This book was planned because Indian children only learn T about our freedom movement through the matter-of-fact pages of school textbooks. Somehow all the excitement and drama of the events is lost among the baldly stated facts and boring clauses of acts of parliament. Children just read about the freedom movement to give exams; the significance of the events are lost to them.
So this book tries to tell it like a story of one of the most unusual freedom movements in the world, one that chose the path of non-violence instead of an armed struggle. And it tries to capture the drama and sweep of those extraordinary years and its cast of charismatic characters.
I could not have written a word without the works of our greatest historians, who have written about the freedom movement with such empathy and meticulous fairness. Among them, the two I value the most are Bipan Chandra and B.R. Nanda. All I know I have learnt from their readable and accessible books that bring it all live again. However, if there are any mistakes in this book they are entirely mine.
Finally I would like to thank my editor and friend Vatsala Kaul, who made me take this journey and stubbornly made sure I did not lose my way. When you get an editor who understands and cares, the book just gets better.
The story of our fight for independence from British rule spans ninety years of struggle and it really begins in the middle of the nineteenth century. To understand how it all began we'll have to do some time travelling and go back to the years just before the Great Uprising of 1857.
One hundred and fifty years ago India was a very different land and a very different society. From the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries the Mughal Empire had united most of the Indian subcontinent under great rulers like Akbar and Shahjahan, but for over a century the Mughal kings had been incompetent and weak men. Their empire had shrunk to just the area around the city of Delhi. As they said sadly on the streets of Chandni Chowk, 'The kingdom of Shah Alam is from Dilli to Palam.' In 1850 the Mughal king living in the Red Fort was Bahadur Shah II. He was still politely referred to as the Shahenshah, but he was just a powerless old man, doddering about the palaces, moodily composing Urdu poetry and living off a pension from the East India Company.
As the Mughal Empire disintegrated, new powers rose in different regions to take its place. Some, like the Marathas and Sikhs, had been at war with Delhi for centuries. Others like the nawabs of Bengal, Hyderabad and Awadh, who had earlier been serving the Mughal emperors as governors, broke free and became independent rulers. The country became fragmented into many kingdoms that were constantly at war with each other. There was no peace, no rule of law, no economic prosperity, and all that the people could do was suffer in silence.
In the eighteenth century a new group of players joined this messy game of power-grabbing and they came from faraway Europe. In medieval times most of the sea trade from India used to be in the hands of Arabs. Then in 1498 the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama discovered a sea route to India from Europe, and the highly profitable trade in spices and textiles brought the Portuguese to Indian shores. The other European nations-the English, French and Dutch-followed soon after. They came begging to the court of the Great Mughal and were magnanimously allowed to trade within the Empire. The European companies began by setting up trading posts near the ports, but by the eighteenth century they had armies of their own and began taking sides in the battles between Indian kingdoms.
The East India Company was formed in England in the sixteenth century during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, and the Company was given permission to trade in India by Emperor Jahangir. By the eighteenth century it was being led by shrewd, ambitious men like Robert Clive and the Marquis of Wellesley, who were less interested in trade and more in building an English colony. After all, a colony would be much more profitable than just trade, and they played the imperial game with maximum ruthlessness. By the early years of the nineteenth century, the English had conquered a large part of India and built the biggest colony of the British Empire.
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