Freedom Movement In India 1857-1947

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The pages of the book offer for the first time a brief but critical account of our Freedom Movement as it emerged and progressed from 1857 onwards to the fulfillment of its desired goal the achievement of our independence. While discussing the episodes of the Movement chronologically, an attempt has been made to discover the subtle current of continuity flowing under them.

Based on contemporary sources as well as on current works available on the subject, the revised edition of the book with an Introduction highlighting the genesis of the Movement and a Post-script focusing on the inevitability of the Partition will be extremely useful again not only for students of Indian history at the Senior Secondary and University levels but also for a non-specialist audience interested in the subject.

Suresh Chandra Ghosh held the Chair of History at the Zakir Husain Centre for Educational Studies at JNU, New Delhi, till his retirement in August 2002 Author of 15 monographs including two published at Leiden and Frankfurt and of 15 research papers mostly published abroad, he was until recently a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of Paedagogica Historica, edited at the University of Gent, Belgium. While at JNU, he visited a number of universities and institutes abroad and spent a year between 2000-2001 as a Guest Professor at the Friedrich Schiller Universitat, Jena, known for its association with Goethe, Schiller, Hegel and Karl Marx.

The book was first published in 1991 by Amold India. Immediately after its publication, I began to receive letters from its readers via my publisher from places as far as Chennai, Mumbai, Kolkata and Bangalore appreciating the work. This is possibly because of the treatment of the subject which I have analysed chronologically, episode by episode, briefly but substantially, in terms of cause and effect relationship, for a clear understanding of the progress in the movement for our freedom.

The book was sold out within two years after its publication. A second reprint could not be brought out as the publisher, for reasons not known to me, closed its business in India. And as I was too busy first with my research on history of education and then with my visit to Friedrich Schiller Univesitat, Jena, Germany, where I lectured on the emergence of our education system from our religious scriptures in ancient India, followed by its publication by Peter Lang at Frankfurt in 2002, the idea of bringing out a second edition did not occur to me. It is only after my retirement in August 2002 that I began to think of it. However, a request for a contribution to NCERT's Encyclopedia of Indian Education followed by another from Routledge to its International Encyclopedia of Education as well as my preoccupation with bringing out the third edition of my book on history of education in modern India by Orient Black Swan, delayed it further. I am now grateful to Mr. Pradeep Mittal of Originals,New Delhi, for his offer to bring out its second edition just at a time when the Indian National Congress is celebrating the 125 years of its existence.

We have started our account of the Freedom Movement with the year 1857, when groups of people consisting of princes and feudal lords whose interests were affected badly by the rule of the East Company joined the Sepoys who had risen against it. The young and the Western educated Indians of the metropolitan cities who had benefited from the rule of the Company, had now opportunities for employment in the lower levels of the Company's administration as well as in other European establishments that were then coming into existence to meet the increasing needs and requirements of a growing European communities, kept themselves aloof from the nightmarish incident. Paradoxically enough, it is these young Western educated Indians who later provided the leadership of the movement and carried it to its fulfillment after years of toils and turmoils, sorrows and sufferings in 1947.

These young men were the products of the Western education, ideas and values which accompanied the introduction of English education in the country by Bentinck in March 1835 and true to the observation of Macaulay who counselled Bentinck on the subject in February 1835, became "a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals and intellect" and served as the interpreters between the rulers and the ruled. However, Bentinck who was imbued with the utilitarian philosophy of Bentham and Mill and was driven by an urge to strip the Indian society of its evils and vices such as sati, infanticide and child-marriage as well as to modernise it, was also conscious same time, as revealed in one of his letters written to Mancy on 1 June 1834,of the subtle danger and risk inherent in the spread of Western education and ideas among a community of people long used to live as "Zimmis" or as protected subjects on payment of a poll tax called Jizya, for centuries under the rule of Islam which began in 1206. He wrote: "I cannot regard the advantage of ignorance to the governors or the governed. If our rule is bad, as I believe it to be, let the natives have the means through knowledge. to represent their grievances and to obtain redress." These means. Bentinck thought, could only be acquired by a spread of Western education and ideas, knowledge and science and to that end, he began working immediately after coming to India as Governor- General in 1828. His first step was to gradually introduce the use of the English language replacing Persian in all governmental works.

However as far as the "natives" were concerned, they could have the means to dispel their "ignorance" and to obtain "redress" for their grievances only when they were able to educate themselves in institutions offering English education. By 1834 the missionaries had opened schools in the metropolitan cities of the country and among them Alexander Duff's General Assembly Institution at Calcutta. now known as the Scottish Church College, was remarkable in offering a course on English education to the higher classes of the contemporary society. The Indians in collaboration with the benevolent watch-maker David Hare had earlier set up the Hindu School in 1817. which had by now become the Hindu College. By the time Bentinck wrote this letter to Mancy, English classes were already attached to the government supported Calcutta Madrasah. Delhi College, Agra College under pressure from Home and now they were attached to the Benares Sanskrit College as a mark of respect for Bentinck's wishes.