The Indian freedom movement has a unique place in history given the participation from people of all forms of life in it. Men and Women from all classes, castes and religion risked their lives for the struggle for freedom. However, often, in popular public memory, it is mostly men who are associated with fighting the British. The contribution of women towards the same has been marginalised over a period of time.
From Punjab in the West to Bengal in the East, there are numerous instances of women who left no stone unturned in proving their mettle for the cause of freedom. The Indian revolutionary movement similarly has its own account to offer when it comes to women challenging the British. But tragically history regards brave women like Kalpana Dutt and Durga Vohra as mere associates of the more popular male revolutionaries.
One such name from the annals of the Indian revolutionary movement is Sushila Mohan, popularly known as Sushila Didi. She was born on March 5, 1905, in the Punjab province of colonial India to an Army doctor. She got her education from the Arya women’s college in Jalandhar where she stayed from 1921 to 1927. Even though she used to write nationalist poems, her stint with active nationalist politics began during her college life. The Arya Women’s college was a centre of nationalist political movement and its principal Shanno Devi and former principal Kumari Lajjavati were prominent organisers and activists.
It was during her student days that Sushila Didi came in contact with the revolutionary movement. She was part of a group that went to Dehradun to participate in a Hindi literature convention, where she met a few students of the Lahore National College who were engaged in revolutionary activities. Later she met Bhagwati Charan Vohra and Durga Devi Vohra and joined the revolutionary group. She along with a group of women activists used to distribute revolutionary literature in Jalandhar and was able to enlist a lot of members for the party.
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Sushila Didi was truly an independent woman in the complete sense of the term. When she received news regarding the conviction of the Kakori martyrs, she decided to fully immerse herself in the revolutionary movement. Her father objected and advised her to stay away from politics and warned her that if she did not stop her political activities, he might end up losing his job. Sushila Didi did not pay any heed to these warnings. Her first act of rebellion was against her family when she decided to leave home and only returned after two years, when her father, following her footsteps, decided to join the Indian freedom movement. She also gave her gold bangles to the party in order to collect funds to fight the case for the Kakori accused.
Later in the year 1928, upon the insistence of her college principal Shannodevi, Sushila Didi moved to Kolkata and took up a job as a private tutor to the daughter of Sir Chajjuram Chowdhary. Following the assassination of Saunders in Lahore, Bhagat Singh and Durga Devi escaped Lahore and reached Kolkata. It was Sushila Didi who arranged for their stay in Kolkata at her employer’s house. During her stay in Kolkata, she formed a group of revolutionary women who, led by Subhas Chandra Bose, protested against the Simon commission. Later this group of women activists formed the ‘Bhagat Singh Defence Committee’ and collected funds for the undertrials of the Lahore and Delhi Conspiracy Cases. Sushila Didi also wrote a play titled ‘Mewar Patan’ which was performed by her group to collect funds and spread revolutionary ideology.
Following the arrest of Bhagat Singh and other revolutionaries in the Delhi Assembly bomb case, the HSRA revolutionaries planned to assassinate Viceroy Irwin. Since all other revolutionaries were under heavy surveillance, the task to collect information and details about the train and schedule of the Viceroy fell on Sushila Didi. Dressed up in complete European attire and impersonating a British lady, Sushila Didi was able to find out all information related to Viceroy’s journey. After the failure of the aforementioned attempt on Irwin, the HSRA revolutionaries planned to free Bhagat Singh by carrying out a jail break. Sushila Didi was involved in the plan and, after quitting her job in Kolkata, travelled to Lahore and lived in disguise as a Sikh boy and with other revolutionaries to collect all the necessary weapons and materials to carry out the jailbreak.
A procession in Bangalore during the Quit India movement. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Unfortunately, this plan proved to be ill-fated as Bhagwati Charan Vohra died while testing a bomb at the banks of river Ravi, following which the plan was dropped. In the wake of this accident, which led to a massive police hunt, Sushila Didi along with Durga Bhabi went into hiding with arrest warrants released for them. Another arrest warrant was issued in the name of Sushila Didi for a letter she had written to Bhagat Singh which was published in a nationalist newspaper Swatantra Bharat. The editor Bhagwat was charged with sedition and slapped with a fine of 10,000 and six years of imprisonment.
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After the hanging of Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru on March 23, 1931, and the death of Chandrasekhar Azad on February 27, 1931, the HSRA was in complete disarray. It was during this time that Sushila Didi took command of the organisation in Delhi and Lahore and planned the assassination of Sir Henry Kirk, the secretary of the Punjab government. Sushila Didi held him responsible for the hanging of the three revolutionaries and wanted to avenge their martyrdom.
Known in the inner revolutionary circle as ‘Lahore Kirk plan’, revolutionaries like Dhanwantari, Sukhdev Raj and Jagdish under the leadership of Sushila Didi gathered in Lahore to plan their action which only proved to be ill-fated, as the police got whiff of the plan and Jagdish was killed in a police shootout near Shalimar Bagh (Lahore), while Sukhdev Raj was arrested. A few days after this tragic episode, even Sushila Didi was arrested and locked up in the Parliament Street police station, but the Delhi police was not able to make any case against her and therefore she was released with orders to leave Delhi within 24 hours.
Sushila Didi actively participated in the 1932 Delhi session of the Congress which was banned by the colonial government. She participated in the session along with a women’s group under the alias of Indu and was arrested and put into jail for six months. Later in the year 1933, she married a Congress activist and lawyer Shyam Mohan and moved to Delhi and continued her political activities.
Although Sushila Didi had joined the Indian National Congress in Delhi, she did not quit her revolutionary ideology. In 1937, when several Kakori revolutionaries lodged in the Andaman Jail were released, Sushila Didi and Durga Devi planned a huge political rally to honour them in Delhi. Since both Durga Bhabi and Sushila Didi were members of the Congress, they faced opposition from Mahatma Gandhi to organise a program involving revolutionaries, but both women defied him, and went ahead with their planned program and successfully organised it despite several warnings and arrests by the Delhi Police.
For organising that program, despite several roadblocks, one revolutionary Pandit Parmanand of Jhansi, who had served many years in the Andaman cellular jail, called Sushila Didi the ‘Joan of Arc of India’. Later she, along with her husband, also participated in the Quit India movement of 1942 and subsequently went to jail.
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After the British left India in 1947, Sushila Didi started a handicraft school for women in Ballimaran neighbourhood of old Delhi. She primarily worked in the Dalit colonies (then known as Harijan colonies) and trained hundreds of women in small handicrafts technology. She also served as a member of Delhi Municipal Corporation for a brief period and was the president of the Delhi Congress Committee. Today there exists a road in her name, the ‘Sushila Mohan Marg’ in Khari Baoli, Chandni Chowk, but not many people know who Sushila Mohan was, and her name just like the street is lost in the labyrinth of revolutionary memories.
Ankur Goswami and Harshvardhan are PhD research scholars at JNU.