Puli Thevar, Velu Nachiyar, Marudu Sagodharargal, Veerapandiya Kattabomman, V.O. Chidambaram, Bharathiyar and Kodi katha Kumaran are freedom fighters from Tamil Nadu, but barring a few popular names, most people may not be much familiar with others. So it was a good idea to present their stories as an ode to these freedom fighters and to commemorate 75 years of Independence.
Tamil Nadu
The Sepoy Mutiny of 1857 may not be India’s first war of independence.
The first such war, not recognised by Indian history, took place in 1839 between the Tai Khamti people and the British. The theatre of this war was some 2,400 km east of Meerut in Uttar Pradesh where the mutiny began, Arunachal Pradesh’s Deputy Chief Minister Chowna Mein said.
The beautifully handwritten note on the yellowing service record, compiled by the Punjab government in 1919 and now over a century old, is as brief as it is poignant.
In faded ink, the entry for Wasawa Singh, the son of Shera, a Jat from the village of Gaike in northeast Punjab, tells the story of a young life cut short in the service of an alien empire.
There are no dates, merely a rank — havildar, equivalent to sergeant — and the name of a unit, the 30th Punjabis.
The 22-acre Shahid Smarak at Ambala to showcase Haryana’s ‘lead role’ in India’s first War of Independence; impetus came from old telegrams discovered by historian KC Yadav, which he presented to claim that 1857 revolt actually began in Ambala.
The Haryana government believes that the Shahid Smarak would highlight that it was Ambala, and not Meerut, from where the 1857 uprising actually began, which culminated in India attaining Independence in 1947.
“The objective of constructing a war memorial in Ambala is to immortalise the bravery of those unsung heroes who never got credit for scripting the first revolt (against the British). It will also highlight Haryana’s contribution to the freedom struggle with a special emphasis on revolt incidents at Ambala,” says a senior Haryana government official.
Chandigarh-based architect-designer Renu Khanna, who earlier built Ambala Gate and Chhapar Chiri War Memorial near Chandigarh, was commissioned to build the memorial. “The project is in its final stages and is likely to be completed in 2022. Besides the museum of objects related to the unsung heroes from Haryana and their role in 1857, there will be a memorial, a library, an interpretation centre, a huge parking space and a helipad,” Khanna tells the Indian Express.
“We call this mutiny, but that is from the point of view of the Britishers, but from an Indian perspective, it should be called the first War of Independence,” Khanna says.
The 1817 Paika rebellion of Odisha could not be called the first war of Independence, but considering it as a beginning of a popular uprising against the British, it would be included as a case study in the Class 8 National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) history textbook, the Union Culture Minister said on Thursday.
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh will inaugurate the revamped war memorial at Rezang La in Eastern Ladakh next week, a defence source said.
The memorial, dedicated to those who laid down their lives in the Battle of Rezang La during the 1962 war, now includes the names of Army personnel who lost their lives in the violent clash at Galwan last year.
The six shortlisted books this year provide creative insights into the history of India — its diversity, difference, heterogeneity, and the very idea of the nation state.
The selected books are: The Death Script: Dreams and Delusions in Naxal Country by Ashutosh Bhardwaj (Fourth Estate, HarperCollins Publishers); India’s First Dictatorship: The Emergency, 1975-77 by Christophe Jaffrelot & Pratinav Anil (HarperCollins Publishers): Naoroji: Pioneer of Indian Nationalism by Dinyar Patel (Harvard University Press); Gandhi in the Gallery: The Art of Disobedience by Sumathi Ramaswamy (Roli Books); The Coolie’s Great War: Indian Labour in a Global Conflict 1914-1921 by Radhika Singha (HarperCollins Publishers); Jugalbandi: The BJP Before Modi by Vinay Sitapati (Penguin Random House).
THE THIN EDGE | Reconstructing India’s freedom struggle on celluloid
Re-examining periods of the past is crucial to deepening our understanding of history. Today, when we are fighting a massive, relentless hijacking attempt on the history of our freedom struggle by the falsification factories of the Hindutva brigade, genuine re-examinations of the first few decades of the 20th century matter more than ever.
Shoojit Sircar’s recently released film, Sardar Udham, positions itself as such a project, one which brings to light the almost forgotten story of Udham Singh, who also went to the gallows, ten years after the execution of his younger and much more famous HSRA comrade, Bhagat Singh.
People in many parts of Manipur celebrated the renaming of Mount Harriet in Andaman and Nicobar Islands as Mount Manipur, by lighting candles in front of their houses on Sunday evening.
Prince Kulachandra and 22 others were deported to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands for serving long prison terms for revolting against the British government. Officials say that in view of his good behaviour, prince Kulachandra was shifted to a bungalow there later. Nothing is known of the other prisoners.
Dr. S. Jaishankar also visited the Indian Cemetery at Talpiot in Jerusalem and paid homage to the brave Indian soldiers who made the supreme sacrifie during World War I. | Photo Credit: PTI