Lakshmi Sahgal
officer in the Indian National Army (INA) and former presidential candidate of India
Lakshmi Sahgal (; née Swaminathan; 24 October 1914 – 23 July 2012) was an Indian politician and activist. She was a revolutionary of the Indian independence movement, an officer of the Indian National Army (INA), and the Minister of Women's Affairs in the Azad Hind Government. She is commonly referred to in India as Captain Lakshmi, a reference to her participation in the INA's Rani Jhansi Regiment during the Second World War. A prominent member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), she was a founding member of the All India Democratic Women's Association. In 1998, Sahgal was awarded the Padma Vibhushan, India's second-highest civilian award. Following this, in the 2002 Indian presidential election, she was nominated as the presidential candidate opposite A. P. J. Abdul Kalam. A medical doctor by profession, she practiced till her death in Kanpur in 2012.
Early life
Lakshmi Swaminathan was born on 24 October 1914 to S. Swaminathan, a lawyer who practiced criminal law at Madras High Court, and A.V. Ammukutty, better known as Ammu Swaminathan, a social worker and independence activist from an aristocratic Nair family known as "Vadakkath" family of Anakkara, Ponnani taluk, Malabar District, British India. She was the elder sister of Mrinalini Sarabhai and the younger sister of Govind Swaminadhan.
As a child, Lakshmi joined her mother in burning their clothes in a pyre to protest against the import of foreign goods, as part of the Swadeshi movement.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Lakshmi Sahgal” is officer in the Indian National Army (INA) and former presidential candidate of India. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Lakshmi, Sahgal and officer, not as a finished interpretation.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q465051. VIAF identifies the subject as 13903235. The Library of Congress control number is n89202432. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1914, 2012, 1998 and 2002.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lakshmi Sahgal” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.