The fire of patriotism ignited by armed revolution helped the Congress-run freedom movement succeed but these efforts were unfortunately not given due recognition in history books, Union Home Minister Amit Shah said on Wednesday.
Shah was speaking at the launch of "Revolutionaries: The other story of how India won its freedom", a book by Sanjeev Sanyal, a member of the Economy Advisory Council to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. "There are people like me who believe that it was because of the fire of patriotism ignited by the armed revolution that helped the Congress-run freedom movement succeed. I believe this and I can even prove this, that if it weren't for the parallel stream of the armed movement it would have taken a few more decades to attain independence," he said.
"It is unfortunate that these efforts, these contributions of the armed revolution have not been given due credit by historians," he added. The book tells the stories of freedom fighters like Bhagat Singh, Chandra Shekhar Azad, V D Savarkar, Aurobindo Ghosh, Rashbehari Bose, Bagha Jatin, Sachindra Nath Sanyal and Subhas Chandra Bose in a collective manner.
Talking about the freedom struggle, Shah said India's independence was the result of efforts put in by a wide number of individuals and organisations. "If we analyse India's freedom movement, we see a great number of people, a great number of ideologies and organisations were putting in efforts to reach the same destination. It is the result of their collective efforts," the senior BJP leader said.
However, he added, only one type of narrative of nonviolent movement has been "forced through education, history and legends". "I do not say that non-violent movement had no contribution in India's freedom, or it is not a part of the history. The non-violent movement played a great part, it had major contribution to independence. But it is not correct to say that nobody else had any contribution," Shah said.
He blamed those "who were responsible to tell the history from India's perspective" for having made mistakes. "Those who were responsible to tell the story of India's freedom struggle from an Indian perspective, I believe they made some mistakes. The British went away but they left behind 'angrejiyat'. And the history was written through those glasses of 'angrejiyat', which ultimately created this entire confusion," Shah said. He also called upon the younger generation, academicians and historians to "read history more closely and take its true message to the next generations".
