Monday 23 July 2012

Lakshmi Sehgal died

Lakshmi Sehgal, who has died aged 97 at a private hospital in Kanpur on 23 July 2012, was a closeally of the Indian nationalist revolutionary Subhas Chandra Bose. 
She was born Lakshmi Swaminathan into a well-off family in Madras on October 24 1914. Her father was a lawyer, her mother a social worker and independence activist. Lakshmi studied Medicine at Madras Medical College, and in 1940 left for Singapore, where she established a clinic for poor migrant labourers from India. 

In 1942, following the fall of Singapore to the Japanese, she helped wounded Indian prisoners of war. The following year she met Subhas Chandra Bose, who had broken ranks with Mahatma Gandhi over his policy of non-violence and turned to the Axis powers for help in liberating India from British rule. With Japanese support, he organised the Indian National Army and sought recruits not only among Indian PoWs, but also among the Indian diaspora in south-east Asia. 
In 1947 she married Colonel Prem Kumar Sehgal, a fellow INA fighter, and settled in Kanpur, where she returned to her medical practice. 
In 1971 she joined the Communist Party of India which she represented in the Indian upper house of Parliament, the Rajya Sabha. But in 1997 she admitted she was disillusioned with the reality of Indian independence and the religious tensions exacerbated by Partition; after a Hindu mob destroyed the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya in 1992. 
Lakshmi Sehgal is survived by two daughters.

Source:
http://cablequest.org/news/obituary/item/1740-lakshmi-sehgal-died.htmlSource: http://cablequest.org/news/obituary/item/1740-lakshmi-sehgal-died.html

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