The Hindu : New Delhi News : A ‘neglected’ freedom fighter of INA

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A ‘neglected’ freedom fighter of INA

Smriti Kak Ramachandran

Eighty-two-year-old Laxmi Panda calls on the President with hope of getting ‘recognition’

- Photo: V. V. Krishnan

A member of the Indian National Army Laxmi Panda after meeting President Pratibha Patil in New Delhi.

NEW DELHI: Eighty-two-year-old Laxmi Panda has been living a life of penury for most part of her adult life. Yet when she met President Pratibha Patil on Monday, she did so as a member of the Indian National Army and not as a “neglected” freedom fighter.

Christened “Indira” by the late Subash Chandra Bose, the frail octogenarian had no wish list to give to the President. All she wants in her twilight years is “recognition”.

“I am thankful to the President for meeting me. I just asked her for my right. After serving the nation and giving it all I had, I am today homeless and without any financial security,” she says.

Learning of her plight, the President has issued directions to ensure that Ms. Panda is given monetary compensation by the Government. “The President gave her Rs.10,000 from a special fund, and has also instructed that the needful be done to ensure that Ms. Panda is taken care of,” said a Rashtrapati Bhavan aide.

Driven out of her son’s house, Ms. Pandas earned a living as a domestic help for several years.

Her petitions for a freedom fighter’s pension were turned down on the grounds that she had no documents to prove her stint in jail. “I was not jailed, because I was barely 14. The British could not put me in prison. There is photographic evidence of me being in the INA, even Captain Lakshmi Sehgal recognises me, but apparently that is not enough,” she says.

Despairing that her fight for the country’s freedom has alienated her from her kin, she says: “My only son holds it against me. He asks me what you have accomplished.”

Witnessing the hoisting of the national flag at the Red Fort on Independence Day was a dream come true for this resident of Orissa.

“I came to Delhi to watch the Prime Minister unfurl the flag. Our leader, Subash Chandra Bose used to talk of this historic happening. I wanted to see for myself the realisation of his dream,” says Ms. Panda fluent in Tamil, Hindi and Burmese.

Narrating stories of the INA’s bravado and fervour, she recalls how the “soldiers” marched on endlessly on foot without food and how they leant to use arms, all to free their mother country.

“When I look back, I have no regrets. We faced hardships because we were committed to fight. The only remorse I feel is that today there is no one to recognise what we did. I am homeless in a country whose freedom I fought for,” she says.

Her only other regret so far is the “disrespect that is shown to Subash Chandra Bose”. “We called him Thakur, he was our hero.And I even told this to the President,” she says.

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