Published By: Sayan Paul

The British Woman Who Fought for India's Freedom - Who was Freda Bedi? 

Did the British government call her a ‘deshdrohi’ for doing the right thing? Who knows!

In 'Lagaan', when the British officers pushed Bhuvan and his villagers to the edge, it was a British woman, Elizabeth, who stood up for them. To her own people, she may have looked like a traitor. But in truth, she simply stood by what was right. Now that was fiction. However, in real life, too, countless British voices rose against their own empire’s cruelty in India. A few even joined our freedom movement and went on to shake the colonial rule. Among them was Freda Bedi, a name not many know, but should. Born British, she lived and fought like an Indian. And her journey raises a striking question: Was she betraying her country, or was she just following her conscience?

As India prepares to celebrate its 79th Independence Day, let’s revisit the remarkable story of the British woman who crossed borders and fought for India's freedom. 

A Girl from Derby with Dreams Bigger Than Her World

Freda Marie Houlston was born on February 5, 1911, above her father’s watch repair shop on Monk Street in Derby, England. When Freda was just seven, her father, Frank Houlston, died in World War I while serving in northern France. Needless to say, the trauma of that loss left a lasting impression on her; she would often faint at remembrance services, overwhelmed by that emotion. Her mother, Nellie, later remarried, and Freda grew up in Littleover, attending local schools like Hargrave House and Parkfields Cedars.

Despite her modest upbringing, Freda’s academic brilliance earned her a scholarship to Oxford’s St. Hugh’s College at 17. She began studying French, but soon switched to Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, a combination that broadened her worldview and exposed her to radical ideas and debates. It was here, in the charged atmosphere of 1930s Oxford, that Freda’s life took a turn toward India.

A Radical Romance: Meeting B.P.L. Bedi

At Oxford, Freda was drawn to political circles that challenged imperialist ideology. She regularly attended meetings of the Labour Club and the communist-leaning October Club, but it was the Oxford Majlis (a society of Indian students campaigning for their country’s independence) that truly captivated her. There she met Baba Pyare Lal Bedi, or B.P.L., a fiery nationalist from Lahore descended from Guru Nanak.

Their connection was immediate and intense. Freda fell for his intellect, idealism, and passion for India’s freedom. Their relationship (an interracial love affair in conservative 1930s Britain) was nothing short of audacious. Freda’s college reprimanded her for visiting B.P.L. without a chaperone, and her family initially disapproved. But she remained undeterred.

In June 1933, the couple married at the Oxford Registry Office in an intimate civil ceremony that still made headlines. When the registrar refused to shake hands, Freda saw it for what it was: racial prejudice. Yet she had already embraced Indian culture wholeheartedly, wearing saris and speaking out against colonialism. “There are things deeper than labels and colour and prejudice,” she said, adding, “And love is one of them.”

After a brief stint in Berlin, where their first son Ranga was born, Freda and B.P.L. sailed for India in 1934. On arrival in Bombay, they were detained for seven hours at customs, suspected of smuggling in leftist literature. But it was in Lahore that Freda would truly begin her transformation.

(Credit: Deepti Empathy Madam Sharma)

The Making of a Revolutionary

In Lahore, Freda and B.P.L. chose to live simply, far from colonial privilege. They settled in a humble cluster of huts outside Model Town, aligning themselves with the leftist wing of the Congress Party. They started Contemporary India, a quarterly magazine, and Monday Morning, a weekly political paper. Freda also began a column, From a Woman’s Window, in The Tribune, giving voice to issues of gender, politics, and social justice.

But activism obviously came with consequences. During World War II, B.P.L. was arrested and sent to the Deoli Detention Camp for protesting British recruitment efforts. Refusing to sit idle, Freda met Mahatma Gandhi and expressed her wish to join the satyagraha movement. In 1941, with Gandhi’s blessing, she traveled to Dera Baba Nanak in Punjab to speak against the war effort.

Freda’s arrest came soon after. Since British protocol discouraged Indian police from arresting a British woman, an English officer was dispatched to detain her. She was sentenced to three months in Lahore jail, where she tended a garden and wrote about her fellow inmates in her memoir, Behind Mud Walls, calling them “quiet, determined souls, the stuff of which Gandhi’s little army is made.”

(Credit: Nehruvian)

Even in prison, Freda wore her sari with pride, teaching English to fellow prisoners and sharing stories of resistance. She also endured personal heartbreak, losing her second child, Tilak, to dysentery while on a political tour. But her resolve only deepened.

(Credit: KABIR BEDI)

More Indian Than the Indians

Freda didn’t only adopt India politically; she absorbed its soul. “India is my womanhood and my wife-hood,” she once wrote. She raised her children - Ranga, Kabir (who later became a well-known Bollywood actor), and Gulhima - in the Indian way, speaking Hindi at home, wearing Indian clothes, and maintaining a spartan lifestyle.

She was often viewed as an enigma; too Indian for the British, yet still a foreigner to some in India. But Freda made peace with that complexity. “I cannot feel even the least barrier or difference in essentials between myself and the new country I have adopted,” she wrote. After India’s independence, she took Indian citizenship and never returned to live in the UK.

(Credit: KABIR BEDI)

Buddhism and Spiritual Devotion

In the 1950s, Freda’s path turned spiritual. During a UN assignment in Burma, she encountered vipassana meditation under the guidance of Mahasi Sayadaw. This encounter sparked a deep interest in Buddhism.

When Tibetan refugees began arriving in India after the Chinese invasion in 1959, Freda dedicated herself to their cause. She worked under the direction of Prime Minister Nehru to manage relief efforts and went on to establish the Young Lamas Home School in Delhi, later moving to Dalhousie, where she trained young monks in modern education alongside spiritual practice.

In 1966, at the age of 55, she took an extraordinary leap: she became the first Western woman to be ordained as a Tibetan Buddhist nun. At the Rumtek Monastery in Sikkim, the 16th Karmapa conferred her the name Gelongma Karma Kechog Palmo.

Her children were stunned. Kabir later joked to his sister, “One thing you’ll never have to worry about again is buying Mummy a comb.” Despite their shock, Freda remained steadfast. She accompanied the Karmapa on trips to the West in the 1970s, playing a key role in introducing Tibetan Buddhism to audiences in Europe and America.

(Credit: The Buddhist Society)

A Life Larger Than Labels

Freda Bedi died in Delhi on March 26, 1977. Her biographer, Vicki Mackenzie, calls her story “a vivid portrait of a disciplined and dedicated life.” Journalist Andrew Whitehead, who authored The Lives of Freda, notes: “She was both extraordinary and ordinary, remarkable in her conviction, yet grounded in the everyday struggles of the people she served.”

Today, as her son Kabir Bedi contemplates adapting her story for the screen, Freda Bedi’s journey continues to remind us that true freedom lies in the courage to choose your own path.