Dateline Independence Excerpts

8/7/2019 Dateline Independence Excerpts

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Dateline Independence- an Indian MemoirbyIndu Saraiya

My generation which grew up in the 1930s,40s,and 50s, saw and lived through history

being made. My own mother, and our lady neighbour joined Gandhijis legion of Desh-Sevikas until one day they were arrested and imprisoned by the Raj for picketing British

goods at the Mangaldas Market in Bombay. They sepnt nearly five months in jail, first in the

Arthur Road Prison, and later in the Yeravada Jail, Poona, until a general amnesty was

declared.

I was yet a child of four when this happened, and my brother was a youngster of fourteen.

Mothers unexpected arrest shook everybody. Today, many many years later, and after 63years of Independence, when I think back on those stirring, historic times, I am dismayed to

find revisionist historians like Swagato Ganguly who wrote The God that Failed (2005) and

leaders like Jaswant Singh who wrote Jinnah India-Partion-Independence (2009) all too

ready to consign Gandhiji, Nehru, Patel, Jinnah and other stalwarts to the boon-docks. Theselatter-day writers will never know how these leaders agonised over the smallest decision they

made, knowing it would make or mar the future of millions of our countrymen.

The commitment, and voluntary sacrifices made by the Desh-Sevikas often women

comfortably ensconced in well-to-do homes has spurred me to write this book. However,

History by itself, I felt, would not a good book make, which is why I invented new

characters, reinvented some already known to me, and interwove their ongoing stories with

Indias ongoing historical landmarks. So my brother became Gurav Bhimani, I his younger

sister Chitra, our neighbours daughter became Geeta Raichand, and so on.

To make sense of what was going on, young Gaurav and Geeta, neighbours and bosom

friends, decide to write down in diary form the landmark happenings they were themselveswitnessing in the 1930s,40s,and 50s the call for Swaraj, Muslim separatism and Partition,

Boses INA and his quixotic life, the Cripps and Cabinet Missions, Mountbattens cavalier

decisions, Independence Day, and so on. Their researches take them back and forth in time

to South Africas Boer War of 1899-1902; to Curzons Partiton of Bengal in 1905 along

communal lines; to the Khilafat Movement from 1919 to 1923; to the Dandi Salt March in

1930, and so on.

But while Geetas and Gauravs diary spans roughly 16 years from 1932 to 1948 in

historical time, their own ongoing lives in real time, grow evolve and change in different

ways. The characters acquire husbands, wives, suitors, friends and new relatives- with the

result that their own larger sphere of life contains within it their diarised milestones of Indiasfreedom struggle.

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As e-bookhttp://pothi.com/pothi/book/ebook-indu-saraiya-dateline-independence-indian-

memoir-0

by courier:

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