July 10: After rescuing people in numerous search missions at sea, the Indian Coast Guard is now on a different search altogether: for relatives of Madame Bhikaiji Cama, after whom their newest patrol vessel is named.

The Coast Guard is looking for relatives of the illustrious freedom fighter who unfurled India's national flag for the first time at the World Socialist Congress at Stuttgart in Germany on August 18, 1907. She later was to occupy a place of pride at the commissioning ceremony of the CGS Bhikaiji Cama at the Garden Reach Shipyard in Calcutta.

``Since Madame Cama hailed from Mumbai, we have been asked by the eastern Coast Guard region to locate her relatives,'' said a senior Coast Guard official of the western regional headquarters. Enquiries with newspapers and archives had just commenced, he said. Dates for the commissioning ceremony would be fixed after relatives of the late freedom fighter were located and invited as guests of honour.

The ship is the seventh in a series of Priyadarshini class fast patrol vessels (FPV) in the Coast Guard, and is to be based on the eastern seaboard in Madras. The sixth ship, CGS Kanagalatha Barua, was earlier commissioned in Calcutta on March 27.

Other 300-tonne FPVs in the category include Priyadarshini, Raziya Sultan, Annie Besant, Kamla Devi and Amrit Kaur. Coast Guard officials informed that ship names are personally chosen by the Prime Minister.

``Names for the first series of patrol vessels from Jija Bai to Ganga Devi were personally selected by the then PM Indira Gandhi in 1983,'' said a Coast Guard official. Today, the Coast Guard has nearly 20 patrol vessels named after famous female freedom fighters and personalities.

The Coast Guard has not always been fortuitous. Veteran freedom fighter Ramadevi died 10 days before she could commission a patrol vessel named after her at Garden Reach, Calcutta in 1985.

Born on September 24, 1861, in Mumbai, Madame Cama came in contact with Dadabhai Naoroji and took interest in social and political work. At the age of 40, she went to England owing to ill health and thereafter settled in Paris. Here she met Indian revolutionaries like Veer Savarkar along with whom she began propaganda for India's liberation from British rule. She began the Bande-Mataram English weekly from Geneva in 1905, and went on to become one of the most articulate advocates of India's freedom struggle in Europe.

During the First World War, her fervent appeals to Indians not to help the allies led to her internment, and she was released only after the war was over. She had to live in exile despite her failing health and was allowed to return to India only in 1935 when her health had completely deteriorated. Madam Cama died in August 1936 at the Parsi General Hospital in Mumbai.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.