I am almost half-way through an excellent book by US historian David McCulough called “
1776”. As the title of the book signifies – it deals with the events leading to and during the year of American independence. Unlike many Indian historians and definitely unlike the NCERT history books – David writes in a conversational style mixing in historical evidence with his own poignant comments.
I cannot but help contrast that year with the year “1857” and how we Indians tend to sell short the significant heroes and events during our own history. Of course – the mutiny of “1857” was not a patch on the American revolutionary war and obviously did not achieve anything even close to what the revolutionary war achieved for the Americans – yet it did produce some very real legendary Indian heroes like Mangal Pandey, Tantya Tope and Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi. Still, some of our own commentators fail to see the significance of that event. For example, Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar in
this article on 21st August in Times of India declares Mangal Pandey to be a mercenary.
Of course – what we lacked at that time was not the gun power but the power of the ideas. There were no leaders like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson or Benjamin Franklin in India who could give us an ideological footing defining us as a nation or give us reasons to fight against the British. Every king, every fief, every nawab was fighting to maintain his own harem and his own decadent life style. If we had someone like Chanakya at the time to give us an ideological foundation then perhaps the story of our country could have been different.