Bravery and kindness personified

She was born to South Indian parents – Tamil Brahmin father and Malayalee Nair mother; married a Punjabi, fought for India’s freedom in the company of a famous Bengali and spent most of her life in Uttar Pradesh, serving poor people of all castes and communities as a doctor. Cosmopolitan culture and the spirit of communal harmony and national integration oozed through her every pore.

“ Eanakku Thamizh pesa varum (I can speak Tamil),” Captain Lakshmi Sahgal told me at her Kanpur residence in the early winter of 2003.

I had gone to the town to meet her in connection with research on a book I was writing on Pandit K. Santanam of Lahore. Sahgal’s brother Govind Swaminadhan was married to one of Santanam’s daughters – Sulochana.

In a mixture of English, Hindustani and Tamil, she spoke to me about Santanam briefly, over tea and snacks. “I have not interacted with him much. Of course I have heard of his work in Lahore as a Congressman and an associate of Lala Lajpat Rai and Chairman of Lakshmi Insurance Company, before my brother married his daughter. I am sorry I would not be able to give you much information,” she told me, sounding a trifle apologetic.

Later in the day I visited her clinic and saw her at work, treating poor patients from Kanpur and its neighbourhood, a charity service she continued till a few days before she died — on July 23.

By a strange coincidence, Sahgal made national headlines exactly around this time of the year a decade ago — in July 2002. She was the losing candidate in the presidential contest.

Game fighter

She was in the news during the campaign that preceded the election. I saw her at a few press meets. Even at 87 she was alert and answered questions with ease. Her daughter Suhasini Ali and a few Marxist leaders always escorted her. The legislators of the country, her voters, had respect and regard for her, yet a majority of them did not vote for her.

To many of them it must have been a rather unpleasant exercise. But the dictates of politics must be obeyed.

She knew she had little chance of winning against Mr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, the ruling NDA candidate supported by the main opposition Congress, but accepted the challenge as the brave fighter that she was all her life.

She was the candidate of the Left parties. Her candidature enhanced the prestige of the presidential poll.

After her defeat, the self-effacing woman quietly returned to her service of the poor in Kanpur.

ILLUSTRIOUS FAMILY

On hearing the news of her death, I rang up Madhuri Santanam, the only surviving daughter of Pandit Santanam and sister-in-law of Sahgal, and conveyed my condolences.

She said, “Lakshmi Sahgal was a rare spirit who belonged both to the past and the present while remaining poised on the brink of the future — as when she blazed a trail in women’s emancipation by heading the Rani of Jhansi regiment in Subhas Bose’s Indian National Army, by driving tractors in the Terai when she took up farming as a hobby, by running for President against Abdul Kalam.”

She also recalled that Sahgal was born into a comfortable family — her father Dr Subbarama Swaminadhan rose from a poor background to become a successful lawyer in Madras.

He married his Nair patron’s daughter, Ammu (who played an important role in the freedom struggle), from Palghat and settled in Madras.

The Swaminadhans had four children, of whom three gained fame — the eldest Govind, lawyer and State Prosecutor of Madras, Lakshmi in the INA, and Mrinalini (Sarabhai) as a danseuse. Subra, the businessman, was low-profile.

(The writer, a former deputy editor with PTI, is a New Delhi-based freelance journalist.)

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