There are daughters born from Indian soil who don't just inherit the earth beneath their feet - they shake it. Usha Mehta was one such force of nature, a woman whose courage didn't wait for permission and whose conviction couldn't be caged. On August 14th, 1942, when the British Raj had imprisoned every major leader of the freedom movement and silenced every voice that dared to speak of independence, this young Gandhian did something audacious. She became the voice itself.
The Secret Congress Radio wasn't born in some grand, well-funded revolutionary headquarters. It was pieced together with borrowed equipment, donated jewellery, and the kind of stubborn hope that refuses to die even when logic says it should. Usha and her associates had scraped together funds, found technicians willing to risk their lives, and set up a clandestine station that would broadcast what the British government had worked so hard to suppress - the truth. Gandhi's messages, uncensored news, strategies for the movement, voices of leaders who were locked away in British prisons - all of it travelled through the airwaves, reaching revolutionaries across India who desperately needed to know they weren't alone.
But here's what makes Usha Mehta's story extraordinary: she knew the cost. She had already sworn celibacy before Gandhi, pledging her entire life to the freedom struggle. She had defied her father, a man who loved her deeply and feared for her future, breaking a promise she'd made to him that she would keep away from revolutionary activities - because the promise she'd made to her country was bigger. She had run away from home, knowing she might never return. And when the time came to operate the radio on a day when everyone knew the British would trace the signal and arrest whoever was broadcasting, Usha didn't hesitate. She sat at that microphone herself. This wasn't recklessness - it was radical love for a nation not yet free.
The Secret Congress Radio functioned for only three months. The organisers moved locations almost daily, always one step ahead of British intelligence, until November 1942 when the authorities finally closed in. They arrested everyone. Usha was thrown into Yerwada Jail, shuttled to J.J. Hospital when illness struck, then dragged back to prison again. During her trial, she exercised her right to remain silent - not out of fear, but out of defiance. They tortured her. They offered her freedom if she'd reveal where Ram Manohar Lohia was hiding. She chose jail. Four years of her young life, locked away, but never broken.
What haunted her most wasn't the imprisonment or the torture. It was the betrayal. An Indian had given them away to the British. She called the Secret Congress Radio both the finest and saddest moment of the freedom struggle - finest because it proved that even when leaders were imprisoned and newspapers were gagged, the spirit of resistance could not be silenced; saddest because it took one of their own to bring it down. Yet even in that grief, Usha Mehta stood tall. Her father, who had once tried to stop her, eventually wrote to her in prison: "You are no longer a revolutionary. You have become a revolution yourself."
Luv My India salutes the indomitable spirit of daughters of the nation like Usha Mehta. Stories of courage like hers remind us why India deserves to be loved with pride. We are committed to bringing such narratives to the forefront - for a new India, for its young minds - so they truly understand what it means to be a true Indian.
This feeling of pride must not live only in history books or on calendar dates. It deserves to be alive every day, in every moment. It was this very inspiration that gave birth to India’s First Nationalist Lifestyle Brand, Luv My India, founded by advertising veteran Vandana Sethhi. A brand rooted in the belief that India’s stories must be celebrated daily, not reserved for special occasions. Because loving your country, as Usha Mehta showed us, is not merely an emotion. It is an action.
We dedicate this heartfelt poetry to the many ‘Ushas’ of India:
“Jab khauf thaa dushman ka,
Tumne awaaz uthayi thi.
Sangram ched diya thaa aisa,
Band darwazon se khabar pahuchayi thi.
Naam toh Usha thaa tumhara,
Par pehle tum desh ki beti kehlaayi thi.”
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Jan 19 2026
