Freda Bedi

“We can’t say for sure if she is Tara, but she is very special, because she knew Buddha in her heart.” Ani Wangchuk, one of the original Dalhousie nuns who escaped Tibet.

Because of Freda, the woman everybody referred to as Mummy or Mummy-la, Buddhism entered these new worlds in Europe, Canada, Australia, and the United States.

“The Karmapa told me to look after her. He told me directly, ‘She is an emanation of White Tara.’ He also said that he and Mummy-la were of the same essence.” Pema Zangmo, Freda’s secretary.

In 1976, her old friend, Indira Gandhi, the Prime Minister of India, recognized Freda with an award given to foreign women who had distinguished themselves through outstanding service to India. Publicly, Freda was grateful; according to her son Kabir, she was outraged for being considered foreign since she felt herself to be fully assimilated as an Indian woman.

Freda Bedi was a flawed heroine worthy of note and study in the history books. She sacrificed everything to care for other people and became Mummy to a broader base than the children she bore. This woman who was naive, stubborn, ambitious, and determined should be remembered for the mark she left on the world.

Freda Houlston (Bedi), a penniless provincial English schoolgirl born in 1911, got herself into Oxford, bucked racial prejudice to marry a Sikh, then moved to India, donned a sari, learned Hindi, and emerged as an influential political and social activist, an intimate of Nehru and his daughter, Indira (later Prime Minister Gandhi), only to throw it all over to become a Buddhist nun.

The Revolutionary Life of Freda Bedi: British Feminist, Indian Nationalist, Buddhist Nun
https://www.amazon.com/Revolutionary-Life-Freda-Bedi-Nationalist/dp/1611804256