Most people who were not familiar with the facts of history, accept the officially approved version handed out in mainstream media, with little thought of asking if it were true, much less challenging anything so given to masses.
That is where the value of someone like Shourie - in as much as he questions the official or current fashionable versions, and brings up facts and quotes with extensive research into the history, and brings alive the reality forgotten by those that did not suffer the consequences, or did not have anyone they care about go through any. And those that did not thus suffer have little reason not to forget the reality of the times of an independence struggle of epic proportions - it is far more profitable to get on with an education that tells one the powers that were ruling were all good, since today it is as profitable to get along with the former masters (and their cousins across the pond) as it was in the times Shourie is writing about in this work.
The dead of the Irish "famine" are as forgotten by the rest of the world as the dead of the "famine" in India during British rule, and the fact that neither were famines is conveniently swept under the rug, even when the empire is broken into shards and splinters, with the erstwhile rulers taking care they did not leave any piece of the erstwhile empire without ensuring it will be shackled forever, by various splinters hurting other shards of the same piece.
What does live on is the various speeches and dialogues, especially the documented and witnessed ones; and while some have been hidden under the pretext of official secrecy, others have been out there for all to read and comprehend, with convenient avoidance of taking notice thereof by the official versions. That Ambedkar was involved with the committee that formalised a constitution for the nation of India is escalated into a stature of his being the sole sculptor thereof, while the surrounding factors of reality are forgotten. Which is ok until the idol thus made takes over - due to interests of the now would be kings - and others, the great personalities that did commit sacrifices for the nation, are either pushed aside or subjected to mud slinging in the interest of the now would be kings or any other political shortcuts, and it all turns to falsehood of the grossest sort. Not just one of a misunderstanding, not a lack of comprehension due to an inability such as Churchill's in regard to Gandhi, but far worse, that of an inversion of reality.
And so an exposé like this is needed to debunk a myth, built around a man who not only protested vigorously against any possibility of independence of his country, much as an English landlord in protestant north Ireland would (calling himself Irish so he is not told to leave but claiming he needs protection against his own countrymen by the occupying nation) but far worse - he went to any length to secure the approval of the masters, and couldn't care less if well over a million of his countrymen starved to death, in the artificial famine created by rulers who simply took the food for their own, and let the poor of the ruled nation die and called it a famine. Stalin too did the same to Ukraine (taking the harvest and sending people to Siberia or getting rid of them in other ways so the food was free for the rest and it got counted as an economic miracle for his regimé), just another example of the horrible, great crimes against humanity committed by callous or worse rulers; and today Russia no longer keeps Ukraine, pretty much as the British - and various other European nations - lost their empires in various parts of the world.
So while reading this one is reminded that the British rule in India was not only fair and just, but in fact it was the very opposite just as often, and in horrendous ways, what with the repression of the independence movement with hundreds of thousands of people that suffered injuries or death at the hands of the forces of law, when court decisions were flouted with regular routine ordinances, and people were shot or beaten for instilling a terror for no fault of the ones that were thus treated.
That the subject of this book did not care to protest against any of this and wanted to keep the subjugation and in fact went to any length to please them so his own position was somehow was secure, and that for him was the whole and sole criteria of upliftment of his people, is one of the points Shourie makes with documents that are not only not hidden all these years but sold at a discount with the governement publishing (the taxpayer bearing the burden) and all this while Gandhi fasted on and off every time the British repression of India went beyond cruelty.
The machiavellian rulers pretended to be disinterested bearers of an obligation to protect - while in reality the nation was exploited in huge, humongous terms; and the conferences for discussion of independence - much publicised - were an out and out fraud. And while the rulers could count on people like Ambedkar and Jinnah whose primary interests were in their own exaltation and any completely atrocious demands made only to twist the elbows of everyone else (the latter died heartbroken, when much to his surprise he got his demand of a separate nation granted, since in reality he had not anticipated such an event, and had in all probability expected to be the next mogul emperor) - the rulers had little to fear from a nation of three hundred million people who did not want them around. The me-first people such as those who were consequently very easily manipulated were the easy tools of the rulers in keeping a facade of a fair and just execution of a noble obligation, while in reality it was little of the sort most times or fundamentally.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
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