Freedom's Child

Chandralekha Mehta

Description

Freedom was then a far vision, and no one really expected to see a free India in his or her lifetime. The hundreds and thousands of men, women and teenagers, whose stamina and sacrifices led to our independence, were the real heroes of the Non cooperation movement. For people like them, Anand Bhawan was a symbol of the struggle.' Writing about her growing up years, author Chandralekha Mehta, Pandit Nehru's niece, gives us a peek into the momentous years of the freedom struggle. This was the age of Satyagraha, when the country was awakening to new realities, trying to shape her own destiny and inching her way to freedom, all brought about by the vision of one man Mahatma Gandhi. The author and her family, the Nehrus in Allahabad, were prominent participants in the extraordinary and historical events of the time.

Sujets

• Children's
• Philosophie et théologie
• Memoir

Informations

• Publié par: Penguin Books Ltd
• Date de parution: 25 août 2008
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9788184759662
• Langue: English

Extrait

Chandralekha Mehta
Freedom s Child
Growing Up During Satyagraha

PUFFIN BOOKS
Contents
About the Author
Dedication
My Family
An Explanation
Preface
1. Early Memories
2. Anand Bhawan
3. The Life of Khadi
4. Family Matters
5. A New School
6. Our First Elections
7. Travelling Bapu Style and Congress Sessions
8. Papu and Khali
9. Summer 1942
10. Jail
11. Afterwards
Acknowledgements
Copyright
PUFFIN BOOKS
FREEDOM S CHILD
Chandralekha Mehta grew up in Anand Bhawan, Allahabad, during the struggle for India s freedom from British rule. She was arrested during the Quit India movement and spent seven months in prison. Later she attended Wellesley College in the USA and then worked with the National Herald as a sub-editor. She has been in charge of a weekly magazine and has contributed articles to newspapers. Her other publications include Our Neighbours, published by Children s Book Trust. As the wife of a diplomat, Ashok Mehta, who ended his career as Ambassador to Afghanistan, Nigeria and Mexico, she has lived in capitals all over the world.
For Farhana, Gautam, Amrita, Giorgio, Asha, Chandani, Rajiv, Kabir and Ayan.
And in memory of their wonderful great grandparents Ranjit Sitaram Pandit and Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, who showed us how to live by our hopes in the face of adversity.
My Family
I n this account of Satyagraha-the non-violent non-cooperation against the British government in India-close family members have been referred to by the names used for them by Chand, Tara and Rita. They are: Nanuji (Motilal Nehru) Our grandfather Nanima ( Swarup Rani Nehru ) Our grandmother Bibima Her elder sister Mamu (Jawaharlal Nehru) Maternal uncle Mami ( Kamala Nehru ) Aunt, his wife Indu didda or Indi (Indira Gandhi) Their daughter Feroze Bhai (Feroze Gandhi) Her husband Masi (Krishna Nehru) Our mother s sister Raja Bhai (G.P. Hutheesing) Her husband Harsha, Ajit Their sons Mummie (Sarup Nehru, later Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit) Our mother Papu (Ranjit Sitaram Pandit) Our father Chand (Chandralekha), Tara (Nayantara), Rita (Rita Vitasta) Their daughters
An Explanation
W hen I was a child, one of my storybooks began: When the world was young and frogs ruled the world . . . But when I was young, the British ruled the world. One had only to twirl the globe to see all the pink patches, big and small, proclaiming the fact that these were the possessions of a small island called Great Britain. The sun never set on the British empire, and India was referred to as the finest jewel in the British crown. Even after two generations since we became independent, there are still British people who lived and worked in India in the days of the Raj and have nostalgic memories of their stay in our country. But for us the British era has receded, and to young Indians, those times probably seem as far away as the prehistoric age! However, there are some of us in India who still remember events from the early twentieth century, or have heard them being spoken of. A time when no Indian was admitted to a British club, when parks had large statues of Queen Victoria, when park benches had signs saying Not for Indians , and when Indians had to endure the worst form of humiliation such as the crawling order . (This order was enforced by General Dyer after the shocking massacre at Jallianwala Bagh. More than a thousand men and women collected peacefully in the Bagh were shot or wounded, and in the aftermath of the tragedy an English woman was killed in an alley. The crawling order forced the Indians crossing this narrow road to literally crawl on their bellies.) We now take freedom for granted, but it would be interesting to look back on the struggles that led to it and what it meant to those who played a part in it.
The British had been in India for a long time, coming first as traders of the East India Company and gradually getting a grant of Diwani from the Mughal Emperor to collect revenue in Bengal. They went on to establish their power by war, amassing huge fortunes and establishing their authority, little by little, until they virtually controlled most of India, but not with the acceptance of the Indians. Prosperous Bengal had been terrorized, there was anger at the greed of the East India Company and the manner of deposing princes on the flimsiest of excuses while acquiring territory for Britain. The time was ripe for a revolt, and this was secretly planned and organized. But on 10 May 1857, the Indian regiments of the British army in Meerut mutinied earlier than had been planned, thereby alerting the British. The revolt quickly spread all over what is now Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and other areas. Delhi was captured, and Bahadur Shah, fated to be the last of the Mughal emperors, became a rallying point for those fighting the foreigners. Lakshmi Bai, the young widowed Rani of Jhansi, left her fort dressed in men s clothes; riding on horseback, she led her army in battle against the English. She fought valiantly until she was killed, and her general Tantia Tope and others continued the fight. The English were full of admiration for Rani of Jhansi and spoke of her as the best and bravest of the rebels. The rebellion lasted only a few months, from May to September, and had Indians from other parts of the country united with the rebels to defy the British, who knows what the outcome may have been! But they were disunited, to the extent that some were actively with the British, and under the circumstances there was no question of a victorious end to the revolt. There was bitter fighting on both sides and terrible acts took place. In Cawnpore (now Kanpur), a large number of British men, women and children were killed in spite of being given a promise of safety. But when the tide turned, the British crushed the revolt with the greatest cruelty. For long after fighting ended, the countrysides were full of bodies of Indians hanging from the branches of every tree. Thousands were destroyed by being shot out of canons. Whole villages were wiped out and many other atrocities committed, which were meant to spread terror among the Indians. When I was a child, I remember hearing tales of horror about the mutiny from my ayah, who must have heard them from her elders. The ghastly revenge of the British continues to linger in collective memory, and we speak of that terrible time now as the First War of India s Independence.
After the revolt was ruthlessly suppressed, the British tightened its control by exiling the old and ailing Bahadur Shah to Burma, where he died in pitiable conditions, and by putting his sons to death. Thereafter, India became a British possession. The rule of the East India Company ended, and India was directly under the British crown with Queen Victoria taking the title of Empress of India or Kaiser-e-Hind .
But however powerful a ruler may be, the desire for freedom can never be suppressed, whether one seeks to be free from a foreign master or any other form of enslavement. Indians had tried violent means to rid themselves of alien rule. They also tried other ways, including associations to debate ways of gaining political concessions from the government, but to no avail. Around this time, a little-known Indian lawyer, who had been living for several years in South Africa, returned to India. This lawyer was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, who had successfully employed Satyagraha as a means of opposing unjust laws against the Indian community in South Africa. He now brought his startling ideas to India. Going far beyond the debates of the elite gentlemen speaking English, Gandhi reached out to India s vast population. Most of the people he sought were unheard of and unseen by society s upper layer. But by seeing them and speaking with them, Gandhi created a unique method of revolution, bringing about changes through non-violent means. His revolutionary ideas did not merely focus on overturning the government but on overturning ways of thinking, changing the very mindset of a subject people. He started this in his early encounter with British authority in India, when he went to Champaran to help peasants get relief from unjust taxes levied on them by European planters. Simply attired and speaking their language, he moved among the people, collecting facts and acquainting himself with their problems. On their behalf he spoke to officials and planters and got them relief from the planters who refunded part of the money that had been extracted. He taught them not to cringe before authority and thus made them aware of the dignity and power within each individual. He showed them there was nothing to fear. He spoke of moral principles, of truth and the right means to attain right ends. And since his talk was translated into action-when he asked the peasants to spin their own yarn, he did the same himself-his example of achieving rather than preaching found response among all kinds of Indians. The educated and the illiterate, the privileged and the peasant were all drawn to him. Long after he was assassinated by one of his own countrymen, his thoughts continue to influence those who oppose injustice and struggle for civil rights. There is hardly a country that has not honoured Gandhi in some way or other. In India we think of him as the father of our nation.
This account of growing up during Satyagraha is a very personal story written for the younger members of my family, born long after the British left India, dividing it into the two countries of Pakistan and India. It was also written because memories fade and I wanted to tell them about stirring events that took place in the country, with which their family, along with tens of thousands of other families, was closely associated, and to try and capture the atmosphere of that long vanished era. All Satyagrahis did not share some of the experiences that I have written about. We were an unusual family because of the activities of those closest t