Sagari Chhabra's exhibition featuring invisible battles that played key role in India's freedom

Indian Express

11 hours ago

Against the backdrop of India's 79th Independence Day, the quiet hall of the Art Gallery at Kamaladevi Complex, India International Centre, at New Delhi's Lodhi Gardens comes alive with voices from another time — voices that fought, bled, and sacrificed, yet remain absent from the history most of us know.
The exhibition Hamaara Itihaas Archives of Freedom Fighters, on from August 9 to 23, is founded and curated by award-winning filmmaker and writer Sagari Chhabra. This exhibition features India's first and perhaps only international archive with a dedicated focus on women freedom fighters. Its purpose is as much to inspire as to educate, and to remind us that independence was won not only in the streets of India but beyond the borders, across the continents.
Since 1995, Chhabra has been gathering oral testimonies, fragile letters, faded photographs, rare revolutionary publications like Bande Mataram and Talvar — by Madam Bhikaiji Cama, photographed fading faces, and pieced together the overlooked geography of India's independence movement.
From the history of Mahendra Pratap's establishment of the First Provisional Government of India in Kabul in 1915, to Shyamji Krishna Varma's India House in London that provided a roof for all the nationalists to gather under — all the stories dismantle the notion that India's independence was fought on home soil alone.
One of the exhibition's most striking sections centres on Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose's Indian National Army (INA) and its legendary Rani of Jhansi Regiment. Recruited largely in Malaysia (Malaya) and Singapore during World War II, these women underwent rigorous military training, shouldering rifles and marching in step with their male counterparts.
Through photographs collected and captured by Chhabra, the visitors are introduced to Gowri Sen, who reportedly signed a petition in blood when the regiment was disbanded; Rasammah Navaratnam, whose mother was firmly against her decision of joining the INA, but was later persuaded by Captain Lakshmi Sahgal, who was the commander of Rani of Jhansi regiment; and Yamuki, who escaped an unwanted marriage to 'die for a cause', yet was never granted recognition or pension by free India.
'Most of these women had never had a reunion, never received a pension. Recording their experiences became my life's mission. It is a privilege, and an honour,' says Chhabra.
The archive reaches far into Myanmar, where many INA veterans remain stateless to this day, denied citizenship by both India and Myanmar. Photographs by Chhabra capture the faces of Lt Perumal with his wife Mehrunnisa, standing before the remnants of an INA office in Yangon.
The Gallery has many more stories — Tokyo Cadets trained for aerial warfare, one of them being Gandhinathan, who was photographed by Chhabra in Kuala Lumpur in 2004, the secret operatives in Malaysia, teenagers in the Balak Sena of Thailand, all getting trained through their youth to achieve a nation's dream of freedom.
The exhibition also honours women who stitched their defiance into prison flags, who ferried messages for underground networks while raising children at home. It tells stories of Bengal's Pritilata Waddedar, who chose cyanide over capture, Gandhian activist Sushila Nayyar, who balanced her belief in non-violence with acts of resistance, and women prisoners who raised a Tricolour flag inside Lahore Women's jail in 1942.
Running alongside the exhibition is the screening of Chhabra's 45-minute-long documentary Asli Azaadi, released in 1997 and daily walk-through at 5.30 pm led by the curator herself. Her storytelling bridges the gap between the dust of the past and the pulse of the present.
For her, this is not just an act of remembrance but a rewriting of history from the margins.
Hamaara Itihaas stands as a reminder that freedom was never a gift — it was seized, demanded, and defended by countless known and unknown heroes. Their battles, fought in jungles, jails, and faraway cities, deserve to be part of the nation's collective memory.