August 1947. While speaking about Indian independence & the Indian freedom struggle, often times we miss talking about one woman – one of many – who lived it in blood, fire, and steel. Her name – Lakshmi Sahgal.

She was born Lakshmi Swaminathan on 24th October 1914 to Ammu & Dr. Subbarama Swaminathan, into comfort and privilege. Her father was a leading lawyer at the Madras High Court.

She could have lived an easy life. Instead, she became a doctor, earned her medical degree, and moved to Singapore, where she ran a clinic.

Then the war came, and she made a choice almost no one of her social standing made.

In 1943, Subhas Chandra Bose arrived in Singapore to build the Indian National Army, the force that would try to win India’s freedom by fighting the British from outside the country. The day Subhas Chandra Bose formed the Azad Hind Fauj, he roared: “Give me blood, and I will give you freedom.”

At his meetings, he spoke of raising a regiment of women who would fight. Not nurse. Not serve from behind the lines. Fight. Lakshmi volunteered.

She trained. She steeled her core and learnt what it was to be a soldier. Then a leader of soldiers. Seeing her abilities, Bose gave her an extremely critical mission – to lead India’s first all-women combat regiment – the Rani of Jhansi Regiment. It became the first all-women combat regiment of its kind in Asia.

Around a thousand women, many of them daughters of ordinary Indian families living in Singapore and Malaysia (many from India as well), left their homes to train under her as soldiers. Young girls, some as young as sixteen. She drilled them. Trained them. Forged them into soldiers of steel. Every day she ensured their fear dissolved into resolve. Self-doubt became courage.

Of the many broad shoulders with steely resolve that Free India stood on, was a woman who chose battle over comfort, command over safety, and service over spotlight. Lakshmi Sahgal was India’s first government’s first woman minister – the only woman in Bose’s Provisional Government.

The British sneered. “Women will break. They will flee.” They were dead wrong.

Through monsoon-soaked jungles. Across disease-ridden camps. Facing bullets, disease, and despair, Lakshmi marched. Planned. Fought. Healed. Commanded. Her soldiers called her Captain Lakshmi. The enemy called her a phantom. She kicked British ass (sorry ‘British arse’). Big time!

When the tide of the war turned and the INA began its retreat, she did not abandon her people. As both a doctor and a commander, she stayed with the wounded in the jungles and field hospitals, treating the injured through the worst of the collapse.

She was captured and brought back to India in 1946. Crowds welcomed her home as a hero.

After independance, she returned not to glory, but to service.

She married her INA compatriot – Prem Sahgal – settled in Kanpur and returned to the work that had first defined her life.

She ran a clinic, treated Partition refugees who had arrived with nothing, and continued seeing poor patients. A doctor. A reformer. A politician.

She was later awarded the Padma Vibhushan, one of India’s highest civilian honours.

In 2012, at 97, Lakshmi Sahgal passed away quietly. No national mourning. No headlines.

A woman born into privilege became a doctor to serve, a soldier to fight for her country’s freedom, and then, for the rest of her long life, a doctor once again.

Our textbooks have largely ignored her. We must not.

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P.S. Capt Lakshmi’s family is an interesting one. Her sister is Mrinalini Swaminathan, who married Vikram Sarabhai & their daughter is Mallika Sarabhai. Capt Lakshmi’s daughter Subhashini was a politician & married filmmaker Muzaffar Ali (later separated). Their son is filmmaker Shaad Ali.

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