Rebels against the Raj

Rebels against the raj tells the little known story of seven people who chose to struggle for a country other than their own. Of the seven, four were British, two American and one Irish: four men and three women. These renegades came to the subcontinent from diverse social and intellectual backgrounds.

1. Annie Besant  (1893)

2. B. G. Horniman (1904)

3. Samuel Evans Stokes @ Satyanand Stokes (1904)

4. Madeleine Slade @ Mira Behn (1925)

5. Philip Spratt (1926)

6. Ralph Richard Keithahn (1925)

7. Catherine Mary Heilemann @ Sarala Behn (1932)

Annie Besant Promoted the emancipation of women in a deeply patriarchal society. She confounded one of the country’s best known universities and helped focus scholarly attention on the culture and civilisation of ancient India.

B.G. Horniman ran one of the finest and bravest newspapers in India; promoted and encouraged, young journalists; and campaigned tirelessly for the freedom of the press. 

Samuel, later, Satyananda, stocks helped abolish forced labour in the hills before laying the foundations of a horticultural industry that has sustained the economy of the state of Himachal Pradesh for many decades now.

Madeline Slade, later Mira Behn, wrote pioneering environmental tracts, and by influencing the making of Richard Attenborough’s film Gandhi, made the Mahatma’s ideas of non-violence, and inter-faith harmony once more known around the world.

Philip Spratt fought for the rights of workers before campaigning against the licence-permit-quota Raj that strangulated the Indian economy.

Richard Ralph Keithahn helped found a rural university as well as a charitable hospital, and cultivated dignity and self-reliance among the oppressed.

Catherine Mary Heilemann, later Sarala Behn, established a pioneering girls’ school in one of the most backward regions of India, training and nurturing several generations of social workers, some of whom went on to lead that most celebrated of environmental movements, the Chipko Andolan.