Tuesday, July 12, 2016

Book Review – India’s Struggle For Independence, Bipan Chandra

It is said that history is written by the victors, which means that the facts are often twisted to suit the needs and to the advantage of the writer. While Bipan Chandra does nothing to twist the facts, he has managed to take a partial view of the facts, as always. This is the second book by this same set of authors that I have read and just like the first one – ‘India Since Independence’ – this book also stands as a glaring testimony to the author’s/authors’ parochial attitude towards Congress.

While I am not one of those growing majority who take special pleasure in bashing Gandhi, Nehru and innumerable Congressmen who had given their all for the freedom struggle, what I cannot accept is projecting Congress as the one and only organization that brought freedom to the country. Never!

It is really a good work by the authors. Documenting the history of the freedom struggle of our country spanning a period of almost a century is no easy task. The authors deserve appreciation for even taking up such a big task. But what is not good about the book is the way in which the history is presented.

The efforts of anyone other than Congress is puffed away as puny or not paid as much attention as it deserves. Bhagat Singh, Bismil, Azad and other such daredevil youngsters have all got tagged as ‘terrorists’. Truth it might be, for their having taken up the violent methods to attain freedom, but something is not right about the way in which he belittles the efforts of even people like Bose. To prove my point, the entire episode of INA is given only one page with the overall part of Subhas Chandra Bose being reduced to just another also-ran!

The book should be renamed as ‘Congress’s Struggle for Independence’, because that is all you will ever read in this book. The author’s having a special liking to Nehru is quite apparent from his way of writing.

I would suggest that one can go for much better books than this, if one wants to read about the struggle for Indian independence in an unbiased manner.

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