On May 10, 1857, the “sepoys” of Meerut rebelled against the British East India Company. Very soon, others joined them under the banner of Bahadur Shah II, the Mughal emperor, to whom the rebels gave the title Shahenshah-e-Hind. The rebellion became a full-fledged uprising against the British, with kings, nobles, landlords, peasants, tribals, and ordinary people fighting together. Yet historians tend to ignore, and to completely forget, the role of the women who came out of their homes and joined the men in fighting the Company Bahadur.
She crowned her 11-year-old son Birjis Qadar the ruler of Awadh, under Mughal suzerainty, on June 5, 1857, after a spectacular victory by the rebel forces in the Battle of Chinhat. The British were forced to take refuge in the Lucknow Residency, a series of events that became famous as the Siege of Lucknow, while her diktat ran in Awadh as regent of Birjis Qadar.
The longest and fiercest battles of the First War of Independence were fought in Lucknow. The begum ruled for 10 months as regent and had the biggest army of any of the rebel leaders that fought the British in 1857.
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Born to Annaveetil Meera Sahib and Khadeeja Bibi on April 30, 1927, at Pathananthitta in the erstwhile state of Travancore (now Kerala), Fathima studied law at Trivandrum’s Law College. Despite being only one of the five women students in her class in the first year (a number that dropped to three by the second year), the hardworking student was already on her way to making history.
In 1950, Fathima became the first woman to top the Bar Council of India’s exam. The same year in November, she enrolled as an advocate and started her career in Kerala’s lower judiciary, much to the displeasure of many people who raised their eyebrows at a headscarfed woman in the Kollam court.
In October 1989, six months after retiring from the Kerala High Court, Fathima was appointed as a Supreme Court judge in October 1989. For India, it was a watershed moment that paved the way for women in India to occupy positions in the higher judiciary.
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Tuesday, July 28. 2020
Indian freedom fighter Sarojini Naidu became the first female Governor of a state in independent India when she was appointed as Governor of United Provinces, now Uttar Pradesh, in 1947. Also known as the 'Nightingale of India', Naidu also served as the first Indian woman President of the Indian National Congress. She was born on February 13, 1879.
Her collection of poems entitled "The Feather of The Dawn" was later edited and published after her death in 1961 by her daughter Padamaja.
Born as Sarojini Chattopadhyaya on February 13, 1879 in Hyderabad she received her higher education from King's College London and later at Girton College, Cambridge.
She married Govindarajulu Naidu, a doctor by profession, when she was 19 and the couple had five children.
Sarojini Naidu died of a heart attack on March 2, 1949.
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