BHUBANESWAR: A lot has been written on the non-violent history of India’s freedom struggle. The time has come to write about a definitive violent history on the freedom movement, said historian and award-winning author Hindol Sengupta on the concluding day of the Odisha Literary Festival, on Sunday.
Speaking on ‘The Art of Biography: Knowing the Limits’, he said there are many heroes in the freedom movement who have been left out. Sri Aurobindo was a strange combination of both violent and non-violent freedom struggle.
The author of ‘The Man Who Saved India’ and ‘Being Hindu’ said, it is rubbish that the British left India due to the salt movement by Mahatma Gandhi.
“These are lies we have been told in the name of history. The British were fatally weakened after the Second World War and realised that they cannot even keep their ships along Bombay coast. They in fact, preponed their exit and ran away,” he said.
Though Sengupta did not entirely discount the power of Gandhiji’s message or what the Congress party had done at that time, he simultaneously said the historians could have been more realistic and written about the realpolitik behind it.
Sengupta said people would be more interested to know the history of King Marthanda Varma, who beat Dutch East India Company in the battle of Colachel which is the first-ever Asiatic principality to bring down a great European power. But Indians are not taught that history. “How will India have a grand strategy when it has no proper history of it?” he asked.
What happens in India is that either people write hagiographies or they are so irrationally particular that they end up doing character assassination. Getting a complete and holistic view of characters should be central while writing biographies, he said.
The session was moderated by consulting editor of The Sunday Standard, Ravi Shankar Etteth.