Bhikaiji Rusto Cama

Proud to be INDIAN

  Bhikaiji Rusto Cama

Bhikaiji Rusto Cama^{[n 1]}
(24 September 1861 – 13 August 1936) was a prominent figure in the Indian independence movement.
Bhikhaiji Rustom Cama was born Bhikai Sorab Patel on 24 September 1861 in Bombay (now Mumbai) in a large, well-off Parsi family.

Her parents, Sorabji Framji Patel and Jaijibai Sorabji Patel, were well known in the city, where her father Sorabji—a lawyer by training and a merchant by profession—was an influential member of the Parsi community.

Like many Parsi girls of the time, Bhikhaiji attended Alexandra Native Girl's English Institution.^[1] Bhikhaiji was by all accounts a diligent, disciplined child with a flair for languages.
On 3 August 1885, she married Rustom Cama, who was son of K. R. Cama.^[2] Her husband was a wealthy, pro-British lawyer who aspired to enter politics. It was not a happy marriage, and Bhikhaiji spent most of her time and energy in philanthropic activities and social work.
Bikhaiji Cama bequeathed most of her personal assets to the Avabai Petit Orphanage for girls, which established a trust in her name. Rs. 54,000 (1936: £39,300; $157,200) to her family's fire temple, the Framji Nusserwanjee Patel Agiary at Mazgaon, in South Bombay.^[8]
Several Indian cities have streets and places named after Bhikhaiji Cama, or Madame Cama as she is also known. On 26 January 1962, India's 11th Republic Day, the Indian Posts and Telegraphs Department issued a commemorative stamp in her honour.^[9]
In 1997, the Indian Coast Guard commissioned a Priyadarshini-class fast patrol vessel ICGS Bikhaiji Cama after Bikhaiji Cama.

Following Cama's 1907 Stuttgart address, the flag she raised there was smuggled into British India by Idulal Yagnik and is now on display at the Maratha and Kesari Library in Pune. In 2004, politicians of the BJP, India's Hindu nationalist party, attempted to identify a later design (from the 1920s) as the flag Cama raised in Stuttgart.^[10]
 The flag Cama raised – misrepresented as "original national Tricolour" – has an (Islamic) crescent and a (Hindu) sun, which the later design does not have.