NEW DELHI: Union home secretary Amit Shah said on Wednesday that the anti-British armed revolutions in India formed the basis for the success of the congress-led nonviolent movement.
He added that although the armed revolution and its activists ignited the flame of patriotism in the hearts of millions of Indians and inspired them to join the independence struggle, they never received their due prominence in the history of India’s struggle for independence.
The Interior Minister spoke at the launch of the book “Revolutionaries – The Different Story of How India Won Its Freedom” by Sanjeev Sanyal, economist and member of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council.
“Had it not been for a parallel stream of armed movements, achieving independence would have taken a few decades longer,” Shah said.
“It is true that the non-violence movement against the British had its own significance and contribution to making India free. But to mean that the armed revolution was insignificant; Proving the importance of a nonviolent movement by portraying the armed revolution as sporadic, disorganized and individual struggles is incorrect,” he added.
Shah said that the armed revolution for India’s independence was not done justice in the way history was written, saying emotionally, “People who had a responsibility to tell the full story of the Indian independence movement, and from Indian perspective, they didn’t do their jobs well.”
“They don’t know that on the day Bhagat Singh was executed, every family from Lahore to Kanyakumari was so suffocated with grief that they could not eat,” Shah said, adding, “This lit the flame of patriotism in the heart of every Indian and no one can deny that it sparked the freedom struggle.”
“Just because Bhagat Singh’s supreme sacrifice did not lead immediately to independence does not make his sacrifice any less important. This applies not only to Bhagat Singh but to the entire stream of armed revolution,” he added.
He also asked if the awareness raised by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay’s poem Vande Mataram and the Gadar party movement was not important.
Targeting Congress without naming the rival political party, Shah said: “I’m in the field of politics so I don’t want to delve further into this issue here because it could lead to politicization but it is true that these revolutionaries have never been given sufficient space in our history”.
Congress, Shah added, did not introduce Purna Swaraj’s demand until 1930.
Without naming any names, Shah lashed out at left-liberal and communist historians with terms like angrez and angreziat. “This story is written from the perspective of Angreziat, after the Angrez left India.”
The Home Secretary noted that Sanyal’s book focuses on lesser-known strands of India’s freedom struggle and breaks the shackles of a popular belief he said has been planted in the public psyche by repeatedly pounding it through education, legend and history.
“When we analyze the history of India’s struggle for independence, we find that different individuals, organizations, thoughts, ideologies and ways aim to achieve the same goal. Freedom at last was the result of their combined efforts,” he added.
“Pride in heritage and freedom from the symbols of slavery – are two important parts of the Panch Prans mentioned by the Prime Minister (Narendra Modi). Citizens who are not proud of their heritage cannot form a great nation. And the people who carry traditions, beliefs and thoughts imbibed during the period of slavery cannot free the thought-processing nation from the shackles of slavery,” he added, appealing to historians and history students, “a correct and glorious history of India.” “To write Independence struggle” by identifying 300 personalities and 30 great empires other than the Mughals who ruled for more than 200 years.
Sanyal’s book covers the life of the nationalist leader Veer Savarkar, the spiritual leader Sri Auribindo who dreamed of making India the Viswaguru, the Gadar movement, the Andaman prison cell, the Hindustan Republic Association, the gun attack on Chittagong and the valiant exploits by Netaji, Shah noted.