Author Savie Karnel shares a 14-year-old spy’s story that was 14 years in the making

Sometime in the early 1940s, when World War II raged and, simultaneously, India’s freedom struggle entered what would be its final phase, with the founding of Azad Hind Fauj, a 14-year-old girl waited outside the Rani of Jhansi regiment camp in Burma (now Myanmar). Orphaned with her brother in the war bombing, this young daughter of Indian-born railroad labourers — they toiled for the British in Burma, and died there, too — wanted to join the path-breaking freedom army.

For three days, Laxmi Panda waited, braving the Rani of Jhansi regiment’s refusal to admit her into the force because she was considered too young for a military campaign.

Then came her big break: Laxmi spotted a vehicle bringing none other than Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, the leader of Azad Hind Fauj or the Indian National Army (INA). She jumped in front of the vehicle to get noticed by the great leader. He did notice her and inducted her into the women’s regiment, whose very existence was a social revolution.

Being very young, Laxmi Panda was deployed as a spy for the INA, though she also received some military training and had a firearm issued in her name.

By the time this extraordinary story came to Savie Karnel, then a young journalist making her mark in Bangalore, the youngest spy in Netaji’s army had become a poverty-stricken woman in her seventies, eking out a living as a maid, abandoned by her blood relations, her vital contribution largely forgotten by independent India.

But the fire of the freedom struggle was still burning in her. “When I spoke to Laxmi Panda on the phone, the first thing she said was, ‘Jai Hind!’ And she said it with such feeling and devotion that it gave me goosebumps. We’ve all heard those words spoken, but this woman had lived those words, in that time. She felt the meaning of every syllable [of the patriotic greeting],” says Savie, speaking to Connected to India about how she wrote her second book, Laxmi Panda: The Story of Netaji’s Youngest Spy, published on June 24, 2024.

The inspiring conversation stayed with Savie for 14 years after she first interacted with the INA spy. That was in 2008, when the grandson of Laxmi Panda was taking her life story to all media houses, so that she could finally get the freedom fighter’s pension. As a journalist, Savie wrote about Laxmi Panda, as did many others, focusing on her age and penury.

Recognition followed: Laxmi Panda was honoured by the then President of India Pratibha Patil with Rashtriya Swatantrata Sainik Samman (which translates to ‘national freedom fighter honour’). Sadly, she passed away within a matter of days after this. That pension stayed stuck in the paperwork.

“As a writer, I felt that she had an incredible story, and she had lived a full life,” says Savie. “But I met her in her old age, and felt sorry that she lived in penury. [But] when she spoke to me, she was very proud of her time in the INA.”

Though she knew with conviction that the young Laxmi Panda’s story would also have to be told, Savie began work on this book only in 2022, following that first interaction in 2008.

The 14-year-old Laxmi would venture into British camps in the guise of a frog-catcher who wanted to sell the frogs, and then she would gather intelligence for the INA. To fill in the gaps, where documented research could not corroborate the accounts given by Laxmi’s family, Savie fictionalised the story and made it something of an adventure.

Before this, she had already published her first book The Nameless God, in 2021, thus realising the dream of writing she had nurtured since childhood. This book is the story of two young boys — one Hindu, one Muslim — who invent a god without a name, a god that would answer only their prayers, unbound by religion.

About her transition from journalist to author, she says, “I always had the thought of writing a book, right from the age of 11. I read a lot as a child, and always wanted to write.”

Very interestingly, the young Savie’s writing ambitions were fired up by a tourism campaign undertaken by the government of her home state Karnataka.

“I grew up in Karwar,” she says. “The Karnataka government was promoting tourism [there] and one aspect [of the campaign] was that Rabindranath Tagore wrote his first play in Karwar.” Indeed, the town has a beach named after the great poet-playwright, and the young Savie would often visit that beach.

This tourism campaign made her believe in her own ability. “After listening to this story, my writing seemed possible. I thought, ‘If Gurudev could sit on this beach and write, this beach that I have been coming to since childhood, then why can’t I?”

Fans of the “law of attraction” theory might say that Savie has attracted her present literary success. Both her books have gone into reprint within a short time after being published and they have received great reviews. Her recent book tours to promote Laxmi Panda have included sessions with school students, many of whom came prepared after reading the book and also reading up on the INA. They have been totally engaged in the sessions and inspired by the teenage freedom fighter.

This is every author’s dream, and Savie has been steering herself towards a sustainable writing career. “I always thought, ‘Whatever I do as a journalist, should lead to writing a book,’” she tells Connected to India about her early goal.

While working in Bangalore as a reporter, she recalls, “I loved the night shift, as it took me to people, instead of the day shift, which took me to press conferences.” The journalism job also brought the Laxmi Panda story to her.

Perhaps no success tastes as sweet as the one that follows failure. Savie also experienced a phase of “rejection leads to dejection”, when The Nameless God was turned down by many publishers.

The backdrop of the two friends’ story was the period of violence that followed the Babri Masjid demolition of December 1992, and spilled over to January 1993. When Savie finished the book, around 2015, the subject perhaps did not interest the publishers. Disheartened by too many “no” responses, she nearly gave up on her dream of being a published author.

But then, she tried again — driven by a moment of epiphany following an accident — around the same time of the Delhi riots of February 2020. This time, her book was accepted by the publisher Westland. With some more chiselling of the story, the book was released on January 25, 2021, when the country was still reeling under the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, and a second wave was rising.

It was all the more remarkable that The Nameless God was a runaway hit in the middle of the biggest health crisis in a century.

Now two books old and firmly established as an author of repute, Savie’s greatest challenge is not a shortage of ideas but the difficulty of getting uninterrupted time for diving into those ideas.

As the mother of a young boy and the wife of an Army officer with a transferable job, the author Savie Karnel sometimes has to claw back her free time. She says with a laugh, “When you’re thinking, you’re doing the most important part of the job. But people look at you at a desk and staring outside, and they think you’re doing nothing. With a woman, it can be even more challenging. People don’t so much mind a man simply staring at a blank space.”

Her mantra is: “Perseverance and the strength to say ‘no’ to people are essential.”

Between chores and socialising, a woman has to find the time to reach into her real self. Savie has mastered the art; her two books prove that.