THE People's Publishing House decided to publish a Memo-rial Volume on the 1857 uprising as its contribution to the centenary celebration. Despite a very broad agreement about the national character of this century-old uprising among our patriotic intellectuals, it remains, unfortunately enough, one of the unresolved controversies of Indian history. This volume, therefore, is in the nature of a symposium and the views of each contributor are his own.
Talmiz Khaldun is an old research worker who has worked on the subject in the National Archives. Dr. K. Μ. Ashraf of the Delhi University has described the outlook and contribution of the Wahabis who were an organised influential group and represented the viewpoint of the older feudal intelligentsia. Benoy Ghose has outlined the back-ground to the critical negative attitude of the Bengali intelligentsia, which represented the then new intelligentsia endowed with modern education. I have tried to deal with the controversies with which the 1857 uprising is shrouded. I am not a professional historian and had to resort to the old-fashioned method of speaking through lengthy quotations. If I annoy the modern stylist, my only defence is that I am supplying the younger readers with documentation from older books, etc., which are not easily available to them.
The 1857 heritage played a big part in giving a patriotic orientation to Indian national literature in our various languages. It has supplied the Indian writers with dramatic incidents of suffering, struggle and sacrifice and noble patriotic themes. In the literary section, Professor P. C. Gupta of the Allahabad University has dealt with the im-pact of 1857 on the Hindi literature, and Professor Ehtesham Husain of the Lucknow University on the Urdu literature. Dr. K. M. Ashraf has contributed a paper on Ghalib. Gopal Haldar, Bengali literary critic and author, has dealt with contemporary Bengali literature.
We express our heartfelt gratitude to the foreign scholars who have contributed valuable papers on the im-pact of 1857 in their own countries. Of special mention in this regard is James Bryne, the author of the paper on British reactions, whose sudden death has deprived us all of a keen, sympathetic and intelligent student of our history. These papers, results of painstaking research, reveal that in all these foreign lands the 1857 uprising was hailed as a national uprising of the Indian people for liberation from the British yoke and stirred feelings of solidarity in the democratic circles. We hope these foreign papers will help to write a hitherto unknown chapter in India's national history.
We thank our contributors who have made the publication of this Memorial Volume possible. Many other friends have contributed plenty of their labour of love before this volume could be got ready for the press. Our thanks to them all.
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