New Delhi: Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Wednesday said that since independence, a particular narrative has been imposed on the people through education, history to serve a particular ideologue and that the nation's history since 1947 has been broken and manipulated.
Speaking at the launch of the book "Revolutionaries: The other story of how India won its freedom" by Sanjeev Sanyal, Shah noted that if it was not for the armed struggle, India would have required "a few more decades" to gain her independence.
Sanyal is an economist and a member of the Economic Advisory Council of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The Home Minister acknowledged the role of the Indian National Congress (INC) in the Indian freedom movement, noting that the "collected stand" taken by citizens at the time was what handed them the well-earned freedom.
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"I do not say that the non-violent struggle has no role in the freedom struggle, or is not a part of history. It is a part of history and has a huge contribution," Shah said, observing however, that "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,"
The book by Sanyal strives to display sides to history it claims have not been covered by the mainstream, and narrates the tale of revolutionaries such as Bhagat Singh, Chandra Shekhar Azad, V D Savarkar, Aurobindo Ghosh, Rashbehari Bose, Bagha Jatin, Subhas Chandra Bose, and others.
Urging the young historians and scholars to come up with other such collective narratives, Amit Shah said historians had a very crucial role in the freedom struggle but after gaining Independence, a larger narrative was hided but "that time is gone."
