An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way.

An artist says a
hard thing in a simple way. - Charles Bukowski

I had met Manish Shrivastava few years back. What struck me most
was utterly endearing sincerity in his being. That sincerity and
simplicity with which he would offer me Rudraksh maala comes out
in his writing. When we met first in a Noida Coffee Shop, I was a
little circumspect. Such genuineness in today’s world is so rare that
one tends to believe it to be some sort of act being put up for some
purpose. But as we sat talking with hope and sadness about the way
history of India in general, and our freedom struggle, in particular
has been written, I could see that this honesty was not an act.

I had around that time translated the Autobiography of Ram Prasad

Bismil- The Revolutionary and was still overwhelmed by the
greatness of the person of Bismil. We sat and spoke among us for
hours on how a skewed history of India’s great freedom struggle has
been held hostage to a particular narrative, written with an aim to
further the political objectives of the present and what could be done
to rectify it. We both agreed that it is too serious a thing to be left to
the Government alone.

The story of India’s freedom struggle as told till now moves in spurts
and lacks continuity. If one were to read it from the popular sources,
one would believe that post the first war of Independence, which has
been projected by the British as murderous mutiny by a murderous
mob, there was a brief lull, during which AO Hume, erstwhile
British Bureaucrat formed Congress and then Gandhi arrived from
South Africa and metamorphosed a sleepy movement of elites and
brought it to the masses.

While it is true that Congress for almost half a decade was a loyalist
British-sponsored convention of Indian elites, which Gandhi did
manage to broad base as a popular movement, this presumption that
until then there was no activity towards freedom is hugely misplaced.
From Sanyasi movement to the armed resistance to in Maharashtra to
the revolutionary movement in Bengal, and Aryasamaj in the
Western India to the revolutionaries of Central provinces under
Hindustan Republican Army- the zeal to free the motherland
continued unabated.

India was not a Cinderella in pink-frock waiting for her knight in

shining armour to arrive from South Africa to liberate it. The
movement however was not an elite movement. It was made of men
like Tilak, Savarkar, Shyamji Verma, Bismil, Azad, Ashfaq and
Bhagat Singh. When one reads about these great leaders and
revolutionaries, one thing one is absolutely taken aback by almost
universally modest upbringing of theirs, their unflinching love for
the motherland and above all, their supremely splendid intellectual
prowess.

This particular aspect of their personalities makes me wonder if the

reason that they were hidden from us was merely political or was it
because there some sense of intellectual inadequacy of our later
leaders who were mostly academically poor and obtained education
merely owing to their affluent backgrounds? In a zeal to build an
aristocratic history of India, we took away from our present the
inspiring heroes from the past, who rose through deprivation and
poverty and became academics and intellectuals.

This book ‘MitraMela’- a gathering of friends- taken from the first

revolutionary group legendary freedom fighter, Vinayak Damodar
Savarkar, formed, is third in the series of Ten books author has
planned to write, in this praiseworthy attempt to resurrect those lost
heroes. One big casualty of caricaturisation of History is that while
they make the heroes too big in stature, they reduce everyone else so
small in size that they are like miniature toys in the background not
worthy of any attention.

While this is unjust to the great heroes, it also is unjust to those who
we are trying to make appear as giants of the history. Apart from the
commendable motive of Manish behind writing this series, what is
exceptionally notable here is that his writing allows all those
personalities to come out of the hiding and breathe in the fresh, free
air of India for the first time.

In his earlier book in the series, on Chandra Shekhar Azad, we have

Master ji, living and breathing as a much respected revolutionary
leader. In this book, while it tends to explore the history of Savarkar
or rather the making of Veer Savarkar, it narrates the story of Bhai
Parmanand and Shyamji Verma too with great affection. It fills
human colours into the names of Bhai Parmanand and Shyamji
Verma, both great academics, Professor Bhai Parmanand who
headed the History department in Lahore University and Professor
Shyamji Verma who came from a poor family and based on his
academic brilliance became a professor at Oxford.

Much like the previous books in this series, the narration is in story-
telling pattern. As we had in the second book of the Krantidoot
series, Kashi, where Azad as a young recruit in the Hindustan
Republican Arm, as an off-shoot of Anushilan Samiti is told the
history of revolutionary movement and key characters are
introduced, here the backdrop is of National college also known as
Tilak School of Politics in Lahore (Tilak was from Pune and this
College is in Lahore, then Western India, now Pakistan, and we are
told that before Gandhi and Congress, there was no national
movement for freedom which ran across the regions) where Bhagat
Singh, Sukhdev and other students are being introduced to Savarkar,
the revolutionarily movement in England, by their teacher, Bhai
Parmanand, himself a noted leader of Gadar movement.

Somewhere, the reader is transformed into one of those students of

National College, Lahore and almost imagines himself or herself
sitting on the classroom benches, elbows on the desk and face held
between the palms, charmed with the story of Savarkar who could
with sheer power of his words transform the disdainfully passive into
a daring patriot.

The story touches upon the hard research that went into the first
proper record of India’s first war of Independence coordinated across
various regions of India, put together by Savarkar and published as
India’s First War of Independence. The book was promptly banned
by the British looking at the emotions it stirred across India.
Ironically Savarkar’s book was banned in England and Nehru’s
books were published and sold in England, with Krishna Menon as
latter’s Literary agent in England.

The story touches about the fear among the British in 1907-1908 as
the Fifty years Anniversary of the Revolution of 1857 came up and
activities in the India House. Number of articles celebrating the first
national uprising were published the Indian Sociologist brought out
by India House. On 9th of May, 1907, Lala Lajpat Rai and Sardar
Ajit Singh were arrested and deported to Burma by the British
Government fearful of the repeat of the rebellion.

The record of David Garnett, a young Irish revolutionary from those

times who visited India House and met Savarkar in 1909 mentions
the environment in the India house where he mentions Savarkar
reading a chapter from his book and the moved audience, after the
reading going to another room and sit poignantly listening on the
Gramophone Vande Mataram. Coming back to this book, we have
Bhagat Singh devotedly listening to the inspiring story of India
House.

He and along with him, we the readers, learn about the first
movement to boycott the British Clothes in Pune organised by
Savarkar on 2nd October, 1905, under the guidance of Tilak and
supported by the Brahmins of Pune at Mahadev Temple of Sardar
Natu (Gandhi is still in South Africa and yet to support the Zulu War
of the British). We learn about the founding of Mitra Mela, a
revolutionary group Mitra Mela, a front for revolutionary
organisation Rashtrabhakta Samuha under the code name- Ram
Hari, by Savarkar, still a school child.

The narrative-builders of independent India who often pose as

historian do not speak about this phase of Bhagat Singh’s life. This
does not go well with their motive of setting Bhagat Singh in the
mould of a staunchly communist and mildly Hindu-hating
revolutionary. Bhagat Singh was sent ot the DAV because students
in Khalsa school of Lahore were made to sing prayers praising the
British Empire. Bhagat Singh joined DAV in 1917.

The College which forms the backdrop of this book is affiliated to

the Punjab Qaumi Vidyapeeth founded by Lala Lajpat Rai and Bhai
Parmanand. Acharya Jugal Kishore who also appears in the novel
carrying the story forward was the Founder-Principal of the College.
While we have no way of knowing if the story was indeed narrated
to Bhagat Singh as a student as it is detailed in this book, but what
we do know is that Bhai Parmanand who tells the story of Savarkar
who wrote the book on 1857 revolution was also sentenced to death
1915 in the first Lahore Conspiracy case for writing History of India.

After his death sentence was commuted, he was sent to Andaman,

like Savarkar was sent in 1911. Bhai Parmanand was released after
Five years in Andamans, having served hard Labour in the prison.
While he was away, his property was forfeited by the British and his
wife lived in penury supporting two of his young daughters with a
monthly salary of Seventeen Rupees a month as a vernacular teacher
in Arya Samaj Primary School. Both his daughters died, one in
childhood, other later in her early youth as he writes in ‘The story of
My Life’ due to the hardships she suffered as a child.

Bismil’s mother also faced similar penury after he was martyred by

the British. Somehow Congress leaders managed to escape this
misfortune which everyone considered as the enemy of the Empire
had to face.

As I have mentioned, while we cannot verify the story itself, which I

would call as literary tool to tell the truth, I can say with some
authority that the incidents which form the narrative in this fiction
are nearer to the truth than the fiction which is taught in our country
as History. It is accepted by almost all historians that this particular
period left an indelible mark on Bhagat Singh’s later life as a
revolutionary.

We do not often talk about it because it bring forth uncomfortable

aspect of his life like his admiration for Savarkar. As the politics of
India had evolved post-Emergency and with a leadership of current
Congress alienated from Indian emotions and ethos, there has been
huge attempts to push Savarkar away from public memory and
attention and to use one exceptional son of the motherland, Bhagat
Singh to short-sell another great patriot, his hero, Savarkar, is an
ingenious tool deployed for the purpose.

We can say with some certainty something of this kind must have
happened when we read what Bhagat Singh wrote on Savarkar on
15th of November, 1924- ‘The Universal lover is that person who
we shamelessly refer to as a violent revolutionary, and a hardcore
anarchist- the same Veer Savarkar, who would stop walking over
the grasses lest the soft blades of grass might get crushed under his
feet.

Bhagat Singh’s disenchantment with Congress leadership also comes

to fore when in a series he wrote on the revolutionaries, paying
tributes to MadanLal Dhingra he writes in Keerti in March 1928,
‘Indians organised big meetings, made big speeches. Many big
resolutions were passed. All condemning Madanlal Dhingra. But
at that time, it was only Veer Savarkar who openly supported
Madanlal Dhingra’. Gandhi had condemned Madanlal Dhingra, in
1909 while in South Africa then and had written- ‘India can gain
nothing from the rule of the murderers, no matter whether they are
black or white.’

This is not a book of one-upmanship between on freedom fighter

against another. It is simply an attempt to bring forth inconvenient
truths. We need more such books to be written and be read across the
board. We must fight against the zeal of current politicians to create
villains out of those who suffered for their desire to serve the
motherland. The contents of the book are backed by a long list of
references.

The only way to fight lies is facts and this book by Manish
Shrivastava scores high on facts. We owe it to those of our leaders
who have been pushed to the shadows forgetfulness in order to
honour politically important ones. The sincerity, honesty and
simplicity of the writer stands out in this book. This is a must read
and reading this will be true tribute to our patriots in this Azadi Ka
Amrit Mahotsav.

Link to Buy- https://pages.razorpay.com/krantidoot

- Saket Suryesh as @saket7 on Twitter

(Saket Sureysh is a bilingual author who writes in both Hindi

and English. He writes columns on History, politics and
literature in leading print and digital news portals. He has
recently published the translation of Autobiography of Ram
Prasad Bismil- The Revolutionary and a collection of Hindi
stories-Ek Swar, Shasra Pratidhwaniyaan)