Durgavati Devi was an Indian freedom fighter known for her armament struggle against British rule in India. She was actively involved in the Indian revolutionary movement along with her husband Bhagwati Charan Vohra, who was an active member of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA) , which is why she is popular among various revolutionary groups under the name Durga Bhabhi. She is remembered for helping Bhagat Singh and Rajguru escape police arrest after the murder of JP Sanders in 1928.
Wiki/Biography
Durgawati Devi was born on Monday, October 7, 1907, in Allahabad, United Provinces, British India (now Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh, India). She was 92 years old. Her zodiac sign is Libra. She received formal education until fifth grade.
appearance
Hair Color: Salt and Pepper
Eye color: black
family
Parents and siblings
Her father’s name is Pandit Banke Bihari and he is a court officer in the Allahabad Collection Bureau. Her grandfather, Pandit Shivshankar, was a landlord in Shahpur. She is the only child of her parents.
husband and children
Durkawati Devi married Bhagwati Charan Vohra in 1918. Charan Vohra was a revolutionary freedom fighter. The couple had a son named Sachinanda.
Durgawati Devi with her husband and children
caste
She was born into a Gujarati Brahmin family.
revolutionary activities
Durgawati Devi joined the Naujawan Bharat Sabha after her marriage to Bhagwati Charan Vohra. She is famous for organizing the funeral procession from Lahore to Kolkata, which was attended by a large crowd, after freedom fighter Jatin Das died in Lahore jail after he went on a hunger strike for 63 days to protest against British rule. Revolutionary organizations often delegated responsibility for arms procurement to Durgavati Devi, and in 1930, at a secret meeting in Delhi, J.N. Sahni, then editor of the Hindustan Times, read There was a pistol hidden in her clothes. She tried to kill Lord Haley in 1929, shortly after Bhagat Singh surrendered in the bomb-throwing case. Lord Haley was not injured in the bomb blast, but many of his companions were killed. She was subsequently sentenced to three years in prison by British police. During the freedom struggle movement, Vimal Prasad Jain ran a bomb shop on Qutb Road in Delhi with the help of Durgawati Devi and her husband Manufacturing plant, the Himalayan toilet. Picric acid, nitroglycerin and fulminate were some of the elements they used to make bombs against the British Empire in India. Shortly after the murder of John P. Saunders on December 19, 1928, Bhagat Singh and Shivaram Rajgu fled from the British police. Shivaram Rajguru called Durgasati Devi for help and the next day, concealing their identity and appearance, they boarded a train from Lahore to Bathinda. Durgavati pretended to be Bhagat Singh’s wife and Rajguru pretended to be their servant. They bought two first-class tickets and one third-class ticket. She also brought her infant son with her. During his escape, Bhagat Singh shaved off his beard, cut off his long hair, and donned Western clothes. With loaded guns, they reached Howrah, where Durgavati and Bhagat Singh landed. Rajguru went to Benares station. A few days later, Durgavati Devi returned to Lahore.
Remington Road Fury
Durga Devi was involved in a shooting incident outside the Lamington Road police station in South Bombay at midnight on October 8, 1930. In this shooting, Durgawati Devi targeted a European couple. Later, this incident was regarded as the first instance of women participating in terrorist atrocities in Indian revolutionary activities. A police officer and his wife were two of the victims of the shooting. During the shooting, Sergeant Taylor was wounded in the hand and his wife was shot three times in the leg. Witnesses to the shooting told police that three people in a moving car fired more than one gun. Subsequently, the police tracked the car and found clues about the driver JB Bapat. After five days of interrogation, he told the British police that one of the gunmen in the car was a Gujarati woman who was wearing men’s clothing. From this statement, police concluded that a woman, her husband and eight-year-old son were in the car. This assumption by the police was inaccurate; however, police began searching for the woman, Sharda Devi, based on eyewitness descriptions, which described her as a young, fair-skinned, beautiful woman wearing Khaddar. clothing. She was later arrested and sentenced to two months’ imprisonment on 28 September 1932 under the Special Powers Ordinance. Furthermore, she was sent to Lahore jail and the British police extended her imprisonment by one year under the Preventive Detention of Suspects Act. He was released from prison in 1935 and continued his college preparatory education shortly after his release. In 1936, Durgavati Devi started teaching at Piyare Lal School for Girls in Ghaziabad. Later, all charges against her were dropped after the British government granted amnesty to political prisoners.
Congress Party Chairman
In 1937, Durgavati Devi began to participate in revolutionary activities and joined the Congress Party at the 1938 Congress Committee meeting in Delhi and served as its president. At this meeting, Durgavati Devi helped arrange a reception for the released prisoners in the Kakoli conspiracy case. In the same year, Durgavati Devi was arrested for the second time for her participation in ‘Hartal’ or protests as a Congress leader. She was detained for a week.
die
Durgawati Devi died of natural causes on October 15, 1999, in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, India. She died at the age of 92.
Facts/Trivia
- She is also known as Durga Bhabhi in the history of Indian freedom struggle.
- Durgavati Devi was very young when her mother died, and her father left Durgavati Devi to her aunt who raised her. Soon after her mother’s death, her father went to Tirat sannyasin.
- Bhagwati Charan Vohra was eleven years old when she married Durgawati Devi. In 1925, they had a baby boy named Sachinanda. Later, she began teaching at a women’s college in Lahore, where she taught until 1929.
- During the court proceedings against Bhagat Singh and his associates, Durgawati Devi sold her jewelery worth Rs. 3,000 people went to rescue them.
- Durgawati Devi founded a school for poor children in 1935.
- In Indian history, she is known as the “Fire of India”. She fought against British rule in India’s struggle for freedom.
- Professor Bhagwati Charan Vohra planned to release Bhagat Singh from Lahore jail but died while testing a bomb on the banks of River Ravi.
- In 1928, while escaping from the British police, Bhagat Singh transformed into a person whom even Durgavati Devi could not recognize. Talking about this image of Bhagat Singh, Shivaram Rajguru once said:
If Devi, despite knowing Singh well, could not recognize his clean-shaven appearance, then the police certainly would not have recognized him either, as they would have been looking for a bearded Sikh. “
- The small reference role of Durgawati Devi was played by Indian actress Soha Ali Khan in the 2006 film Rang De Basanti directed by Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra.
- The character of Durgawati Devi appeared in the seventh episode of the TV show Adrishya, which was aired on EPIC channel in 2014.
Categories: Biography
Source: HIS Education