Every war of Independence has its heroes. The USA has George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Paul Revere, Benjamin Franklin to name just a few.
Likewise India’s struggle for Independence from the British came with its own heroes. Some became internationally famous like Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. Streets were named after them in every Indian city. And some of their compatriots - Sardar Patel. Subhas Bose. Dr Ambdekar became famous as well.
But as India celebrates its 77th Independence Day this week, people are telling the stories of the freedom fighters who didn’t make the history books, didn’t get roads and statues.
This is Sandip Roy in Kolkata
P Sainath of the People’s Archive of Rural India has been documenting the stories of many of these forgotten heroes, even as they last generation of those who took part in the struggle die out. Ordinary people like a cook whose husband was in prison.
PS1:One of the characters in this book, at the height of the Bengal famine height of the Bengal famine, was growing food, transporting the food back home, cooking the food and feeding underground revolutionaries hidden in the forests of Purulia
Another freedom fighter was a master of the slingshot she used against the Razakar army in Hyderabad in southern India. When Sainath met her she was in her 80s but still feisty
PS2: She at 11, was an expert at the slingshot. At 13, she was fighting the Razakars of the Nizam and killing people with a slingshot in armed confrontations between underground revolutionaries and the razakars.
And when he brought her on stage in front of a crowd of techies, the 84 year old woman who spoke no word of English wowed her audience with her knowledge of the world by telling them it was people like them who spearheaded Occupy Wall Street.
PS3: They asked her, what can what can we do? And one of the most brilliant one liners I have ever heard, she said, What did we do? We fought for justice. And she said, the slingshot was my weapon. The laptop and the mobile phone are yours. Use those to fight for justice
It’s important to tell these stories not just because they would be lost in the fog of history but because its important to remember that movements are not just about leaders, no matter how charismatic.
Aditya Mukherjee, professor emeritus of contemporary Indian history says Gandhi and Nehru were both aware of that.
AM1: Neither Gandhi nor Nehru had any illusion that it was their leadership which did it. Both of them repeatedly write. Gandhiji particularly says that I don't create movements. I only have the capacity to read the people's mind. And when their people's mind is at unrest, I give it a direction. That's all I do.
It was not just London educated barristers arguing the case for freedom. Or even hot blooded revolutionaries throwing homemade bombs. Without the ordinary people who came forward, at great risk to themselves, this great freedom movement would have never been possible says Mukherjee
AM2: In my mind, it was the biggest event of the 20th century because colonialism after that globally just collapsed. Once the Brits got thrown out of India.
The British always said India could never be a country. The European idea of nation state was one language, one religion. Catholic France, Protestant Germany. But India was a smorgasbord of languages and religions and it needed the Crown to hold it together.
AM3: They said India is a geographical expression. It cannot be a nation. How can so many languages, so many religions, etc. be a nation?
Decades says Mukherjee the tables are well and truly turned,
AM4: I remember a few about a decade ago, a team of European Union sort of intellectuals visited India with the specific purpose to try and see that. How is it that India has maintained remained a nation, where we are having a difficulty in keeping Europe together, even as a union with far less diversity.
As India celebrates another Independence Day it is worth remembering that while this diversity poses its own challenges, the solution is not to bulldoze it into homogeneity. Its diversity is its unique strength. Just as it was the diversity of those who fought for freedom that managed to deliver India its freedom on August 15 1947 says Sainath.
PS4: The whole point is to show you how grand and wide and rich the spectrum of the Indian freedom struggle and the participation in all India's diversity was in it.
This is Sandip Roy in Kolkata for KALW.