Authors typically write books grounded on impeccable research or an enviable command over the language. P Sainath is among the rarest authors whose written word is steeped in lived experience. A journalist by nature more than a profession, he conducts first-hand interviews in places city folk would deem inaccessible. To all his writing, he brings the perspicuity of an economist, who studies the ultimate fallout of policies in the lived lives of the marginalised.
In a way, The Last Heroes: Foot Soldiers of Indian Freedom also measures the flow of credit as it traverses and gets absorbed in the terrain of governmental bureaucracy’s many offshoots. As Sainath’s writings have elucidated in the past, government policies do not always reach the intended beneficiaries. And in much the same way, social respect owed to the heroes of the freedom movement has not always reached the deserving.
This book goes beyond the few leaders or martyrs we revere, and attempts to situate 16 stellar heroes within the discourse of the fight for independence.
Imagine the social structures way back in 1930 and the utter deprivation in the remote villages, including that of Saliha in Nuapada, Odisha. On discovering that a group of British policemen were firing upon the politically active villagers and had injured her father, 16-year-old Demati Dei Salihan charged at the police, armed with nothing more than a lathi she used to herd sheep.
She led a group of over 40 women who chased the hapless policemen out of the village, where today a memorial pillar stands to honour those who contributed to the freedom struggle. Demati’s name isn’t there, nor is her father, Kartik Sabar’s. Sabars are tribals who worshipped the god Neel Madhav at a sacred temple in Puri, which we now know as the temple of Lord Jagannath, which they claim was misappropriated by non-tribals. Even today, Odisha’s tribals are poor, with low social capital.
Women of Demati’s time didn’t warrant a second thought. It is so easy to forget or bury stories like hers. Except that some part of our freedom today we owe to her and others have written about in the book–– Laxmi Panda, a foot soldier in the INA; Mallu Swarajyam, an expert rifle shooter; writer Harohalli Srinivasaiah Doreswamy––who made the country inhospitable for the British by lighting
a million revolutions.
The heroic stories in the collection are significant and retold with the deft touch of a seasoned storyteller. It makes a difference that the author has met the protagonists, and thus adds personal notes to his re-creation of the tale. These lives are gems that history chooses to forget. The book helps make us aware of how the silence around their contributions and the misappropriation of credit is a grievous wrong that only our reading and memories may recalibrate.