Revolutionaries: The Other Story of How India won its Freedom

The saga of India’s quest for independence and freedom from centuries of foreign rule has many heroes. Each of them had a different approach and religiously adhered to a certain frame of thought to work towards this pursuit of freedom from colonial powers. So, the freedom struggle was never a straight-jacketed approach nor did a specific ideology or a value system had made this dream of being independent a reality. The freedom struggle was replete with the selfless sacrifices of numerous leaders and visionaries from every nook and corner of the land.

Ideally, India’s contemporary history should have been etched with the extraordinary feats of the ordinary heroes who made the freedom struggle a mass movement. Instead, slyly scrubbed off the legendary acts of several unsung heroes a dominant monochromatic view of the independence movement has become the most coveted narration even after over seven decades of becoming a free nation. The heroes of the freedom struggle never received their due. They were never credited for their sacrifices and courage.

Of late, to counter this chicanery and abject whitewashing of the different strands of thought, historians, and intellectuals are steadily bringing out to the fore the legendary acts of several lesser-known freedom fighters. The contributions of these legends have generated new interest and set a platform to explore a hidden side of the freedom struggle that was deliberately side-lined.

Several strands of thoughts were brought to light by these works.  But it needed master craftsmen to join these links or join the dots to effectively discern a spectrum of thought that relentlessly strove and worked for the liberation of the motherland from the foreign shackles. Piecing together these disparate strands is Sanjeev Sanyal’s book “Revolutionaries: The Other Story of How India Won Its Independence”. Know for his immaculate style of writing, Sanyal who is hugely popular for his books on history that sparked new interest among gen-X, in his present work has put things in perspective and shaped a narrative.

Indian freedom struggle is invariably identified with the non-violent doctrine of M. K. Gandhi. While the lesser-known deterrent and the real force majeure that advanced the exit of the colonial masters have been the armed resistance and peerless acts of courage and dare. Often dubbed as random events, these fierce acts of patriotic fervour had a story to them which were unrecognised and underappreciated. Sanyal’s new book fills the gap in the general understanding of people about the role of armed resistance in India’s independence.

Indeed, the impact of armed resistance on the independent struggle remained understated with bits and parts of the heroic acts often appropriated to certain ideologies. Giving a perspective to this disjointed understanding, Sanyal has done a brilliant job of connecting these dots and lending credence to the revolutionary network that wasn’t just confined to different parts of the country but had established nodes in far-off lands like the US, Canada, UK, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Japan, Thailand, Russia and Ireland.

Other than the 1857 revolution or the first war of Indian independence that has been the dominant influence, Irish nationalism, Hindu revivalist leaders like Swami Vivekananda, and Japanese pan-Asianism were among the major intellectual influences of the revolutionaries. Ironically, the book also shreds the prevalent dogmatic view about revolutionaries. The majority of the revolutionaries in the early 19^th century were unapologetic Hindus and followers of Shakta tradition who took a solemn oath on Bhagavad Gita to dedicate their entire lives to the cause of independence. They were deeply religious and the personification of India as Bharat Mata is an extension of this view. But they weren’t bigoted and worked with varied groups of people including pan-Islamists, Japanese imperialists and communist-leaning cadres. They were pragmatists, open to new approaches, soaked in ideas from similar fights against oppression and actively collaborated with like-minded people to liberate India.

Indeed, the broad group of revolutionaries by the 1940s comprised Anushilan Marxists, Royists (followers of MN Roy founder of CPI), and the Congress Socialist Party led by Jaya Prakash Narayan. Despite the ideological differences, they worked together as a group towards the mission of ending foreign rule. On the contrary, issuing a press statement Jawaharlal Nehru said, “I do believe that the choice before the world today is one between some form of Communism and some form of Fascism, and I am all for the former, that is Communism”. Instead of taking sides, Subhash Chandra Bose opinioned, “unless we are at the end of the process of evolution or unless we deny evolution altogether, there is no reason to hold that our choice is restricted to two alternatives”. (p-224)

The book also exposes the double-speak and fawning hypocrisy of the mainstream narrative and its approval of the ‘alliance of convenience’ of President Roosevelt being colonial sympathiser siding with imperialist Churchill and despot Stalin but demonised Subhash Chandra Bose for allying with Axis powers. This is the narrative that relentlessly derided the installation of the Netaji’s statue at the Kartavya Marg by PM Modi.

Sadly, even now the luminaries who ignited and sustained the spark of devotion towards the nation among successive generations of revolutionaries have failed to get their due. They are unfortunately relegated to the footnotes of history.

A continuum of thought spans the entire expanse of the book laid out in eight chapters. Chronologically, the book starts off with the leading lights of this armed resistance in India- Aurobindo Ghosh, Veer Savarkar, Sachindranath Sanyal and characteristically ends with the declaration of India’s freedom. But the thread extends into the epilogue that talks about -some of the revolutionaries in the post-Independence era, the rise and accommodation of the ‘collaborator class’ in the political spectrum, the punitive downplaying of the armed resistance in freedom movement and the emergence of RSS as an influential religio-cultural organisation.

Suffused with acts of defiance against the colonial rule carried out by young, patriotic revolutionaries a sense of awe certainly overwhelms the readers. With an ambitious task of presenting the resistance saga of revolutionaries spanning over five decades, Sanyal expertly packs and duly hails the bold acts of revolutionaries like Chapekar brothers, Prafulla Chaki, Khudiram Bose, Madanlal Dhingra, Udham Singh, Ram Prasad Bismil, Ashfaqullah Khan, Bhagat Singh, Jatin Das, Bina Das, Surya Sen, Rashbehari Bose, Ghadarites, Padurang Sadashiv Khankoje and several others.

Resisting the temptation of cramming more information, Sanyal limits the introductions of revolutionaries to cursory details and constructs the narrative by highlighting pathbreaking events and people associated with them. Peppered with numerous anecdotes and the personal tragedies, the book feels like a roller coaster ride with few hits and several misses with men of undaunting courage unshaken by the vagaries of life and degeneration of the movement, making every attempt to resurrect it.

Sanyal underscores the seminal efforts of Sachindranath Sanyal, his great grand uncle who was the only person sent to Cellular Jail in reviving and reaching out to the people all over again just an hour after his release. The violent acts of revolutionaries are not just isolated acts or sporadic heroism but they were part of an organised network with a defined objective and mission. Instrumental in installation of the Provisional Government of Free India, the revolutionaries have partly succeeded in accomplishing their mission.

Neatly packing a wealth of information that was systematically erased from public memory and the invaluable gist of the armed resistance in 352 pages, Sanyal has done a brilliant job of providing a perfect overview of the revolutionary movement, the backbone of India’s resistance.

The book also highlights the British tactics of frustrating the revolutionary heists at regular intervals, infiltrating Gurudwaras and excoriating Sikhs of Hindu identity, deliberately introducing and encouraging the political prisoners to the Marxist ideology and even hand-holding them into starting indoctrinating centres in India to create rift. Wielding the Divine and Rule Policy, the British ruled by pitting Indians against each other.

The meat of the book is clearly the epilogue that fleetingly rushes through post-independence era bundling together the partition woes including death, rape, betrayal and neglect endured by revolutionaries, minority appeasement, opportunistic politicking, Brahmin pogram etc. Without getting into details, this chapter enlists the British legacy interventions which has turned into perennial problems -Khalistani separatist movement, the Rohingya conflict a consequence of arming the local Muslim-Buddhist rivalry, official patronisation of loyalists or the ‘collaborator class’ which orchestrates and sets the discourse, emergence of a cult of westernised ‘brown sahibs’, secularisation of akhadas, proliferation of communist ideology, etc.

Drifting through various aspects that continue to afflict the independent India, Sanyal recounting the real inheritor of the Indian revolutionary movement, points to RSS that has grown by leaps and bounds with Sakhas or the youth clubs even in foreign countries. The apolitical Sakhas, akin to social network of akhadas of ancient India, where youth practice physical skills managed by pracharaks (usually bachelors) have uncanny similarities to the Bhawani Mandir concept envisioned by Aurobindo Gosh. The effort to draw parallels is certainly not lost on the readers.

Given his own family connect with the revolutionary movement, Sanyal even takes us along to the places of consequences by narrating its importance and its present condition as well. This nuanced narrative building of Sanyal really sets this book apart and makes it an essential read for everyone who wishes to discern the Indian resistance to foreign domination.

Pages: 352

Publisher: Harper Collins

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