March 23, 1998
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Stirring
Rhetoric Nanda in his old-fashioned way captures the drama of the freedom movement. By Hiranmay Karlekar THE MAKING OF A NATION There are two difficult challenges which face historians writing books like the one by B.R. Nanda. First, given the long and meandering road the freedom movement had to traverse, compressing even a reasonably comprehensive account of it in 332 pages is not easy. It is to Nanda's credit that his work does not miss out on any of its landmarks. Nor does his narrative lose focus and become a patchwork quilt of episodic accounts. This reflects his grasp of the subject and a clear line of approach based on Gandhi's description of the freedom movement as a struggle involving "three mighty conflicting forces of British imperialism, Congress nationalism and Muslim separatism", which he quotes in the preface. Second, a number of scholars have written on each of these conflicts as well as on the general unfolding of the freedom struggle. There is therefore not much scope for saying anything startlingly new in a macro study. It is a tribute to the author's narrative skill that one rarely lapses into a mood of deja vu or is tempted to skip a passage. His profiles of individuals are sharply etched and their roles carefully analysed. One is particularly happy to see him dwell on the contributions by Gopal Ganesh Agarkar, Dadabhai Naoroji, Mahadev Govind Ranade and Gopal Krishna Gokhale. Men of character, scholarship, prescience and moderation and steeped in liberal ideals, they laid the foundation of the freedom movement, but are often scornfully dismissed as "moderates". Equally arresting are his profiles of Aurobindo Ghosh, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Bipin Chandra Pal, Lala Lajpat Rai and later, of M.A. Jinnah and Lord Reading. These characters come alive because of Nanda's writing which fully captures the drama of history. His style, a trifle old-fashioned but gripping, flowing and studded with metaphors and stirring rhetoric, sometimes reminds one of Hal Fisher in A History of Europe. In this book, Nanda presents history as a majestic procession of events and personalities. The underlying social, economic and cultural factors sometimes do not find adequate mention. An example is the treatment meted out to the social and economic causes that contributed to the large-scale participation of bhadralok youth in the agitation against the partition of Bengal (1905), which was a watershed in the history of the freedom movement. Similarly, while discussing Muslim separatism, he does not dwell on the social and economic factors, the attitude of a section of Hindus and the political rhetoric of the extremists steeped in Hinduism. Even in terms of personalities there are a few perplexing omissions, the most startling of which is that Bankim Chandra Chatterjee whose influences on extremists, particularly Aurobindo, was profound and whose song Bande Mataram has provided Indian nationalism with one of its most rousing calls to action and sacrifice. Compulsions of abridgement perhaps explain the conscious attempt to reduce to a minimum references to the social and economic factors influencing the dynamics of the freedom movement, and some of the subaltern upheavals and the workers and peasants struggles which constituted a parallel stream. It is a pity. A purely political narrative, however engrossing, does not do sufficient justice to the complex and meandering flow of history. All this notwithstanding, the book is a very good read as it whets the reader's appetite to know more about one of the most stirring chapters in India's history.
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