Freda Bedi
  • The Lives of Freda
  • Excerpt
  • Blog
  • Photo Gallery
  • Video Gallery
  • Get In Touch
  • The Lives of Freda
  • Excerpt
  • Blog
  • Photo Gallery
  • Video Gallery
  • Get In Touch
.





​



​

​THE LIVES OF FREDA: THE BLOG

.

Freda Bedi, 'noted Communist' ...

1/18/2019

0 Comments

 
Picture

​In 1963, Freda Bedi was the victim of a scurrilous and vindictive piece of journalism which deeply upset her. The article appeared on the front-page of a Bombay weekly, The Current, and was the work of its founder and editor, D.F. Karaka. He had been an Oxford contemporary of Freda and her husband - indeed thirty years earlier he had been the first Indian President of the Oxford Union debating society. By the 1960s, he had been reduced to tawdry, sensationalist journalism.

Karaka's article accused Freda of just about everything: financial irregularities, abusing her role as a civil servant, innuendo about her friendship with Sheikh Abdullah, and a suggestion of involvement in political skulduggery in Kashmir. At its heart, though, was the suggestion that Freda Bedi was using her Buddhism, and her support for Tibetan refugees, as a cover for the promotion of Communism.

This was twenty years after Freda had broken her links with the communist left and a decade after her husband had done so. Given that Communist China was the oppressor of the Tibetan people and the religion so central to their way of life, the suggestion that she was acting as a Communist agent was both deeply wounding and very damaging.

What particularly upset Freda - in the recollection of colleagues and family - was the suggestion that a fellow British convert to Buddhism was behind some of the smears. That suspicion seems to have been well founded. There's more in my biography of Freda, out in India soon: 
Picture

The Lives of Freda: 

​the political, spiritual and personal 
​journeys of Freda Bedi


by Andrew Whitehead

to be published by Speaking Tiger in February

0 Comments

    The Lives of Freda

    - a blog about my biography of Freda Bedi

    Picture
    Andrew Whitehead

    Archives

    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019

    Categories

    All
    Aanchal Malhotra
    Abdul Samad Khan Achakzai
    Afternoon Despatch & Courier
    Ami Bedi
    Amitabh Mattoo
    Ananda Bazar Patrika
    Anil Dharker
    Asian Age
    Asian College Of Journalism
    Asiaville
    BACSA
    Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad
    Bangalore
    BBC
    Bengal Famine
    Biblio
    Bisakha Ghose
    B.P.L Bedi
    B.P.L. Bedi
    Bradlaugh Hall
    Business Line
    Calcutta
    Chennai
    Chintan Girish Modi
    Chowkidar
    Current
    Daily Excelsior
    Deepali Saxena
    Derby
    D.F. Karaka
    Frank Houlston
    Freda Bedi Recording
    From A Woman's Window
    Hindustan Times
    Humra Quraishi
    Hyderabad
    Indian Journalism Review
    India Today
    Indira Gandhi
    INTACH
    Jawaharlal Nehru
    Jawhar Sircar
    Kabir Bedi
    Kalwinder Singh Dhindsa
    Karl Marx
    Kashmir
    Kashmir Times
    Kashmir Walla
    Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan
    Khushwant Singh
    Krishna Prasad
    Lahore
    Lahore Women's Jail
    Live History
    LSE
    Madras Literary Society
    Mark Tully
    Millennium Post
    Moneeza Hashmi
    Mridula Sarabhai
    Mumbai
    Mumbai Mirror
    National Herald
    Nehru Centre
    New Indian Express
    Olive Shapley
    Outlook
    Oxford
    Print
    Rajini Vaidyanathan
    Rajiv Gandhi
    Ramesh Tamiri
    Ranga Bedi
    Rangaswami Iyengar
    Readers Digest
    Reba Som
    Rosemary Raza
    Sheikh Abdullah
    Shervani
    Speaking Tiger
    Sridhar Balan
    Statesman
    Sunday Guardian
    T.D. Bedi
    Teacher Plus
    Tehelka
    Telegraph
    The Better India
    The Hindu
    The Week
    Times Of India
    Tollygunge Club
    Tribune
    Umi Bedi
    United India
    Urvashi Butalia
    Yasmin Khan
    Yusuf Madhiya

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly