Every year on August 15, India remembers the countless heroes who fought for its Independence. We tell their stories, pass on their courage to the next generation, and celebrate their sacrifices. But India’s freedom struggle was not fought alone. Alongside its own leaders stood a remarkable group of foreign renegades—men and women who left their homelands to fight for India’s liberty.
Annie Besant was born in London in 1847 and began as a fiery suffragette. Drawn to Theosophy, she moved to India in 1893 and became a key figure in the Indian Home Rule movement. She helped establish Banaras Hindu University and in 1917 became the first woman president of the Indian National Congress, unshaken by criticism from both the British and her peers.
Madeleine Slade, daughter of a British admiral, read about Gandhi in 1924 and abandoned her aristocratic life to join him in India. As “Mirabehn,” she was arrested during the Civil Disobedience Movement, endured imprisonment with Gandhi, and dedicated decades to India before returning to England in 1959. She was honoured with the Padma Vibhushan in 1981.
BG Horniman, editor of the Bombay Chronicle, defied censorship to expose the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, smuggling eyewitness accounts and photos to London’s Daily Herald. His fearless journalism earned him deportation, but he returned to India to continue advocating for labour rights and press freedom.
Samuel Stokes, an American Quaker, came to India in 1904 to work with leprosy patients but soon joined the Non-Cooperation Movement. He became the only American jailed for sedition during India’s Independence struggle, later settling in Himachal Pradesh, introducing apple farming, and embracing the name Satyananda.
Philip Spratt, a Cambridge-educated communist, arrived in India in 1926 to organise the working class. He was arrested multiple times, defended by BR Ambedkar, and played a key role in the Meerut Conspiracy Case. Though he later abandoned communism, he remained in India, advocating for labour rights until his death in 1971.
These renegades were not bound to India by birth but by conviction. They gave up comfort, risked imprisonment, and in many cases faced exile—all for a country that was not their own.
This Independence Day, as we salute India’s heroes, let us also remember Annie Besant, Mirabehn, Horniman, Stokes, and Spratt—the foreigners who became Indians in spirit, and whose courage helped light the path to freedom.