by Wikipedia
Accessed: 3/15/19
Freda Bedi and Baba Pyare Lal Bedi, at Nishat Bagh, Srinagar, 1948
Title Gelongma
Other names Sister Palmo
Personal
Born Freda Houlston
5 February 1911
England, Derby
Died 26 March 1977 (aged 66)
New Delhi, India
Religion Tibetan Buddhism
Nationality British
Spouse Baba Pyare Lal Bedi
Children Gulhima Bedi, Kabir Bedi, Ranga Bedi
School Kagyu
Lineage Karma Kagyu
Education Parkfield Cedars School
St Hugh's College, Oxford
Other names Sister Palmo
Occupation Social worker, writer, translator
Senior posting
Teacher 16th Karmapa
Freda Bedi (sometimes spelled Frida Bedi, also named Sister Palmo, or Gelongma Karma Kechog Palmo) (5 February 1911 – 26 March 1977) was a British woman who was the first Western woman to take ordination in Tibetan Buddhism, which occurred in 1972.[1] She was born in Derby, England.
Early life
Freda Bedi was born in a flat above her father's shop in Derby.[2]
The family appears in the 1911 Census when Freda was two months old. Her father was killed in the First World War, in 1918, and her mother remarried in 1920, to Frank Norman Swan. She studied at Hargrave House and then at Parkfields Cedars School, both in Derby. She also spent several months studying at a school in Rheims in northern France.[3]
It was her confirmation, at age fourteen, at St. Peter's Church, Littleover, that truly opened the spiritual door. "When I took Holy Communion, I felt there was something different there -- a direct communication, a sense of awe in the face of the Divine," she said....
It triggered a deep-seated yearning that was to last all her life. As always Freda turned to books to find out what this yearning was, and what it meant. "I read the Anglo Catholic writers, and the biographies of the saints. The life story of Saint Therese of Carmel, the book of Saint John of the Cross, trying to find out how they had reached this exalted state. It was a turning point. I discovered all these saints of the past had sought Reality, the Truth, and were not satisfied until they had reached some direct intuition of the Light, the life in the cosmos. This started a new stream of thought. If they can do it, why can't I sit quietly and contemplate."
Freda had discovered that what she was looking for could not be found in dogma but only through going within....
There was no one nearby to help her. England in the 1920s had not even heard of meditation. Christmas Humphreys, a judge and scholar, opened the first Buddhist Society in 1926, at Eccleston Square, London, based primarily in Zen. The Theosophists had thought about things Buddhist, but nothing had percolated through to provincial libraries, schools, or homes.
Freda was not only sincere, she was extraordinarily determined -- unusual traits for a girl that young. "The only thing I could think of was to go to church when nobody was there. I used to slip away from home in the early hours before school, sit alone in the pews, and just wait. There was always a prayer in my heart to reach God, or whatever you call that power or love beyond thought. I was only deeply interested in what I could find out from direct, intuitive understanding."
She had taken the first step of the spiritual seeker, setting out on a journey that was to last nearly forty years, when she eventually found the path that she was looking for.
In the meantime she kept her head in books. There were hints in her choice of reading of where she was heading. "Whenever anything from the East came into my hands -- poetry, literature of any sort -- there was always more than an ordinary depth of response," she said.
-- The Revolutionary Life of Freda Bedi, by Vicki Mackenzie
Life at Oxford
Bedi studied for an MA in philosophy, politics and economics (PPE) at St Hugh's College, Oxford University. She met her husband Baba Pyare Lal "BPL" Bedi, an Indian from Lahore, on her PPE course. He was a Sikh from the Bedi family, linked to a Sikh clan tracing back to Guru Nanak Dev Ji. Romance blossomed and they married at Oxford Registry Office in June 1933, in spite of the reservations of her family and disciplinary action by her college. Whilst at Oxford she became an opponent of Empire and attended meetings of the Oxford Majlis, where nationalist-minded Indian students gathered, as well as of the communist October Club and the Labour Club. At St Hugh's her closest friends included Barbara Castle,[2] later a prominent Labour cabinet minister, and the broadcaster Olive Shapley. All three women graduated with a third-class degree; Freda's husband got a fourth-class degree.[4]
"It was a very quiet little student who came up to St. Hugh's and wore the long exhibition gown to the lectures," Freda conceded. Oxford opened the doors of the world to her. At St. Hugh's she drew to her a small group of girls who were to go on to become some of the most powerful figures of their time. They stayed friends for years. From this time on, Freda was to mingle effortlessly with the great and the good from all cultures and ways of life.
Leading the pack was the inimitable, feisty Barbara Betts, later better known as Barbara Castle, the first woman to become First Secretary of State under Prime Minister Harold Wilson, and hailed as one of the most important Labor politicians of the twentieth century. She was a major influence on Freda's life, steering her away from her provincial upbringing into an infinitely bolder, more sophisticated life.
"Barbara brought with her a flavor of the north of England, where I was brought up, as well as the sturdy atmosphere of the great pioneers of English socialism," commented Freda. There was also Olive Salt Gorton, who became a pillar of the BBC and broke down class barriers by introducing regional accents to the airwaves to balance the clipped tones of "received pronunciation." "Olive brought the people of England into the BBC with programs like 'Underneath the Arches.' She took the microphone onto the pavements." And there was Olive Chandler, whom Freda was particularly fond of and with whom she maintained a lifelong correspondence: "She was a quiet little nun of a girl with a dove-like quality who was like my good conscience. When she saw me getting too excited with outside activities, she used to bring me back to my books and look after me."
***
She joined just about every society, from the League of Nations to the Ornithological Club.
***
Inevitably, like many Oxbridge intellectuals of her day, she became increasingly left wing, joined the Labor Club along with Barbara Castle and Michael Foot (the future Labor prime minister), and began to class herself as one of the "Burning Socialists." She meant it. Freda's idealism about a fairer world never left her....
"My belief in the charter of human rights was very strong, so that I saw Marxism not as a cheap political stunt, but in a deep,direct way." Freda rapidly learned German in order to be able to read and study Hegel, Marx, and the German philosophers in the original.
Her spiritual life was not forgotten, however, and was running smoothly along parallel lines. Every Sunday she went to church to take Communion and would pop into chapel if there was Bach concert. Any hint of Eastern thought drew her like a magnet. She devoured "The Light of Asia," subtitled "The Great Renunciation," by Sir Edwin Arnold -- an epic poem describing the life of Prince Siddhartha, who became the Buddha. And she rushed to attend a lecture by Rabindranath Tagore, the Bengali Nobel Prize-winning poet, philosopher, songwriter, and educator, and was immediately entranced.
"I first saw him at Oxford lecturing on the highest philosophy before some of the greatest savants and philosophers in the West. He sat on a low platform with the rare light of the late evening falling on his face and making a complete aureole around his white head. I was very moved by his understanding, his dignity, the way in which he seemed to distill the essence of India into the small hall and with it the essence of all that is highest and universal in man. At that time my knowledge of India was superficial and I did not know it was to be my home, but my response to Tagore and what he was saying was immediate. I believe that Tagore, more than any other Indian, has been able to interpret the East, and her aspirations, and make them understood in the West. ...
***
Initially the glue was their shared admiration of communism and socialist ideals, so fashionable among the Oxbridge intellectuals of their day, who were eager to build a better, fresher world after the devastation of World War I. Cambridge, in particular, became a famous, well-documented breeding ground for communist gentlemen spies. Revolution was in the air, first in Russia then in China, overthrowing the old order, making way for the new. It was exhilarating. The Suffragettes were on the march too, chaining themselves to rails, throwing themselves under horses, and going on hunger strikes to obtain equal rights with men. The atmosphere was electric.
***
It was not only politics over which they bonded; they also found affinity in their spiritual orientation. Oxford, with its intellectual liberalism and vast library, provided Freda with a wider scope of religious inquiry. Hearing Gandhi and Tagore and listening to BPL opened her up to Eastern beliefs. Her spiritual horizons were broadening considerably.
"I decided completely that my search for Truth was beyond the Church, beyond Christianity even. By now I had become conscious of all the religions in the world. At Oxford, I realized I wanted to follow the path of the seeker, and the path of the meditator," she said.
BPL understood that. Although he belonged to the Sikh Guru family, he himself was not orthodox. "He did not attach himself to any particular religion, but to all gurus and those who believe in deeper truths. This of course included his devotion to his ancestor, Guru Nanak, which was very great."
At one point, Freda showed him a drawing she had done when she was seven. "You've drawn the Lord Buddha," BPL told her. He later added, "It explained why she was drawn to India, and why she fit in so well, and her great attachment to Buddhism in the latter part of her life. Everything that happened to her was the inheritance of a past life. Her karma was there from the very start."
-- The Revolutionary Life of Freda Bedi, by Vicki Mackenzie
Life in India
After a year in Berlin where B.P.L. Bedi was studying - and where the first child was born - Freda, her husband and baby son sailed to India in 1934.
In 1931 [Annie Besant] became ill in India.[45] Besant died on 20 September 1933, at age 85, in Adyar, Madras Presidency, British India. Her body was cremated.[46][47]
-- Annie Besant, by Wikipedia
Freda married BPL on June 12, 1933, at the Oxford Registrar’s Office. She was twenty-two and he was twenty-six….
Their creative, radical Oxford days were over. Both Freda and BPL received their degrees and a whole new life beckoned. It was not what Freda had imagined. She had successfully lined up a job as a cub reporter on the Derby Telegraph, her first stepping stone to Fleet Street (as she had intended). Instead she went to Germany with her new husband, who had won a Humboldt scholarship at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin, to research a PHD in Political Science.
“Bedi was concerned about the rise of Hitler, but he thought that as long as he didn’t get a chance to rant in Parliament, it would be all right. He was going to keep a very keen eye on the situation,” she said. She was not to see her homeland again for fourteen years….
By the time Freda reached Berlin, she was pregnant, and delighted with the prospect of motherhood. BPL somewhat protectively decided that she should not work, but instead live quietly in the charming little cottage they had found on the bank of Lake Wannsee. “It was really a lovely place, with a beautiful garden, and we had some very happy months there preparing for the child,” she said. She busied herself with making baby clothes, but could not resist going to Berlin University to study Hindi with a Punjabi professor – a necessary preparation, she thought, for a life on the subcontinent, and to counteract the full-on domesticity she found herself in….
BPL refrained from any political activity in Germany, although he was keeping up-to-date with the Free India movement in India. A frequent visitor to their lakeside cottage was Subhas Chandra Bose, who went on to become one of the most prominent and controversial leaders of the independence movement. Bose was educated at Cambridge and also had a European wife – Emilie Schenkl, an Austrian. He made it a point to visit sympathetic Indian students living in Europe, and the couple had much in common with Freda and BPL Bedi.
“We came to know Bose intimately, and a deep friendship grew,” said BPL. Bose was a hard-core communist, a great admirer of the Soviet Union, who maintained that only an authoritarian state, not democracy, would be able to reshape India. (Later he was forced to resign as present of the Indian National Congress because his platform of violent resistance clashed with Gandhi’s peaceful pathway.)
In Germany, however, Bose, won the young BPL over completely. “Freda and I were both fired up with the patriotic zeal of liberating the motherland from British imperialism,” BPL said. “While we were in Berlin, an eminent journalist asked me what was my agenda for India. ‘Live dangerously,’ I replied. ‘Live dangerously for every form of exploitation of man by man. Live dangerously for every form of injustice. Live dangerously for any violation of human dignity.’”
On May 13, 1934, Freda gave birth to a son after just a four-hour labor….They named him Ranga after the Indian statesman who had defeated the political opposition to their marriage, ten months previously….
BPL had not joined any political club at Berlin University, nor was he taking part in any political activities, but he sensed that tension was mountain. He was friendly with many of the Indian students living in the International Houses, which were being increasingly dominated by Nazi representatives.
In August 1934, Hitler was made fuhrer. The morning the news broke, BPL put down his paper and announced, “Tomorrow we get on the train and go to Geneva. It’s not safe here anymore.”
“He knew that Hitler could swoop down on the Indian students, which was precisely what happened,” said Freda. The life of drama and danger that she pledged to share with Bedi had begun. “You can imagine the state I was in, having to pack up everything in one day, and with BPL having to get the visas for Switzerland. But the next morning we were on the train!” she said
After their hasty exit, they spent a few pleasant weeks staying in accommodations that had been arranged by their old Oxford professor, Alfred Zimmern [Professor Sir Alfred Eckhard Zimmern, whose name is associated with the founding of the League of Nations], who ran a school there. In October 1934, they finally made the decision to go to India and make it their permanent home. They sailed on the SS Conte Verde from northern Italy to Bombay, a journey of three weeks.....
Almost immediately they joined both the Socialist and Communist parties. Freda took on the extra work of organizing the All India Civil Liberties Union of the Punjab. BPL happily set to work organizing demonstrations ...This peculiar linking-together of opposites -- knowledge with ignorance, cynicism with fanaticism -- is one of the chief distinguishing marks of Oceanic society. The official ideology abounds with contradictions even when there is no practical reason for them. Thus, the Party rejects and vilifies every principle for which the Socialist movement originally stood, and it chooses to do this in the name of Socialism. It preaches a contempt for the working class unexampled for centuries past, and it dresses its members in a uniform which was at one time peculiar to manual workers and was adopted for that reason. It systematically undermines the solidarity of the family, and it calls its leader by a name which is a direct appeal to the sentiment of family loyalty. Even the names of the four Ministries by which we are governed exhibit a sort of impudence in their deliberate reversal of the facts. The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation. These contradictions are not accidental, nor do they result from ordinary hypocrisy; they are deliberate exercises in doublethink. For it is only by reconciling contradictions that power can be retained indefinitely. In no other way could the ancient cycle be broken. If human equality is to be for ever averted -- if the High, as we have called them, are to keep their places permanently -- then the prevailing mental condition must be controlled insanity.
-- Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984), by George Orwell
"Both BPL and I are determined that our fight for Indian independence will be the one and only aim of our lives."...
BPL turned to freelance journalism, editing a sports magazine and then founding "Monday Morning," an outspoken newspaper carrying articles on injustice wherever he and Freda found it. Together they launched a national quarterly journal, "Contemporary India," which ran articles on current ideas in politics, economics, and philosophy as well as short stories by interesting new writers....
From this time on, Freda took on the added responsibility of becoming the main breadwinner for the family ... She wrote book reviews, was a contributor to All-India Radio, and became a consultant on a woman's magazine, "Modern Girl."....
Inspired by the suffragette movement and Marxism (which was against the exploitation of anybody), Freda was in the vanguard of the feminist movement, long before the term even existed.
In between times, Freda also published "Rhymes for Ranga," a children's book with Indian themes, which also incorporated subtle political propaganda about the nobility of the peasant and about Gandhi and won a national prize for children's verse.....
To obtain extra cash, she took a job as the head of the English department at the Fateh Chand College, the first nationalist school for women....
Her students grew from twenty-six to six hundred.....
To solve the problem of finding somewhere to live, they came up with the novel idea of moving to the newly developed Model Town, on the outskirts of Lahore, designed by Dewan Khem Chand on the ideals of sound ecology and the virtues of community living. As they could not afford one of the houses, they took an acre of land behind the residences (freely given by the landlord, a sympathizer) and proceeded to build a complex of straw-and-mud huts. They moved in together with Bhabooji and three-year-old Barrinder, an orphan of a near-relative. It was basic, back-to-nature living -- the simple life advocated by Gandhi....
"Under the trees we built reed huts with thatched roofs and plastered-mud floors, which were extremely beautiful. And we didn't have to pay rent." ....
Freda became pregnant again and their second son, Tilak Zaheer, was born on November 28, 1935, when Ranga was eighteen months old....
Baby Tilak died of dysentery during an epidemic that was sweeping the Punjab. He was just a few months old. Compounding the tragedy, at the time of his death Freda was away campaigning for independence in the countryside, leaving Tilak in the hands of his doting grandmother....
"You must have heard about Tilak," she wrote to Olive. "It was a big shock, but then I am philosophical about these things. I see too much of life not to believe that such troubles are 'all in a day's work,' and that I must leave it. The best consolation is that Ranga is a healthy, high-spirited child, and a joy to us all."....
What the Huts lacked in the way of modern conveniences and hygiene was compensated for by the fact that life around Freda and BPL was never dull. The Bedis had an open home, and a constant stream of fascinating visitors were always dropping by and staying, encouraged by the "come on in, sit down, and have a meal" welcome. The majority were the leading left-wingers of the time -- artists, poets, and politicians, including Gyani Zail Singh (the first Punjabi to become president of India), I.K. Gujral (thirteenth prime minister of India), Hafeez Jullandhri (Poet and composer of the Pakistani national anthem), and Balraj Sahri (the noted film and stage actor). And not least was the mighty Sheikh Abdullah, self-styled "Lion of Kashmir," three times president, who was later to play such a prominent role in their destiny.....
Her home and working life established, Freda threw herself wholeheartedly into her mission to free India from imperialism and to bring justice and quality to the poor an downtrodden. She traveled all over the Punjab by foot, often taking Ranga with her, going from village to village, absorbing the land and its people, raising their consciousness about the struggle for freedom. She stayed in their huts, ate their food, learned their songs, and heard their problems ....
Word quickly spread of the Englishwoman, dressed in a sari, and her audiences grew from a few stragglers to vast crowds, curious to see and hear this phenomenon for themselves. "When I say that in those days I addressed not just thousands but hundreds of thousands of villagers, I am not telling an untruth." ....
"Being a socialist in India is no joke. We all of us live on the edge of jail, and however careful you are, nothing much can be done if you do get arrested, since legal rights are rather pre-Cromwell. It is very difficult to present a picture of these terrifying days," Freda wrote to Olive.
Ranga still remembers the tension that surrounded them all. "Mummy was trailed by plainclothed policemen all the time. In order to get her removed from her job, Fateh Chand College was subjected to all sorts of harassment and sudden inspections, but the school never submitted. It was extremely brave of them, as harboring a political activist was a punishable act. No other college dared employ her, even though a master's degree from Oxford was no mean qualification for a woman in India.....
"They even questioned the sweepers to see if she was teaching sedition! Once, when a sweeper was taken down to the police station and manhandled, my mother marched off with me in tow and took the police inspector to task. She then insisted on making a notation in the complaint book. That evening a British police officer visited the college and threatened to arrest her. She wrote to the police hierarchy in Lahore and sent copies to the newspapers. Mummy was absolutely fearless at all times!"
It was the threat of prison, however, that most unnerved Freda. All the A-list agitators, including of course Nehru and Gandhi, were constantly being hauled before judges and jailed. BPL was no exception. He was first arrested in 1937 for some provocative speech at an outdoor meeting ....
By 1939, the revolution was heating up, and under Bose's influence, freedom fighters were favoring violence as the means to achieve their goal. This was too much for Freda, who promptly turned her attention totally to Gandhi and his peaceful approach of civil disobedience. BPL, however, jumped right in with added fervor and was promptly arrested for dangerous political activity and sentenced to four years in Deoli Prison ....
Now unable to live independently in The Huts because it was too dangerous, she got permission to move into one of Fateh Chand College's hostels, taking Ranga with her. Children were not allowed into the hostels, but Freda was popular with students and staff alike, having won their admiration and respect. Again, the college bravely agreed. With plenty of staff only too happy to look after (and spoil) Ranga. Freda was free to continue her full teaching program and carry on with her own revolution.
Wracked with anxiety about BPL in Deoli, Freda constantly badgered the prison authorities for the right to visit him. After much string pulling from two barrister friends practicing in the Punjab High Court, Freda finally got a permit for a "family" visit....
Ranga recalled, ... "Finally we were put down beside a dirt track and, after an hour's walk, arrived at Deoli Detention Camp, which was run by the army, not the police. They had no information regarding our visit and were visibly put out ...
After a short while we were escorted to the commandant, a strapping British colonel whose discomfiture was even greater than that of his juniors. He said he could not allow the visit without confirmation from headquarters. Furthermore, he continued, providing accommodation for a difficult prisoner's wife and child or acquiring transport to the nearest town was out of the question. He didn't know what to do with us. We could see he was rattled and confused! At sundown he relented and conceded that we could stay in the officers' suite and would be able to meet Papa the next morning, at nine, for one hour. In the end we were given the VIP treatment, including an invitation to dine in the officers' mess hall. Mummy politely declined."
"Mummy was up at first light, and after breakfast (served in our rooms) we were escorted back to the commandant. The atmosphere was tense. The colonel told us there had been an 'incident.' The political prisoners had gone on hunger strike and had had to be force-fed -- with the exception of Mr. Bedi, who had aggressively resisted....
"News of our visit had spread, and another attempt to force-feed BPL had been made at six o'clock that morning. Apparently eight people had gone to Papa's room and found him to be calm and generally cooperative. They put together the feeding apparatus, with no protest from Papa. As the medical officer bent over him, Papa sprang into action. He kicked the attendant in the groin, carried him to the door, and threw him off the veranda, causing him to dislocate his shoulder. Two other guards were floored" ...
"Knowing we were there, Papa said he would eat voluntarily, but only if he could see us.' "...
Freda and Ranga finally found BPL the sole occupant of a ten-foot-square room ...
The visit marked a turning point in Freda's life. Her marriage was founded on the vow to united with BPL in his fight for Indian independence, whatever it took. She now decided to join him in jail. Having discussed the matter over with him in Deoli, she applied to become one of Gandhi's handpicked satyagrahis, the select band of protestors who were willing to sacrifice everything, including their lives, to free India from colonial rule. It was the radical move, she told Olive, that was needed to get the job done and give the oppressed a voice. Freda was determined to live out her beliefs to the full, even if it meant leaving Ranga without both parents.....
Freda waited some time to be chosen, but she was finally accepted by Gandhi as his fifty-seventh satyagrahi -- the first British woman to be admitted to his elite band....
February 21, 1941, was the day Freda chose to make her biggest protest yet....
After fumbling in his defense of India rules book the judge handed her the sentence: six months' rigorous imprisonment in Lahore female jail.
The sentence was exceptionally harsh -- no other satyagrahi was given as much ...
It was not the dank, rat-infested hellhole one might imagine. Her cell was a room, which she shared with other satyagrahis ...
Freda laid out her bedroll on the floor and began her life behind bars. She adapted relatively easily to the regime, which by Western standards was remarkably relaxed. Together the women cooked their own meals on firewood fires with basic rations issued by the prison: cooking fat, sugar, flour, bread, vegetables, milk, tea, and spices. Occasionally their diet was brightened by provisions sent in from family and friends, which they shared. Freda received baskets of fruit and, mot incongruously, flowers from admirers and well-wishers....
It was an extraordinarily social environment. Women had their babies with them in jail, and friends sometimes volunteered to be inside simply to keep their loved ones company. When they weren't working, they sang and danced, especially on feast days, beating drums and swirling their skirts. Freda noted that the laxity of rules was excellent for keeping tension at bay and making imprisonment bearable. (It helped that the deputy superintendent had been one of Freda's students.) The guards even turned a blind eye, or ear to the revolutionary songs with their theme of independence....
Her "hard labor" was not hauling bricks or smashing rocks but working in the prison garden from 8:00 a.m. until noon, and again from 1:00 to 5:00 p.m. Of all punishments, nothing could have suited nature-loving Freda better. It was a godsend. She set to work tilling the soil, tending the fruit trees and vegetables: marrows, cucumbers, onions, okra, lemons, mangoes, and mulberries. Surrounded by plants and birds, the mystical Freda was often "transported" beyond the prison walls. Her diary records how entranced she was by the early hooting of an owl, the tenderness of a pair of parrots making love, the crows flying purposefully home. And when the garden bloomed, she became positively ecstatic.
"The garden in the early morning is delirious with young leaves, the scent of orange blossom and the crimson roses smelling like heaven. I've never seen so many roses in my life as I have this past fortnight. I put them in earthenware pots and brass bowls and then haven't anything to eat off or cook in."....
When she wasn't outside, Freda kept busy. She taught English, gave lectures on Marx, and as Gandhi exorted, she spun cloth....
By May, Freda began to hear whispers that legal moves were afoot to get her an early release. It was true. A certain Justice Bhide gave an enterprising judgment in the High court that claimed that sending a letter to a magistrate announcing one's intention to break the law (as Freda had done) did not constitute an offense in itself. In fact, he argued, it was a prevention of a crime! Over the next few days, the news became more certain. On May 23, Freda was informed that she was to be released the very next day, triggering a round of farewell parties from the other inmates, who were sad to see her go.
When the jail doors opened just after noon on May 24, 1941, Freda walked into freedom and a rapturous welcome from a small group of Indian National Congress supporters. A large party had been organized in her honor, where food and speeches were to be offered, but Freda declined.... Going to prison for her beliefs had filled her with a deep sense of satisfaction, fulfillment, and strength....
Her triumphant homecoming is etched vividly in Ranga's memory. "Late one afternoon, a message came from Lahore that Mummy's release was imminent, she would come straight to us in Dera. On a rainy afternoon we could hear sounds of slogans being shouted in the distance. I ran straight through the front gate and through the fields where a bullock cart was approaching. Mummy was crouched under a shawl surrounded by several others all crammed into the cart. A huge sirdar (Sikh) picked me up and put me next to her. She pulled me under her shawl and gave me an enormous, tight hug....
Within an hour dozens of relatives, accompanied by others, began to descend. The next morning it got worse -- hundreds of bullock carts laden with families and villagers arrived for darshan (blessing). It was decided that another platform should be built outside the gate, where Mummy could sit and bless the people. For two days people filed past -- and then on the fourth and final day Mummy was taken around the village on a bullock cart."
To the people, Freda have become more than a political activist, she had been virtually beatified. From then on, Freda became a national heroine, her fame, influence, and power growing stronger every day. This was to become invaluable in the work that lay ahead....
Freda had served half of her six-month sentence. During that time she had put on two pounds....
Shortly after her release, Freda heard rumors that her husband was being moved from Deoli, because the detention camp was being prepared for prisoners of war. It was thought that BPL was going to be transferred to another prison, but much to the family's amazement, he simply walked into Dera Baba Nanak one evening. The same victory parades that had regaled Freda's return were now staged for BPL, but this time the couple stood on the bullock cart side by side.
-- The Revolutionary Life of Freda Bedi, by Vicki Mackenzie
She worked as a journalist and taught English at a women's college, and with her husband published a high quality quarterly review "Contemporary India". Both were leftists and campaigning nationalists active in India's independence movement. "Baba" Bedi spent about fifteen months in a prison camp in the early stages of World War Two. Freda herself was detained for a shorter time after deliberately defying the wartime regulations as part of a civil disobedience campaign spearheaded by Mohandas K. Gandhi as a satyagrahi.[5] In 1947, Bedi and her family moved to Kashmir,[2] where husband and wife were influential supporters of Sheikh Abdullah, the left-wing Kashmiri nationalist leader. She joined a women's militia for a while and taught English at a newly established women's college in Srinagar in Kashmir.
For the first time she revealed an anticommunist leaning. “I feel the British Press – with the exception of our friend Norman Cliff on the News Chronicle – is Pakistan minded, and while I realize that Pakistan and Middle East oil interests are linked, I think it is a great injustice to Kashmir. While a very brutal invasion and a lot of propaganda from the Pakistan side has been trying to make the state communist minded, it has valiantly stuck to his democratic ideas and built up this very war-torn, hungry world.”....
-- The Revolutionary Life of Freda Bedi, by Vicki Mackenzie
Later in Delhi, she became editor of the magazine "Social Welfare" of the Ministry of Welfare. She briefly served as a member of the United Nations Social Services Planning Commission to Burma, during which she was first exposed to Buddhism, which quickly became the defining aspect of her life. In Rangoon she learned vipassana from Mahasi Sayadaw, and Sayadaw U Titthila.[6][7]
In 1959, when the 14th Dalai Lama arrived in India along with thousands of Tibetans, she was asked by Jawaharlal Nehru to help them and spent time improving facilities for refugees at camps in Assam and West Bengal. She became an observant Tibetan Buddhist and she followed the guidance of the 16th Karmapa of the Kagyu School. She worked with the Dalai Lama to establish the Young Lamas Home School.[8] Bedi set up the Young Lama's School in Dalhousie to train young Tibetan monks, a number of whom became well-known teachers, including Chogyam Trungpa,[9] Thubten Zopa Rinpoche,[10] Akong Rinpoche, Tulku Pema Tenzin, Gelek Rimpoche, Lama Yeshe Losal Rinpoche, and the sons of Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, Chokyi Nyima and Chokling of Tsikey[11]). In 1963, with Lama Karma Thinley Rinpoche and under the guidance of the Karmapa, she founded the Karma Drubgyu Thargay Ling nunnery for Tibetan women, now located in Tilokpur, Kangra Valley.[12][13]
While running the Young Lamas Home School at Dalhousie in north India, Bedi also spent time at Rumtek in Sikkim, the seat of the Karmapa in exile. In 1966, she took sramaneri ordination by the Karmapa, and was given the name Gelongma Karma Kechog Palmo. She was one of the first Western women to take ordination in Tibetan Buddhism. In 1972, she took full bhikshuni ordination in Hong Kong - the first western woman to do so, and according to the scholar Hanna Havnevik possibly the first woman in the Tibetan tradition to receive this higher ordination. She accompanied the Karmapa on his first visit to the West in 1974, a five-month tour across North American and Europe. She was a Tibetan–English translator.[14]
They arrived in India traumatized, starving, ill, filthy, and utterly disoriented. Their escape to freedom had been pitted with unimaginable horror -- snow, ice, crevasses that suddenly opened up under their feet, and Chinese troops who shot on sight. They had seen many of their countrymen lose their lives. Not sure what to do with this great influx of lost, battered humanity, Nehru sent for the one person whom he knew was qualified to help: Freda Bedi. Nehru knew from firsthand knowledge that she had handled the refugee crisis in Kashmir after Partition with consummate skill, was an excellent administrator, and furthermore was currently engaged in social work throughout the subcontinent. He'd also heard she had a newfound affinity with Buddhism. He duly appointed her adviser on Tibetan refugees in the Ministry of External Affairs. She readily agreed.
A letter she wrote to Olive, however, suggested that it was she who had subtly put the idea into Nehru's head. "I felt that as a Buddhist and part of the Social Welfare Board -- with a particular interest in women and children -- I might have some role in helping to rehabilitate them and the lamas. Pandit Nehru agreed that a woman's eye might be useful."....
It is unknown whether Freda recognized the irony that the great socialist ideal that she and her husband espoused had caused the greatest suffering the Tibetan people had ever known, destroying their most precious possession -- their unique religion, the faith that Freda now proudly called her own....
They kept pouring in, their numbers rising from thirty thousand [30,000] to seventy thousand [70,000].....
"Technically I was welfare adviser to the Ministry; in actuality I was Mother to a camp full of soldiers, lamas, peasants, and families. Women and children were barely thirteen hundred [1,300] in number, but how precious they were, for on them depended the continuance of the old Tibetan culture."....
At one point during this stage of her life she had an inexplicable insight. Freda "saw" that Tibetan Buddhism would not only travel to the West but would take root there. And the ones who would bring it about would be the tulkus, Tibet's recognized reincarnated high lamas and spiritual masters, who held the essence of the teachings.....
In the early 1960s, Buddhism was still virtually unknown in the West, outside of a very small handful of scholars ... In the eyes of the intellectual Buddhist scholars, Tibetan Buddhism was regarded as degenerate -- shrouded in the magic and mystery fostered by those shamans of the Bon religion that existed in Tibet before Buddhism took root. There was too much ritual, too much Tantra, too much mumbo jumbo....
There was also the matter of reincarnation itself, which in the predominantly Christian West was still regarded as heretical. People had been burned at the stake and been killed en masse (such as the Cathars) for believing such anathema. In the 1960s and 1970s reincarnation was still a taboo subject. The Tibetans, however, not only completely accepted reincarnation as a given fact of life, they went farther than any other Buddhist country by devising a system to find specific rebirths of accomplished spiritual masters who had forsaken higher states of consciousness after death in order to be reborn in an earthly body solely to continue to teach others how to reach the same exalted state they had achieved. The voluntary return to this vale of tears was seen as the highest mark of altruism, brave and noble beyond measure. These were the tulkus, titled rinpoches, or "Precious Ones." They were the cream of Tibetan society, revered, feted, and sometimes unwittingly used as pawns in others' games of corruption. These were the people Freda was now planning to bring to the West to plant the seeds of the Buddha's teachings into American, European, and Australian soil for the first time.
Finding the right candidates, however, posed an enormous problem. The entire community of Tibetan refugees was in total disarray, with lamas, yogis, householders, carpenters, tailors, and others, mingling together in a homogenized, indistinguishable mass formerly unheard of in the conservative, strictly hierarchical society of old Tibet, where Tulkus were kept apart from the hoi polloi for fear of contamination ....
Undeterred by, or unaware of, these seeming obstacles Freda forged ahead with her dream. She had seen for herself what she thought were exceptional, special qualities in the handful of tulkus she had come across amid the mayhem of the camps. To her eyes they exuded an unmistakable refinement, wisdom, maturity, and dignity way beyond their years, which she was convinced would be as attractive to Westerners as it was to her....
Gelek Rinpoche was another frequent guest at the Bedi household. A highborn reincarnate lama related to the Thirteenth Dalai Lama, Gelek Rinpoche was found by Freda in the Buxa refugee camp, plucked out, and taught the niceties of how to behave in Western society, Professor Higgins-style. "I stayed with Mummy and her family on and off for about three years. Trungpa and Akong were already living with her. Trungpa was very diligent, but I was lazy. I felt I was on holiday! Mummy Bedi helped me get over my monk's superiority complex. She also taught me to respect women and other people in general.
"Her intention was to teach me about life outside my small monastic world. I was completely unaware of anything other than Tibetan life. She taught me to speak proper English. 'Don't run your words together, say them separately,' she'd instruct. Mummy would also take me to social events such as diplomatic parties. She would literally take me by the hand and show me how to enter a room, how to behave, and what to say. 'If you do not know the person, you put out your hand and say, slowly, "How do you do, how lovely to meet you.'" Sometimes we acted out these scenes with her husband and two children, Kabir and Guli, as the audience.
"Mummy was very strict and stern, especially if I did not do my homework. But she was also very, very kind and extremely good at administration. Whatever she said she was going to do, she did it. She was completely generous with everything. Totally altruistic. There is no doubt she put me on the path for coming to the West. In fact, she told me to go to America. She said that Westerners needed the Dharma, that they needed help. She also told me that Westerners were more open than Tibetans and more forthright, which was encouraging. 'Whatever you know you can say -- the more you say, the more they will understand. You don't have to hide.' She was correct," he said.....
Trungpa was installed as the principal of the Young Lamas Home School, and Akong was its manager. When all was complete, Freda had an audience with Nehru to thank him profusely for his help. Nehru smiled and said in a low, quiet voice, "It was not for you I did it." Nevertheless Freda had single-handedly planned and brought into being the Young Lamas Home School. She had succeeded in her pioneering task to bring the tulkus into the twentieth century, and she was on her way to realizing the next stage of her vision -- to bring them to the West.....
If Nehru provided the political clout for her school, the spiritual blessing was to come from the Sixteenth Gyalwa Karmapa, Freda's guru. She duly invited him to Delhi to perform the necessary rituals, and took advantage of his presence by requesting him to grant her Refuge, the formal ceremony marking one's official entrance onto the Buddhist path.....
To Freda this was a hugely sacred and profound milestone in her spiritual journey. "When you take Refuge, you go on with your life, but in the cave of your heart you feel you have found the oasis, the place where you can take refuge in the sea of suffering, and where you can develop the enlightened mind."....
"We need a living guru, and we train to see the Buddha in him. That gives us the water to make the seed of enlightenment grow."....
Another woman who experienced Freda's ability to break down barriers to get what she wanted was Joanna Macy, renowned American environmentalist, teacher, and author. She was living in Delhi with her husband [Francis Underhill Macy], who was working for the Peace Corps, when Freda came to visit.
"I remember I opened the door and she stood there in her maroon clothes, greeting me as if somehow I and not she were the guest. I loved the way that touch of the Raj blended so paradoxically and superbly with the monk's garb she wore. She had come because she wanted my husband to release a particular person in the Peace Corps to work for her in Dalhousie. 'I shall speak to my friend Mr. B in the Cabinet,' Mummy said with a smile. 'When do you think we can expect him?' It was the marriage of serenity and sheer nerve. She was English in the way only the English can be. She had implicit authority," Macy said.[Francis Underhill Macy] received a master's in 1951 in Slavic studies at Harvard and learned to speak Russian....
He began working for the Russian-language station Radio Liberty, which was based in Munich, at the height of the Cold War. He worked for the U.S. Information Service, which sent American citizen diplomats around the world to talk to people about American values and democracy.....
In 1961, Mr. Macy led the first ever citizen diplomatic mission into the USSR....
Between 1964 and 1972, he served as deputy Peace Corps director in India, country director in Tunisia and Nigeria and finally as director of all Peace Corps programs in Africa....
He got involved in nuclear issues after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, which occurred while he was in Russia. In 1995 he founded the Earth Island Institute's Center for Safe Energy, which has trained hundreds of activists in Russia, Ukraine, Georgia and Kazakhstan.
-- Francis Underhill Macy, by Peter Fimrite
Later, Macy went to Dalhousie to help settle Khamtrul Rinpoche, a high lama who had escaped from Tibet with a huge number of followers, including monks and a large community of accomplished artists and craftspeople. She took the opportunity to take teachings from Freda at a small class for Westerners she had organized in Dalhousie. Macy also undertook a silent retreat under Freda's direction, and today acknowledges Freda's influence on her spiritual life.
"What she had to say had a lucidity and simplicity about it. I can't accept any teachings if there is a false note -- if it is not coming from a person's wholeness and integrity, if what they are saying merely comes from what has been heard or read. With Freda I was able to drink it in. It was coming from beyond." ....
"What Mummy did not do for me, however, was to model the social significance of the Buddha's teachings for our times, which is what I had become very focused on. 'Engaged Buddhism,' as it's called. To me Buddhism frees us to act for social and ecological survival, what needs to be done for a just and sustainable society. This wasn't of interest to Mummy."....
Single-handedly Freda had already set the scene for Buddhism to make the historic leap from East to West when she had the foresight to establish the Young Lamas Home School. In 1972, the year of her full ordination as a bikshuni nun, she took another momentous step in that direction by personally agreeing to take the Buddha's message to South Africa, the first of several overseas "missions" she undertook. Her journey there was significant not least because it revealed the full extent of the spiritual authority invested in her by the Karmapa, as well as the scope of the knowledge and personal realizations that she had attained in her relatively new religious path.
The invitation had come from Rosemary Vosse, a theosophist descended from Italian nobility, who had met Freda in India. She had literally begged Freda, now known as Sister Palmo, to come to South Africa, which was being brutally ripped apart by the bloody internal war of apartheid, as blacks fought for equal rights and the end to racial segregation.....
It was an invitation Freda could not resist..... In fact it was in Johannesburg that her hero, Mahatma Gandhi, had formulated his philosophy of peaceful civil resistance, triggered when he was ordered to move from a first-class carriage to a third-class carriage because he was "colored," despite the fact that he was working as a lawyer there and had a valid ticket. The result was Satyagraha, his Doctrine of Truth, which he propagated there for twenty years and which Freda espoused when she became a Satyagrahi....MW: "You were once a Theosophist. Were you not? I asked.
Mahatma Gandhi: "Yes," he replied "When in South Africa I worked with Major Peacock in the building-up of the Theosophical Movement. I am still a Theosophist but I am not in sympathy with the Movement. I am not in favor of any institution which fosters secrecy.
-- Mohandas K. Gandhi, by Theosophy Wiki
Illustrating her point about the readiness of America to accept Buddhism, she gave a White Tara initiation (the female Buddha of Compassion in Action) in New York, which was simultaneously broadcast on local radio. It was an unprecedented break with tradition and a real entry of Buddhism into modern Western life.
Through the airwaves Freda's voice rang out: "Visualize enlightenment in the form of the Holy Mother, in order to receive all the blessings," she said. "The mind is a tremendous thing. If we can remove the veils, the obscurations, we can see the mirror-like quality of its pure state," she continued. "The Divine Mother helps us calm our minds and brings us the blessing of transcendental knowledge. She also increases life and gives us more energy."
She went on to explain further the esoteric meaning behind Tara: "Tara comes in twenty-one basic forms, whose primary functions are to remove all fears. There is a multiplicity of forms, but in fact there is just one. All is Buddha, all is Divine Mother. It's like fragmentation of light into prismatic colors."
LAME, HALT, BLIND, DYING
WE'RE ALL DYING
AT THIS MOMENT
YOUR BODY IS DISINTEGRATING
BEFORE YOUR VERY EYES
IF YOU'VE TAKEN LSD YOU KNOW
IT'S HAPPENING ANYWAY
IT'S ALL A DOWNHILL TRIP
ALL THE WAY
BOY, WHAT A FUNNY PLACE TO GET ATTACHED!
TO SOMETHING THAT'S GOT TO GO LIKE THAT
SO BUDDHA SAYS: THE CAUSE OF SUFFERING
IS ATTACHMENT
OR DESIRE
THEY ALL SAY THE SAME THING!
THIRD NOBLE TRUTH
GIVE UP ATTACHMENT
GIVE UP DESIRE
YOU END THE BIRTHS
YOU END THE DEATHS
YOU END THE SUFFERING
YOU END THE WHOLE THING THAT
KEEPS YOU STUCK!
IF I'M NOT ATTACHED TO THIS PARTICULAR
TIME-SPACE LOCUS THEN I CAN FREE MY
AWARENESS FROM MY BODY AND I CAN BECOME
ONE WITH IT ALL
I CAN MERGE WITH
THE DIVINE MOTHER
-- Be Here Now, by "Ram Dass," aka The Lama Foundation
-- The Revolutionary Life of Freda Bedi, by Vicki Mackenzie
Bedi died in New Delhi on 26 March 1977.[15][16][17] She was survived by two sons, Ranga Bedi, who was a tea planter, and Kabir Bedi, a Hollywood and Bollywood film and TV star; and a daughter, Gulhima, lives in the United States. A fourth child, Tilak, died in infancy.[18]
Published works
• Freda Marie Houlston Bedi, Baba Pyare Lal Bedi, (editors) India analysed, three volumes published by Victor Gollancz, 1933-4
• Freda Marie Houlston Bedi, Behind the Mud Walls, Lahore: Unity Publishers, 1943
• Freda Bedi, Bengal Lamenting, Lahore: Lion, 1944
• Baba Pyare Lal Bedi, Freda Marie (Houlston) Bedi, Sheikh Abdullah: his life and ideals, pamphlet, c1949
• Ein Rosenkranz von Morgengebeten : nach der Tradition des Mahayana – Buddhismus / aus dem Tibetischen ins Englische übers. von Karma Khechog Palmo. Deutsche Wiedergabe von Advayavajra. – Almora, Indien : Kasar-Devi-Ashram-Publication, 1971. – VI, 49 S.
• Freda Bedi, Anna Bhushan (illustrator), Rhymes for Ranga, Random House, India, 2010, ISBN 81-8400-036-7
Translations
From French
• Voltaire, Fragments on India, Lion Press, 1937
From Tibetan
• A Garland of morning prayers in the tradition of Mahayana Buddhism, Gelongma Karma Tsultim Khechog Palmo, Ed Palmo, 1976
• Wangchuk Dorje (Karmapa IX), Zhar dMar dKon mChog Yan Lag, Mahamudra meditation or The Mahamudra, Gelongma Karma Tsultim Khechog Palmo, Ed. Karma Rigdol Publications, 1971
Further reading
• The Lives of Freda: the political, spiritual and personal journeys of Freda Bedi (2019) by Andrew Whitehead, Speaking Tiger ISBN 978-93-88070-75-1
• The Spiritual Odyssey of Freda Bedi: England, India, Burma, Sikkim and Beyond (2018) by Norma Levine
• The Revolutionary Life of Freda Bedi: British Feminist, Indian Nationalist, Buddhist Nun (2017) by Vicki Mackenzie. Shambhala, ISBN 978-1-61180-425-6
• Cave in the Snow: a Western woman's quest for enlightenment (1999) by Vicki Mackenzie. ISBN 1-58234-045-5. (A biography of Tenzin Palmo, also about Freda Bedi)
• A brief account of Freda Bedi's life and career published in Oxford Today in 2017
• The Making of a Buddhist Nun
• A newspaper feature about Freda Bedi's political involvement in Kashmir
References
1. Chodron, Thubten. "About The Issue: The Present Status of the Bhiksuni Ordination". Committee for Bhiksuni Ordination. Retrieved 2018-06-04.
2. "The British woman who fought for India's freedom". 7 March 2019 – via http://www.bbc.co.uk.
3. Hanna Havnevik, Tibetan Buddhist nuns: history, cultural norms, and social reality, 1989, p. 87
4. "From Oxford to Lahore — the anti-imperialist Briton who became a Tibetan Buddhist nun". Oxford Today. 31 May 2017.
5. Andrew Rawlinson, The book of enlightened masters: western teachers in eastern traditions, Open Court, 1997, ISBN 0-8126-9310-8, p. 181
6. "GELONGMA KARMA KHECHOG PALMO". http://www.luxlapis.co.za.
7. Andrew Rawlinson, op. cit. "In 1952 she went to Rangoon and practised vipassana with Mahasi Sayadaw (Friedman, 276), one of the first Westerners to do so. She also practised with Sayadaw U Titthila (Snelling, 321). "
8. Chögyam Trungpa, Sam Bercholz, Meditation in Action
9. Diana J. Mukpo, Carolyn Rose Gimian, Dragon Thunder: My Life with Chogyam Trungpa, p. 71
10. Jamyang Wangmo, The Lawudo Lama: stories of reincarnation from the Mount Everest region p. 191 : "The Young Lamas Home School started in Delhi in 1961 in the house of Frida Bedi, with Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Akong Rinpoche, Tulku Pema Tenzin Rinpoche, and Geleg Rinpoche as the first students. After a while, Mrs. Bedi rented a beautiful new house at L-7, Green Park, in the Hauz Khas area of New Delhi. When I joined the school in 1962 there were twelve tulkus attending."
11. Kunsang, Erik Pema (18 September 2005). "Blazing-Splendor: Young Lamas Home School in Dalhousie".
12. "Tilokpur".
13. "Free Ebooks PDF, ePub, Mobi Directory - http://www.tilokpur.org". http://www.tilokpur.org.
14. "tibet". http://www.luxlapis.co.za.
15. Bernard de Give, LES MONIALES TIBÉTAINES
16. Mick Brown, The Dance of 17 Lives: The Incredible True Story of Tibet's 17th Karmapa
17. Hanna Havnevik, Tibetan Buddhist nuns: history, cultural norms, and social reality, 1989, p. 88 "Freda Bedi died in New Delhi on the twenty-sixth of March 1977."
18. Fiona Fernandez, A Bedi good rhyme, MiD DAY, 15 August 2010
• Havnevik, Hanna (1989). Tibetan Buddhist Nuns: History, Cultural Norms and Social Reality. Oxford University Press. p. 251. ISBN 978-82-00-02846-8.
• Wangmo, Jamyang (2005). Lawudo Lama, Stories of Reincarnation from the Mount Everest Region. Wisdom Publications. p. 434. ISBN 978-0-86171-183-3.
• Sheila Meiring Fugard "Lady of Realisation. 1st ed. Cape Town: Maitri Publications, 1984. Copyright © The Library of Congress, No. Txu 140-945. Cape Town: Electronic Ed., luxlapis.tripod.com. 19 April 1999. Accessed 30 September 2008. (In 3 parts.) [A "spiritual biography" of Buddhist Sister Palmo.]
