WE are all set
to celebrate the 74th INDEPENDENCE DAY of the Nation ~ the great day
of 15th August when BHARAT was liberated from foreign rule. .. .. often
described in a terse statement, India achieved freedom ‘without battle or
shedding blood’ – Indian freedom struggle was far different perhaps – thousands
sacrificed and more number underwent innumerable difficulties for that magic
freedom, which we happily enjoy .. .. .. and, Indian History does not have much
written about those great martyrs.
On 15 August
1947, the first Prime minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, raised the Indian
national flag above the Lahori Gate and spoke those immortal words – ‘Long
years ago... we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall
redeem our pledge’. Every year on
India's Independence Day, the prime minister hoists the Indian "tricolour
flag" at the fort's main gate and delivers a nationally broadcast speech
from its ramparts. .. .. Can you name
the Ministers who took oath on that all important day ?
Red Fort
[Lal Qila] has Lahori Gate and Delhi
Gate. Images of the fort have featured prominently on postage stamps. It is
associated with history. The vandalism carried out in 1857 after the
suppression of the rebellion makes it a site remembered for national
resistance. In Nov 1945, the Red Fort was selected as the venue for
the court martial of Shah Nawaz Khan, Prem Sahgal and Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon.
These were three token individuals, selected from the many thousands of Indian
officers and troops who had joined the Indian National
Army and fought against the British during the Second World War. But
in our History books, we did not read of Indian freedom struggle but more of
mercy of Cawning, kindness of Atlee, administrative skills of Dalhouse,
coronation of King George, Delhi Durbar and more .. .. not on INA and other
freedom fighters.
Before we read further, here is an extract from a book – which should have been our Text book .. .. It was not a pleasure trip nor an official trip as Congress leaders enjoyed during the freedom struggle. It was banishment to the dark world of Andamans – the feared Cellular jails. On 11th Dec 1909, an youngman was exiled and remained for dozen years. ‘Yet the changes outside are not so remarkable when compared to the change in my memory. This faculty seems to have fallen into a moribund condition and can only groan at its best. When we reached the jetty there was yet some time for daybreak. The Superintendent, Emerson, was there standing with his bike. Mounted policemen could be seen in every direction. We got on board the Maharaja, the ferry boat that was to carry us across the Black Waters. We were shoved in within a hold in the lower deck. A long chain was fixed on to the planking of that room and handcuffs were attached to it at the interval of a yard or so. All the seven had been handcuffed”.
Before Collector Ash was
assassinated by Veera Vanchinathan – there was this murder of a British officer
in Indian civil service - Arthur Mason Tippetts Jackson, Magistrate of Nasik, assassinated by a young
17 year old student. Anant Laxman
Kanhere, student of Aurangabad, shot Jackson on 21 Dec 1909 at a theater where
a drama was tobe staged in his honour on the eve of his transfer. The lesser known of the Savarkars – Mr Ganesh
Savarkar elder brother of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar was implicated and sent to trial.
In the dark hours of April 29,
1912, an alarm went up on the ‘yard three’ wing of the Cellular Jail in Port
Blair. Warden Gulmir, stationed at the jail’s central tower, rushed to the wing
and shined a hurricane lamp through the iron-barred door of cell 82. He found
the bed empty. The prisoner, a young Bengali revolutionary called Indu Bhushan
Roy, who had completed two years of his ten years’ rigorous imprisonment, was
dead. His body hung from the window, a strand of torn kurta wound around his
neck. The newspapers wrote :
Kalapani had claimed one more tortured
soul. It was to this place Barinder
ghosh was heading for .. ..
In 1907, Barin Ghosh arranged
to send Hem Chandra Kanungo, one of his associates, to Paris to learn the art
of bomb-making from Nicholas Safranski, a Russian revolutionary in exile in the
French Capital. Returning to Bengal, Hem began working with Barin Ghosh again.
With Fraser alerted, a new target was selected in Douglas Kingsford. Kingsford
was the Chief Magistrate of the Presidency court of Alipore, and had overseen
the trials of Bhupendranath Dutta and other editors of Jugantar, sentencing
them to rigorous imprisonment. The
defiance of Jugantar saw it face five more prosecutions that left it in
financial ruins by 1908. Kingsford also earned notoriety among
nationalists when he ordered the whipping of a young Bengali boy by the name of
Sushil Sen for participating in the protests that followed the Jugantar trial.
The first attempt to kill Kingsford was in the form of a book bomb that Hem
constructed. An empty tin of Cadbury's cocoa was packed with a pound of picric
acid and three detonators. This was packed into a hollowed section of Herbert
Broom's Commentaries on the Common Law and delivered wrapped in brown paper to
Kingsford's house by a young revolutionary named Paresh Mallick.
Emperor vs
Aurobindo Ghosh and others, colloquially referred to as the Alipore Bomb Case, the Muraripukur
conspiracy, was a criminal case of 1908. The case saw the trial of a number of
Indian nationalists of the Anushilan Samiti in Calcutta, under charges of
"Waging war against the Government" of the British Raj. The trial was
held at Alipore Sessions Court, Calcutta, between May 1908 and May 1909. The
trial followed in the wake of the attempt on the life of Presidency Magistrate
Douglas Kingsford in Muzaffarpur by Bengali nationalists Khudiram Bose and
Prafulla Chaki in April 1908, which was recognised by the Bengal police as
linked to attacks against the Raj in the preceding years, including attempts to
derail the train carrying Lieutenant-Governor Sir Andrew Fraser in December
1907.
Among the famous
accused were Aurobindo Ghosh, his brother Barinder Ghosh as well as 38 other Bengali nationalists of the Anushilan
Samiti. Most of the accused were arrested from Barin Ghosh's Garden house in 36
Murarirupukur Road, in the Manicktolla suburb of Calcutta. They were held in
the Presidency Jail in Alipore before the trial, where Narendranath Goswami,
approver and crown-witness, was shot dead by two fellow accused Kanailal Dutta
and Satyendranath Bose within the jail premises. Goswami's murder led to collapse
of the case against Aurobindo.
Barin was to
undergo rigorous imprisonment in Cellular Jail at Andaman from 1909 – later was
released during a general amnesty in 1920.
Upon returning he dallied with journalism for sometime and later started
an ashram in Kolkata. He published his
memoirs "The tale of my exile - twelve years in Andamans" In 1923, he left for Pondicherry where his
elder brother Aurobindo Ghosh had formed the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. In 1933 he started an English weekly, The Dawn
of India. He was associated with the newspaper The Statesman, and in 1950, he
became the editor of the Bengali daily Dainik Basumati. He died on 18 April 1959 – there are so many unsung heroes whose sacrifices got us freedom.
On this
great day 15th Aug 1947, India got freedom at midnight. Jawaharlal Nehru took
charge as the first Prime Minister of India and chose 15 other members for his
cabinet. Lord Mountbatten, and later C. Rajagopalachari, served as
Governor-General until 26 January 1950, when Rajendra Prasad was elected as the
first President of India. The Prime
Minister held additional portfolios of External Affairs, Scientific Research; Sardar
Vallabhbhai Patel - Minister of Home Affairs and States; R. K. Shanmukham
Chetty- Finance; B R. Ambedkar – Law; Baldev Singh- Defence; John Mathai – Railways and Transport ; Abul
Kalam Azad – Education; Rajendra Prasad – Agriculture; Syama Prasad Mukherjee - Industries and
Supplies; Jagjivan Ram – Labour; Cooverji Hormusji Bhabha – Commerce; Rafi
Ahmed Kidwai – Communications; Amrit Kaur – Health; Narhar Vishnu Gadgil – Power; KC Neogy –
Relief and Rehabilitation & N Gopalaswami Ayyangar.
On this
historic day, we look back with pride India’s achievements in the 7 decades
after Independence and remember those martyrs whose blood and sacrifices
ensured our breathing fresh and free air.
Jai Hind ~ Nation is greater than anything else.
With regards – S.
Sampathkumar
15.8.2020.
நம் தியாகிகளின் எண்ணற்ற செயல்பாடுகள் மனதை வருத்துகிறது.அதைவிட நாம் பாட நூல்களில் அவர்கள் தியாகங்கள் தவிர்க்கபட்டது மிக கொடுமை.Jai hindh..
ReplyDeleteOn this historic day, we look back with pride India’s achievements in the 7 decades after Independence and remember those martyrs whose blood and sacrifices ensured our breathing fresh and free air.....NICE