she met a Tibetan Buddhist lama in Srinagar, the head of a Ladakhi monastery visiting from the other side of the continent. It was a brief encounter, but something resonated deeply within Freda. “She felt it was special, somehow. To me he was only a blur of robes,” said Kabir.

  By 1951, the thorny political issue of offering the people of Kashmir a plebiscite to let them decide whether they wanted to join Pakistan or accede to India hung heavily in the air. Freda was torn. While she believed in the people’s right to choose, she was adamantly against Pakistan’s propaganda, with its call for Islamic separation and the holocaust she feared would irrevocably follow, with Hindus and Sikhs the losers.

  “There will be a tough fight when and if a plebiscite takes place. The other side uses low weapons—an appeal to religious fanaticism and hatred, which can always find a response. We fight with clean hands. I am content as a democrat that Kashmir should vote and turn whichever way it wishes, but I know a Pakistan victory would mean massacre and mass migration of Hindus and Sikhs—and I hate to face it. God forbid it should happen,” she said.

  For the first time she revealed an anticommunist leaning. “I feel the British Press—with the exception of our friend Norman Cliff on the News Chronicle—is Pakistan minded, and while I realize that Pakistan and Middle East oil interests are linked, I think it is a great injustice to Kashmir. While a very brutal invasion and a lot of propaganda from the Pakistan side has been trying to make the state communist minded, it has valiantly stuck to its democratic ideas and built up this very war-torn, hungry world.”

  BPL was valiantly doing his part in promoting counterpropaganda (a role given to him by Sheik Abdullah’s administration), churning out publicity and articles both in Delhi and in Kashmir. One day in 1952, things went catastrophically wrong. BPL had a huge argument with his old friend Sheikh Abdullah, who was about to make a speech ratifying the plebiscite.

  Kabir said, “My father warned him that India would never accept such a move and that Sheikh Abdullah would be jailed. He was also afraid that a plebiscite would deepen the split already existing in the state and would destroy the work that he, Mummy, and others had been carefully building up over the fragile early years to promote harmony and improve the living conditions of all the people. Kashmir had a huge Muslim majority, but anti-Pakistan feeling was also very high in Kashmir. That was what my father was working with, especially with his counterpropaganda. His ultimate commitment and hope was that Kashmir would be joined to secular India, with its democratic principles. Sadly the best of friendships ended in a bitter battle.”

  The minute his argument with Sheikh Abdullah was over, BPL went home, packed up all his household goods and his family, and within twenty-four hours had moved everyone to Delhi. He could no longer stay in a Kashmir that he felt was heading for trouble, and in the employ of a man whose policies he no longer believed in. His prediction was right. In 1953, Sheik Abdullah was dismissed as prime minister, arrested on charges of conspiracy against the state, and jailed for eleven years. In Delhi, BPL never stopped petitioning for his release.

  It was a rude departure from the Kashmir that they loved and had served for over five years, and carried a sour whiff of rancor about it. Nevertheless, Freda was proud of the legacy she had left behind.

  “A great deal has been done to change the feudal face of this traditionally backward area. Land legislation has been given to the tiller of the soil, all absentee landlordism has been abolished, and the landlord left with twenty-two acres, his orchards, and trees so that he may live a decent but not exploitative life. Trade has been canalized into emporiums, which are now all over India, thanks to BPL’s work, bringing in much-needed revenue to the gifted artists and craftsmen of Kashmir. A larger part of the state budget has been given to education than in almost any other part of India. We have a very dynamic Education Ministry, and we cut through red tape and get things done much more quickly. A plan to establish youth hostels, recreation centers, and youth camps is also under way.”

  She could have added many more achievements to her list, not least her pioneering work in giving equal opportunities to women.

  Freda and BPL had certainly left their mark on Kashmir, but the contentious issue of to whom it belonged was not resolved—and the argument continues to this day.

  Once again Freda and her family were stepping into the unknown.

  The dates listed here are approximate.

  1948. Freda totes a gun as a member of The Women’s Self-Defence Corps in the bloody aftermath of Partition—a radical step for an advocate of nonviolence. Pictured with Ranga, Kabir, and the family’s Great Dane, Rufus. (Bedi family archives.)

  1946. Children Kabir and Ranga with their mom in the Lahore meadows surrounding the straw and mud huts where the family lived a back-to-nature existence until Independence. Freda was in heaven. (Bedi family archives.)

  1947. Back in England, Freda introduces Kabir to her mother, Nellie, and brother John. (Bedi family archives.)

  1950. The first appearance of Freda’s daughter Gulhima, “Rose of the Snows,” born in Kashmir on September 15, 1949. Pictured with her brother Kabir, in front of their more conventional house. (Bedi family archives.)

  1960. Freda, BPL, Kabir, and Guli on the steps of their small Delhi flat with newly “adopted” family members, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche and Akong Rinpoche, found by Freda in the refugee camps. They lived together for several years. (Bedi family archives.)

  1961. Freda, still a career woman, in Delhi with her two favorite protégées: Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche (left) and Akong Rinpoche (right). (Bedi family archives.)

  1963. The Young Lamas Home School, Dalhousie, India. Freda with the reincarnated Tibetan lamas she was educating in English and modern history to bring Buddhism to the outside world. (Courtesy Faith Grahame.)

  1963. One of the many Western volunteers teaches outside the Young Lamas Home School, Dalhousie, India. (Bedi family archives.)

  1963. “With my Lama son, Trungpa Tulku.” Freda, still in lay clothes, with Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. (Bedi family archives.)

  1966. The Bedi family with Freda finally in her Buddhist robes and with a shaved head. Transition complete. (Bedi family archives.)

  9

  Turning Point

  THE ABRUPT dislocation from their lakeside home, with its backdrop of snowcapped mountains, to the teeming, hot, dusty, dirty cityscape of Delhi was a rude shock. The Bedis were broke, homeless, and without work. Furthermore, Freda had four-year-old Guli and six-year-old Kabir to look af
ter. Ranga was already in Delhi, a BA student in History and Economics at St. Stephen’s College.

  In desperation, the Bedis initially fell back on their tried-and-tested practice of camping instead of buying or renting. On the outskirts of the bustling capital was a walled area of about five acres belonging to a friend of Freda’s, the White Maharani of Patiala (in the Punjab). Part of the land was taken up by the Ashoka Vihara Center, a community of monks, but the rest was open ground, some of it containing ruins. It was much to their liking.

  The Bedi tents had style. They were large with mesh windows to stop the mosquitoes, and beautiful Kashmiri rugs on the floor (on loan from the Maharani). Their neighbors were a motley collection of eccentric, colorful characters. For Guli and Kabir it was a magic playground. They cooked pigeon over communal fires, and made friends with all the stray dogs. As adults, they admitted their upbringing may have been precarious, even dangerous, but it was never dull.

  Finding work was the next necessity. After his experience in Kashmir, BPL claimed he was incapable of working under anyone, but was perpetually optimistic that life would provide. He settled down to translate into English the mystic poetry of Guru Gobind Singh (the last of the ten Sikh gurus) and Bhai Nand Lal (a seventeenth-century Persian and Arabic poet of the Punjab)—and to research Eastern religions.

  It fell to Freda yet again to become the principal breadwinner. She could have had her pick of top, high-paying political positions (her CV was impressive, her reputation enormous, and her connections the very best). Instead she chose a government job as editor of Social Welfare, the organ of the Central Social Welfare Board, part of the Ministry of Education. Social Welfare was written in English and translated into Hindi to reach as many people as possible. She chose with her heart—still wanting to help the poor and needy. The pay was low, but with her job came a government apartment.

  “It was horrible,” said Kabir. “It was in a colony on the outskirts of the city—with a terrace where we slept and very cheap cement flooring with flecks in it. We all crammed in—Mummy, Papa, Guli, me, Granny, who was bedridden by this stage, and the Great Dane. The irony was that Papa had acquired a grand secondhand Packard (reputedly it had once belonged to Gandhi), which Papa absolutely adored. But he had no money to repair or maintain it, so it just stayed outside on the street. He also built a chicken coop in the backyard so he could have a fresh supply of his beloved eggs. I remember one day Mummy came home to find not a single fowl in the yard. ‘Bedi, where are the chickens?’ she asked. ‘Freda, one of them got sick and I had to kill them all!’ he replied. Then she noticed the kitchen was full of jars of chicken pickle, and she knew. Papa made the best chicken pickle imaginable.”

  Once again Freda’s workload was immense. Her mandate was to coordinate and report on the many social welfare programs in place throughout the subcontinent. This meant, in effect, traveling from Kerala, in the southernmost tip, to Himachal Pradesh, in the north, overseeing new enterprises that she helped instigate as well as mentoring a band of volunteer social workers. The work was demanding and she loved it.

  “I always make a particular point of wandering about villages to our more remote welfare extension projects to understand at firsthand the problems of village workers. I aim to promote women’s literacy, as well as teaching them handicrafts, helping them in childbirth and in child upbringing, as well as running nursery schools and child recreation groups. This sort of work everybody needs as it recreates the basic village, which is the cornerstone of India’s economy,” she said.

  “It is rough going in jeeps, but great fun too. I can never get over the feeling that it is relatively more important to see what is happening in places that the ‘Big’ people all over the world rarely penetrate, than to see the larger and much-visited institutions at the city level.”

  Kabir, who sometimes accompanied Freda on these excursions, observed, “Mummy had more than a social conscience, she cared intimately about everyone. She became part of their lives. She helped people over and over again. She saw people’s inner virtues. Her job as editor of Social Welfare was much more than journalism. Her writings became a record of social conditions across India and a mouthpiece for social change and encouragement.”

  This tremendous work effort, the building up of yet another career path, and her heroic achievement in settling her family yet again into a different way of life was about to be dramatically overturned. In 1953, shortly after arriving in Delhi, Nehru sent Freda to Burma as the Indian representative of a UNESCO mission. For the first time in her life Freda found herself in a rich and exclusively Buddhist country. The impact was immediate and galvanic. Surrounded by hundreds of pagodas and thousands of monks roaming the streets in saffron robes, she instantly felt she had come home.

  “When I set foot on that soil, the Golden Temple, the monks with their begging bowls, suddenly it was déjà vu. Without understanding anything much about Buddhism, I knew. This is The Way, this is what I have been looking for. I saw the whole thing,” she said. Freda was forty-two years old. Her long, diligent quest to find her true spiritual path was finally over. It had taken thirty-eight years, since her first days of sitting in her local church in Derby before school trying to meditate. Curiously, in spite of her remarkable effort and conscientiousness in searching and trying out the world’s great religious traditions, she had never come across Buddhism before, even though the Buddha had been born, taught, and attained enlightenment in India. His message had thrived there for over seven hundred years, until the Mughals invaded in the thirteenth century. They had swept in from the Middle East, destroying the renowned Nalanda University, hailed as the greatest center of learning in Asia, and setting fire to the largest Buddhist library in the ancient world, which allegedly burned for three months. Thousands of Buddhist monks and scholars fled into obscurity in the Himalayan kingdoms, from where Buddhism spread to the Far East and Southeast Asia. From then on, the Buddha was incorporated into the pantheon of Hindu gods and was regarded as a mythological figure.

  Burma now boasted some of the most accomplished Buddhist meditation masters on the planet. Freda wasted no time seeking them out. As usual she went straight to the top.

  Sayadaw U Thittila Aggamahapandita was vice president of the World Fellowship of Buddhists and spoke excellent English. He agreed to teach Freda personally for eight weeks. The regime was tough and exceptionally rigorous, demanding she be aware of each detail involved in every activity—walking, eating, brushing teeth, putting on shoes, blinking. Every breath was accompanied by awareness. And then awareness itself was watched by awareness.

  This acute investigation is called Vipassana, or Insight Meditation, the meditation technique of looking inward to face the inner landscape of one’s mind—the response to emotional, physical, mental phenomena. It was accompanied by Loving-Kindness Meditation—starting with oneself and progressing to others, particularly enemies and the multitude of neutral people. Ultimately the process leads to awakening—the emergence from the deep sleep of ignorance that blights every sentient being until they step onto to the path of searching.

  Freda learned fast, mingling her meditation training with her work commitment. “I remember Sayadaw U Pandita telling me, ‘If you get a realization, or a flash, it may not be sitting on your meditation cushion in front of an image of the Buddha. It will probably be somewhere you least expect it.”’

  That’s precisely what happened. Freda had what she called her enlightenment experience “while I was walking with the Commission through the streets of Kyaukme, in northern Burma. Suddenly I saw the flow of things, the meaning and the connection. It was the first real flash of understanding. I can’t explain exactly what it was because it was beyond words. But it opened so many gates and showed me things I’d been trying to find for a very long time,” she explained. She revealed to a few close friends that her Damascene experience had lasted for hours and was accompanied by great bliss.

  A window had been opened, a transcendental window g
iving a glimpse into another reality. The aftershock was dramatic. “We got a phone call back in Delhi that Mummy had collapsed and we had to bring her home from Burma immediately,” says Ranga. “Of course we had no money, so we went around to Nehru and Indira’s house and they provided the plane fare to fetch her home and an ambulance to meet her at the airport.” Continuing her tour was now out of the question.

  “When she arrived, it was shocking. Mummy didn’t recognize anyone. For weeks she stayed in her bed, getting up just to go to the bathroom. That’s as far as she would go. She wouldn’t talk or register anything in the outside world. She’d eat the food put in front of her like an automaton. If you looked at her, it was like looking into a stone wall. She never saw you. It was as though she were catatonic. It was terrifying for all of us—except Papa. He didn’t seem concerned at all. He said it was all happening as it should and that it would work out all right. He was correct. After about six weeks she began to show signs of improvement. Her face became more expressive and she began to interact with us. But it took about three months before she was back to normal.”

  Gradually she resumed her work and tried to get back to her old life, but she had irrevocably changed. After Burma she was going in a different direction, and nothing was going to be the same. The first to feel the impact was BPL. Their marriage of twenty years had been founded on love, intellectual compatibility, and their shared vision of an independent India. That last job had been completed. Freda knew with certainty that that phase of her life was over. Her heart and her path now belonged to the Buddha.

  She calmly sat her husband down and announced, “I’ve been searching all my life, but it’s the Buddhist monks who have been able to show me what it is that I have been looking for. I am a Buddhist from now on—and I have taken a personal vow of a brahmacharya,” she said, referring to the vow of celibacy said to induce spiritual purity and enhance one’s capacity for divine happiness.