Introduction

“The palest ink is clearer than the fondest memory.”

Famous Saying

I’m reading India’s Struggle for Independence by Bipin Chandra and others. History, it’s said, repeats itself, and therefore oftentimes the key to understanding the future hangs in the past.

Reading without note-taking can be better summed up as half-hearted study, a kind of mental laziness. If you’re not able to write it down, it hints that you haven’t grasped it in the first place.

So I have committed myself to revise in writing what I have read. And instead of keeping these notes to myself, I’m putting them up here so that I can reference them later on.

Well, reading this book is broadening my understanding of politics, socioeconomics and how things work overall. I have understood better how governments manipulate public to attain its dastard motives.

I also read how vital role the press plays in shaping the dynamics of a nation, and how important is it to have it free. In the freedom movement of India, the press mobilised people and galvanised massive support. The masses got aware of the tyranny they had been reeling under; they were brought face to face about the brutal truth that the government was exploiting them – that the rulers weren’t benevolent as portrayed by them.

Once the lid blew off the corrupt tactics of the government, people's blood rushed to their heads. They got overfilled with anger and disgust for the ruling government and placed massive impediments in its smooth functioning.

Any government, it’s said, is safe until it’s able to have people convinced that it indeed is working for their upliftment. If it’s not honest in its actions, and the veil of benevolence is lifted off from its face, people’s flood of anger gets impossible (or nearly impossible) to curb.

History is witnessed to a cluster of events when these very common people have overthrown mighty kingdoms. This is the power of the common people, who fortunately are far too many.

The same thing unrolled when the wrongdoings of the British government were made public.

It wasn’t an easy task to do. Economists and leaders of that time scrutinised in minute detail the economic and sociologic conditions prevailing in the nation, and their thorough analysis revealed a bunch of discriminatory rules that were responsible for the poverty and terrible living conditions of the natives.

Great thinkers of that time didn’t base their analysis on shallow sentiments or on achieving short-term goals. They had a vision for the independence and for a healthy economy of the nation.

Their analysis was rooted in rigorously scientific and mathematically accurate data. The clever British had contrived the system so that decoding it to unearth the evil couldn’t have done if the leaders of the time had been inspired by shallow emotions or by the sense of wounded pride.

Emotions are good, but if you go ahead and base your top to bottom strategy keeping them in view, you might not afford to go that far.