Vanara Sena

According to Hindu beliefs the "Army of Monkeys" or "vanaras", helped Lord Rama fight the armies of Ravana of Lanka in the epic "Ramayana".

It also was the name of an organization of young Indian boys and girls created by the young Indira Gandhi in the late 1920s and early 1930s, as the children's wing of the Indian National Congress, the lead organization of the Indian Independence Movement.

The Sena played a small but interesting role in the Indian Independence Movement. Indira and her young comrades organized rallies and flag marches of young students, gave speeches and sang patriotic songs, and more importantly helped circulate prohibited and sensitive literature and other publications of the Congress Party to supporters. In an often-told story, Indira smuggled out from the police-watched house of her father Jawaharlal Nehru an important document in her schoolbag that outlined plans for a major revolutionary initiatve in the early 1930s to a local Congress office.