LK Advani’s Blog

During India’s freedom struggle against British Rule, in the year 1930 two major events occurred. One was Mahatma Gandhi’s Dandi March; the other was the Chittagong Armoury raid.

 

Gandhiji commenced his Dandi March for the ‘Salt satyagraha’ on March 12 from Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad. Along with 78 Ashramites he walked a distance of 390 kms. to reach Dandi on the West Coast where on April 6 morning he defied the law to make salt from the sea. The British Government arrested him thereafter.

 

For us in the BJP, this date on which Gandhiji performed his salt satyagraha and courted arrest is very significant because exactly fifty years later, on April 6, 1980 amidst a massive gathering at the Bandra sea coast in Mumbai, Atal Bihari Vajpayee launched the Bharatiya Janata Party.

 

While the Dandi satyagraha is widely known, the Chittagong uprising is a little known saga. I heartily compliment eminent journalist Manini Chatterji for bringing alive this forgotten chapter of Indian history by publishing a book “DO & DIE: THE CHITTAGONG UPRISING 1930-34”. This book, published by Penguin Books India in 1999 received the Rabindra Puraskar in 2000. It has now been converted into a Hindi film by Ashutosh Gowariker with the title: Khelein Hum Jee Jaan Sey.

 

 

Manini Chatterji is currently Editor, National Affairs, with The Telegraph. She is the recipient of the Sanskriti Award for Excellence in Journalism (1990) and Ramnath Goenka Award for Excellence in Political Journalism (2007).

 

I have known Manini for over two decades now and regard her as a very competent and fair journalist, who does not conceal her Marxist leanings, but who would never allow her ideological inclination to influence the fairness of her reporting or the objectivity of her analysis. So when some time back she invited me to a private screening of Gowariker’s film, I readily accepted her invitation. I was aware that the film had not done well at the box office. But I was greatly impressed by the production. It was engrossing and inspiring. For me who knew practically nothing about this Chittagong episode, it was educating also.

 

After seeing the film, I procured a copy of Manini’s book as well, and that made me understand why the film had not done so well commercially. Ashutosh had not taken liberties with the meticulously researched narrative of the author, and had tried to be absolutely faithful to the sequence of events mentioned in the book.

 

Ashutosh’s two earlier patriotic films – Lagaan and Swades - had been big hits at the box office. Those two films were based on fictional stories; this one was on historical facts.

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Speaking about films based on the country’s history before independence, I feel tempted to refer to the Era Sezhiyan book I had been invited to release at Chennai on December 19, 2010.

 

The book had not been authored by Sezhiyan; it had been published by him even though it was a Government of India publication. I had therefore described it as a unique publication. Its original title was: SHAH COMMISSION REPORT. As republished its title became: Shah Commission Report, Lost and Regained.

 

Sezhiyan, now 88 years old, has been a parliamentary colleague of mine who writes in his introduction to this republished version of the commission report that in September 2010, he was searching for some background material about the declaration of the 1975 Emergency. When he looked up several websites including the Wikipedia, he was astounded to read that the Shah Commission which had been entrusted the task of investigating the misuse and abuse of powers by the Congress Government during the Emergency, had in its report naturally made a scething indictment of Mrs. Indira Gandhi. So, when Mrs. Gandhi returned to power in 1980, she had all copies of the Shah Commission report withdrawn and/or destroyed. The Wikipedia says: “It is now believed that not a single copy of this report exists in India. A third and final report of the commission seems to have slipped out and is currently held by National Library of Australia.”

 

In her biography of Indira Gandhi published by Harper Perennial, 2005, Katherine Frank writes : “When Indira Gandhi returned to power she invalidated the (Shah Commission) report ; and had it withdrawn from circulation. The only existing copies of the three volumes I am aware of are at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.”

 

After releasing Era Sezhiyan’s book I remarked at the Chennai function that my friend deserves rich kudos for the signal service he had rendered to history, to democracy, and to the country, by republishing this authentic book about a period of Indian History when democracy was brought perilously close to the brink of destruction.

 

However, after seeing Gowarikar’s film last week I do want some passionate lover of democracy in the film world to attempt a perceptive film on that period. It can be a biographical film on Jaya Prakash Narain. Or it can be a fictional plot against the factual background of the emergency.

 

The emergency affected politics immensely. But it also affected the media as deeply. Even under British rule or the war, media had never experienced such suffocating censorship. The judiciary, indeed the entire legal community, was seriously affected. Above all it was the common man who suffered most because of the excesses.

  

There is no dearth of books about the Emergency. Immediately after the Emergency ended in March 1977 scores of books were written mainly by those who had suffered incarceration during that period. More than one lakh political activists were put behind bars. As I&B Minister in the Government that followed I discovered that over 250 media persons were also jailed. Many foreign correspondents like Mark Tully of the BBC were externed. After retirement from the BBC, Mark has settled down in India and made this country his home. I am referring to all this above only to emphasise that for an enterprising film maker, valuable source material, and sources, would not be wanting. Some one has only to pick up the challenge.

 

 

L.K. Advani

New Delhi
9^th January, 2011

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     This entry was posted on Sunday, January 9th, 2011 at 8:08 am and is filed under Blog in English. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.