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Khadi and Khaki A riveting account of the Chittagong armoury raids that shook the mighty British Empire By Swapan Dasgupta DO AND DIE An unfortunate consequence of the shift of history from the liberal arts to the social sciences is the demise of old-fashioned narrative. Telling a story has been replaced by either abstruse deconstructionism or pedantic Marxism. Manini Chatterjee's well-researched account of the Chittagong armoury raid of 1930 and its aftermath -- inappropriately described as an "uprising" -- avoids these pitfalls. If readability is any criterion, she proves that there is no substitute for lucid prose. It's just as well that her study is accessible to lay readers. The Chittagong raid captured the imagination of an entire generation that regarded Gandhism as an effete response to British rule. The leadership of Surya Sen, the antics of Ananta Singh and the battle of Jalalabad were important elements of the Bengali political folklore. Using archival sources and oral testimony -- including riveting details of the tortured personal lives of the main actors -- Chatterjee narrates the fascinating tale of 60 impressionable Bengali youth taking on the Raj in combat and attempting an insurrection without any idea of the magnitude of the project. It's a forgotten story skillfully retold without doses of jargon. The tone of the narrative is touchingly starry-eyed. Yet, the author doesn't gloss over the colossal amateurishness of a group that raided the district armoury, collected weapons and then didn't know what to do because two leaders lost their way. In hindsight, revolutionary terrorism in Bengal appears a tale of bad aim, stupendous courage and an unending quest for martyrdom. Yet these badly trained bhadralok youth with a strange love for military uniform induced panic in the British Empire. A panic sufficient for the Raj to use Muslim antagonism as a counterweight to an upper-caste Hindu movement. No wonder many of these failed insurrectionists later abandoned worship of Kali for deification of Stalin. As for the enigmatic Ananta Singh, he transferred his skills to another generation by masterminding bank dacoities in Calcutta in 1969-70. That's something to keep in mind. AUTHOR
SPEAK:
The basic premise of Perkovich's book is simple. The common belief that India acquired nuclear-weapons capability to redress threats from China and Pakistan is incorrect. Instead, he summarises that domestic factors such as a desire to display modernity and technical prowess, resistance to colonialism, the exclusion of the military from power-making and so on contributed to India's nuclear policy decisions. What inspired Perkovich to write the book? "In 1992, I started spending a fair amount of time in India talking to people who focus on nuclear and strategic issues, and meeting with many of them when they visited the US," he says. "The more I listened, the more fascinated I became with the way Indians have thought about N-weapons. I found much of this thinking to be original and wise, more realistic and enlightened than some of the doctrinal traditions in the US." In addition to managing the Secure World Programme, Perkovich oversees a $14 million Sustainable World Programme and has also advised several agencies of the U.S. government on South Asian security affairs. He believes that progress in Indo-US relations is possible only when both sides become more businesslike and show a willingness to make pragmatic compromises. India's Nuclear Bomb is likely to be released in India this month by Oxford University Press. The book, at 597 pages is a tad too long. "Actually, I would have liked to make the book shorter, but I could not find obvious items to cut given the commitment to tell a 50-year story in enough detail to be useful," defends Perkovich. That is understandable. By Nitish S.Rele |
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Without
doubt, India's Nuclear Bomb (University of California Press) by George
Perkovich is among the more comprehensive accounts of the country's
nuclear programme from 1947 till 1998. It is an attempt by the director of
the Secure World Programme of the W. Alton Jones Foundation -- a
philanthropic institution in Virginia -- to delve beneath the veil of
secrecy around India's N-ambitions.