Women from the Indian Independence Movement

'India's Freedom Struggle' was that chapter from our history textbooks that's actually stuck with many of us into our adult lives. Those of us who did school (and history lessons) in the 80s and 90s will probably recall the bits about a handful of freedom fighters - mostly men - who bravely defied a cruel, oppressive and blatantly exploitative system, to win India her freedom in 1947. Looking back, i can't help feeling that the Freedom Struggle was taught - somehow - as a movement essentially led and won by men, with the rare great woman who got a paragraph-mention in our thin-paged, single-colour history textbooks. We live in a polarised place in polarised times. Maybe now more than ever, it helps to look back at our collective past, and see if there's any context we can derive from it. Here are my tributes to a few great women, those whose words, thoughts and actions contributed immensely to India's Freedom Struggle (and who sadly didn't get a decent mention in our childhoods, at least in mine). This list is in no way the only one i could have come up with, and I hope to continue these tributes, perhaps later. Hope you find meaning. Happy Republic Day RANI GAIDINLIU Queen of the Hills
When she was just a teenager, Rani Gaidinliu was captured and sentenced to life imprisonment for leading guerrilla attacks against the British in Manipur and Naga tribal areas. Socially inclined since childhood, Gaidinlui (b.1915) was deeply influenced by her political mentor Haipou Jadonang who led the Heraka Movement, initially started in order to preserve Naga ways of life and worship, slowly turning into an armed resistence against the British. When Haipou was hanged after a mock trial by the British, Gaidinliu decided that the Movement had to keep moving forward, and took charge. She was all of 16. Gathering people locally in increasingly growing numbers, she popularised the nationwide freedom movement, then at its peak, persuading people not to pay taxes, and openly defy British authority on all levels. Once captured by the British in 1931, she was handcuffed and made to walk for days to prison (even Pandit Nehru could do nothing to secure her release). She remained in prison for the next 14 years, until Independence in 1947. Intent on preserving the unique cultural identity of her people, the Zeliangrong, Gaidinliu saw in India’s Freedom Struggle a parallel to the plight of her own people. “I have nothing to say to the younger generation,” she said in her old age to an interviewer. “As Gandhi said, my life is my message. My people are my hope.”

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