Peerless Pioneers: Unsung makers of modern India

By Prasenjit K. Basu British mythology would have us believe that India achieved its independence through a smooth “transfer of power” to Indian hands. More recent public discourse (initiated by Collins/Lapierre’s book and Attenborough’s movie) fosters the notion that non-violent resistance led by Gandhiji and the Congress alone led to independence. This story-line implicitly flatters the supposed British commitment to fair-play and the rule of law. It also conveniently air-brushes out both the brutality of British rule, and the long history of resistance to it – including violent resistance by the Marathas, Sikhs, and Mysore between 1760 and 1846, then the first war of independence across north and east India in 1857-58, the mighty Swadeshi movement of 1905-11, the Ghadr party’s rebellion in 1913-17, the revolutionary movement inspired by Bhagat Singh and Chandrasekhar Azad in the 1920s culminating in Surya Sen and Pritilata Waddedar's raid on the Chittagong armoury in April 1930,...

In a poignant footnote to last year’s General Election in India, one of the titans of modern Indian politics, George Fernandes, saw his long electoral career end in ignominy in his pocket borough of Muzaffarpur. Denied a ticket by the party he had founded, Janata Dal-United (JD-U), on grounds of ill-health (he had suffered a stroke, and was still in hospital weeks before the election), the 79-year-old Fernandes finished fifth in Muzaffarpur and lost his deposit – despite garnering the support of former Congress chief minister, Jagannath Mishra, in his last quixotic battle. Thirty-two years earlier, he had fought a Lok Sabha election from the same constituency while still imprisoned in the “Baroda conspiracy case” (by Indira Gandhi during her phase of authoritarian “Emergency” rule) – and won a resounding victory. Three years later, he defied the “Indira wave” of 1980 to retain the seat with another thumping majority. George’s popularity was built on the solid foundations of a maverick ...

By Prasenjit K. Basu On August 17th 1945, two days after the Japanese announced they would be surrendering to the US-led allies, Indonesia declared its independence – with Soekarno as president, and Mohammed Hatta as vice president. They were sworn in by senior officers of the Japanese army, then still in control of Indonesia (and indeed much of the rest of East Asia) despite the formal offer of surrender. Both Soekarno and Hatta had collaborated with the Japanese, who had helped them to respectively consolidate the nationalist and Muslim organizations of the former Dutch East Indies under their leadership. Sutan Sjahrir (a socialist who had refused to collaborate with the Japanese) subsequently (November) became Prime Minister in Soekarna and Hatta’s government. After the formal surrender ceremonies in September 1945, British-Indian troops of the South-east Asia Command (SEAC) under Lord Louis Mountbatten began to re-establish order – with some sporadic cooperation from the Japanese. ...