Breaking the monologue

At a political juncture that'll go down in history as a phase when the discipline of history was under siege, 'India's Freedom Saga of Revolts and Reforms' by Deba Prasad Ray is the defence history needs against vicious attempts on its rewriting. In an elaborate rundown of India's modern history, the author makes serious interventions to the facts with close context. A seasoned politician, Ray, manages the rare feat of decluttering history yet discerning it with passion. With his heart at the right place and mind on a committed path, Ray's book is neither a history textbook nor an ideologue's cherry-picking of facts to manufacture propaganda. Rather in a critical exploration of India's history, he argues for keeping the pluralism of India alive and quotes history in a linear manner to emphasise its need and its depressing predicament when in jeopardy.

A Gandhian in letter and spirit, in an India where Godse is increasingly beginning to find his closeted supporters in the open, Ray reiterates Gandhi's idea of nationalism throughout. From the advent of Buddhism in India to fractures in organised Hinduism in the early days to the lines of secularism visible in important official appointments in the courts of Akbar and Shivaji, Ray puts emphasis on how India's unity in diversity is broader than the teachings of Nehru, Gandhi and Patel, and is the cause for its success in harmonious existence for centuries. All this corroborated by serious research, strong insights, and an experienced spectacle, makes the book enriching for all age groups.

Ray has very smartly pulled in the recent events in history, usually the subject matter of opinion editorials, in his book. Lucidly, he's put forth everything that influences the current political crises, from Ayodhya to the evolution and further hijacking of Dalit politics in India. A staunch Congressman, he problematises the question of secularism and very eloquently explicates upon the cause and consequence of it, in recorded history. Where he fails, in fact, is in creating room for dialogue with the modern reader and redefining concepts for them keeping the historical actuality of it aside. In a changing India, a cause under attack can't defend itself with just elaborate reminders of its ethos. What it needs instead, is an accessible retelling of it in the changed idiom of an increasingly polarised world. Somewhere between Bipan Chandra's wonderfully lucid presentation and Romilla Thapar's academic brilliance, Ray's India's Freedom Saga of Revolts and Reforms is the book you must pick to cover lacunas present in the current Centrist dialogue, in the truest sense of the term.

Views expressed are personal