New Delhi: At a time when the Narendra Modi government is celebrating the 75th anniversary of India’s independence by attempting to rewrite the history of the freedom struggle, journalist and author P. Sainath said it was unfortunate that there had been no official recognition of India’s last surviving – and unsung – freedom fighters nor indeed any attempt to explain to the current generation the kind of destruction wrought on the country by two centuries of British colonial rule.
Speaking at the launch of his new book, The Last Heroes: Footsoldiers of India’s Freedom, before a packed audience at the India International Centre on Monday, the award-winning journalist gave a moving account of the interviews he had conducted over the past decade with women and men across India who took part in the struggle for independence but had received no official recognition for the sacrifices they had made because of the narrow manner in which the government chose to classify and honour freedom fighters.
Winner of the Magsaysay Award and author of Everybody Loves a Good Drought, Sainath is founder editor of the Peoples Archive of Rural India.
Clockwise from top left: Bhagat Singh Jhuggian, Mallu Swarajyam, Hausabai Patil, N. Sankariah, Bhabani Mahato and Ganpati Patil. Photos: ruralindiaonline.org
Among the ‘last heroes’ his book profiles are: Hausabai Patil, who was part of the revolutionary underground that carried out attacks on British offices, and looted armouries, buses and police stations in the Satara region in Maharashtra from 1943-46; Demathi Dei Sabar and her comrades who took on armed British officers with lathis in Nuapada, Odisha; the impoverished freedom fighter Laxmi Panda who served the soldiers of the Indian National Army of Subhas Chandra Bose as a cook and survived British bombings and whose only demand was recognition; Ganpati Patil, who played a key role as a courier in the freedom struggle from UP to Maharashtra; N. Sankariah who battled the British Raj in public, in prison and underground; Bhagat Singh Jhuggian of Punjab’s Hoshiarpur district, who took on the British Raj, and continued to fight for farmers and workers into his 90s; Mallu Swarajyam of Warangal who led squads armed with slingshots and rifles against the Nizam’s militia in the 1940s.
Each of these women and men, said Sainath, believed that even though India secured its independence in 1947, the fight for freedom still had to be won. Only six of the 16 freedom fighters profiled were still alive but most of them remained active in peoples’ movements in one way or the other their entire lives.
Sainath was joined by three university students – Sukhpreet Kahlon of JNU, Yusra Naqvi of Jamia Millia and Jenisha Singh of Ambedkar University – who noted how the stories narrated in the book not only filled a vital gap in the history of the freedom struggle but also demonstrated how the struggle did not come to an end in 1947.
Role of Savarkar
In response to a question from the audience, Sainath said that it was important that the role played by all freedom fighters be acknowledged but that historians could not invent a record of struggle where none existed. Citing the example of V.D. Savarkar, he said that the issue was not merely one of the Hindutva icon having submitted a mercy petition to the British colonialists in order to secure his release from prison. Others also sought mercy or clemency, he said, but they then went on to use their freedom to plunge back into the freedom movement rather than collaborating with the British.
The Last Heroes is published by Penguin Books.