August 15 was celebrated with lots of fervour and enthusiasm, as it should be. The general festive feel made me think though. Yes, there is an illustrious list of leaders who were in the forefront of the freedom struggle. Amongst these, each one of us has a favourite or two, too.
As for me, for example, Lokmanya Tilak and Bhagat Singh matter the most. In my opinion, both of them were revolutionary thinkers and conscientious activists who tried to give the movement a philosophical gravitas.
How about the footsoldiers though? Did you know about Kushal Konwar, for example? People who are busy with cheap politicking and empty rhetoric regarding the Northeast should read about him, I feel, and do think so very strongly at that.
At least, he was a scion of a royal family. How about the very many nameless unsung heroes who passionately and in a feat of idealism joined the Quit India movement, leaving midway their educational pursuits, their government jobs?Who remembers them now, lost as we are to orgies of various types of self(ish)-indulgences?
Have you read "Kanthapura" by Raja Rao? Teaching it to post-graduate students was a revelation. The novel is a fictional story of an idealist, oh, yes, a Bramhin (though currently this is a dirty curse word, the whipping boy/girl of every ideologue) youth, Moorthy.
Moorthy uses the freedom struggle to clean up all the cobwebs, be it casteist, economic, gender-related, from his small town. Very intelligently and passionately, he uses mythical references to convince and cleanse all the groups and generations in his hometown.
My submission today is that there were thousands of such, and not fictional, but real Moorthy's across the breadth and width of India. Who remembers them at all?What happened to them? Very few would get any government pension. Most would be highly honourable, and might reject it, too, as they would not accept monetary compensation for doing their duty to the motherland!
Yes, we need to revive (and thus re-live) their great but unsung trajectories. Now they are a lost generation truly, in every sense of the term. If a small lamp is lit in some form or the other in their memory, it would illumine our lives!
Pratima@ A team effort must respect every participant.
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