P Sainath's latest book tells stories of freedom fighters from rural India

The year is 1943 Hausabai Patil 17 is being beaten by her husband outside a small police station in Bhavani Nagar Sangli No one notices or cares Until he picks up a stone and announces that he is going to kill her The policemen amble out counsel the couple into reconciliation and escort them to the railway station to go home When the policemen return they find that the station has been looted and four rifles and ammunition are missingPatil and her ldquohusbandrdquo were members of Toofan Sena an armed wing of Prati Sarkar or the provisional government of Satara that declared independence from British rule in 1943ldquoThe important thing about Indiarsquos freedom is that all the great fights unfolded in rural India The centres of revolt were never the big cities it was ordinary people from villages who were at the centrerdquo says Palagummi Sainath when we meet him at his Bandra residence One of Indiarsquos most respected journalists he has spent much of his 42yearlong news career covering the India that most newsroom titans hesitate to confront The founder of Peoplersquos Archive of Rural India PARI Sainath is out with his second book The Last HeroesFoot Soldiers of Indian Freedom Patil and her ldquohusbandrdquo comradersquos con tale is part of the title thatrsquos set to release at the end of this monthHe says he canrsquot quite place the moment when he decided that he was going to document the men women and children from the Adivasi Dalit OBC Brahmin Muslim Sikh and Hindu communities who became the foot soldiers of Indiarsquos freedom What he does identify is the driving force He quotes Mahatma Gandhi Great men seem to be the cause of revolutions in the world In truth the people themselves are the causeP Sainath met Bhabani Mahato at her home in Purulia in March this year Seen here are 13 members of her family The rest were at work and schoolldquoIn the 50th year of Independence I travelled to Indiarsquos villages to see what their condition was after being pioneers in the freedom strugglerdquo says Sainath adding that since 1982 when he had completed only two years in journalism there was a sense of awareness that we are losing our history ldquoThis book has been written for a generation that has been robbed of his historyrdquo he adds Indiarsquos independencemdashinterestingly he thinks freedom for this lot of ordinary Indians who opposed the Empire goes beyond Independencemdashhits close to home His grandfathermdashIndian politician and former President of India VV GirimdashSainath says was jailed during the freedom struggle ldquoAs were many members of my extended family Given the direction and progression that our country has taken since the 1990s the issue has become even more important for merdquo That the marginalised rarely make it to stories of struggle against colonisers deserves our attention he thinks ldquoHow many Dalits or women do we talk about when we discuss our freedom fighters The social spectrum that participated in the struggle was diverse One in three freedom fighters featured in this book is a woman There are cooks couriers and homemakers who played astonishingly courageous rolesrdquo says the author adding that for him Bhabani Mahato a homemaker in Purulia West Bengal who doesnrsquot consider herself a freedom fighter is for him this titlersquos most defining character ldquoDuring the famine when food was difficult to come by she was feeding about 20 to 25 underground revolutionaries every day including her husband She was growing food and feeding them at great risk For me her contribution is way more than her husband Baidyanath Mahato who spent 13 months in jail during the Quit India stir and is considered a great freedom fighter I was looking for people like her ordinary but with courage to stand up without the expectation of rewardrdquoBhagat Singh Jhuggian at his home in Ramgarh village Hoshiarpur Punjab in 2021 at age 93 He passed away in March this year Sainath discovered that Jhuggian was a courier for the revolutionaries ran a printing press and supplied food to underground freedom fightersSainath admits willingly that the book focusses on names from the east south and west ldquobecause the standard story that we tell our children is that everything happened in UP and Bihar which is not truerdquo Villages in Odisha West Bengal Telangana Karnataka Punjab and Tamil Nadu throw up revolutionaries in his research From Maharashtra Hausabai Patil ldquoCaptain Bhaurdquo Ramchandra Sripati Lad and Ganpati Bal Yadav all from Sangli region make it to the pages ldquoIf you have no clue about where your society came from you wouldnrsquot have an idea of where it is going It is important to know the stories of these people to script our own history better Thatrsquos the only way to figure who we are as a nation and what we are going to set out to do here onrdquo With this he hopes to speak to students and the youth much the same way he did with Everyone Loves A Good Drought now in its 56th edition The book that comprises short accounts of his travels across the poorest districts of rural India won Sainath the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 2007Late Ganpati Bal Yadav 97 spoke to Sainath about his adventures with the Toofan Sena an armed wing of the provisional government of Satara that declared independence from British rule He died at 100The youngest of Sainathrsquos protagonists is 92 the oldest 104 ldquoCaptain Bhau was 100 years old when he died this February Hausabai Patil who passed away last September was 93 Ganpati Bal Yadav was 100 when he died When we met him he was 97 and was still riding a bicycle for 20 km a day None of them became prime minister president or governor Many were simple farmersrdquo says Sainath disappointed that a representative from the north eastern states of India hasnrsquot made it Two of them whom he had identified died during the pandemic and another three were not even partially articulatePicSameer MarkandeThe bookrsquos origin goes back to the year 2000 ldquoUnfortunately the agrarian crisis took over and it demanded my 1000 per cent attention I fell behind but I continued to meet those who I had identified I spend 270 days a year in the countryside and wherever I went I would ask if there was someone there who had been part of the freedom strugglerdquo Several of these accounts were published in national newspapers or on PARIrsquos portal ldquoBut they were in short format I revisited them improved on them and in some places even made corrections after their families and descendents disputed saying that I had confused one person with another or made a factual errorrdquoHausabai Patil a freedom fighter from Shenoli with her father Nana Patil who headed the parallel prati sarkar government in Satara from 1943 to 1946 and later represented Beed as a parliamentarianBecause a story never ends Sainath has chosen to add a QR code at the end of each one in the book which takes readers to the PARI page where more information photos and videos on the said freedom fighter awaits them ldquoYoursquoll see Mallu Swarajyam she and fellow revolutionaries had played a role in the Telangana Peoplersquos Struggle of the 1940s among others swinging a slingshot at the age of 84 Another video features Captain Bhau recalling how they looted a train minus any arms that was carrying the salaries of staffers of the British RajrdquoWhen Sainath met Captain Bhaursquos family they said that he was having good and bad days It was possible that his memory wouldnrsquot cooperate Sainath decided to place Bhau in context literally ldquoSince he was famous for the biggest train robbery in history we took his chair for him to sit and placed it on the platform of Shenoli railway station where he had looted the PuneMiraj train in 1943 He was quiet for 10 minutes but after that he spoke with startling clarity about the attack how one squad placed rocks to block the track The minute the train stopped the next squad put rocks behind the train locking it in its place The guard had a rifle but he was paralysed with fear even though the Toofan Sena squad were only brandishing sickles and knives They looted R19175 With this money at the time which was one of famine they could buy as much as 60 kg of ricerdquo he narrates There is one tiny memorial in their honour set up at Shenoli All it says is that a train was looted at the location ldquoItrsquos one that the British put up therersquos nothing installed by the Indian government to commemorate the eventrdquoCaptain Bhau or Ramchandra Sripati Lad from Sangli seen in a photo taken in 194243While the Swatantrata Sainik Samman scheme of 1980 offers people like Bhau a pension the first of the lsquoeligiblersquo categories demands that the fighter must have suffered minimum imprisonment of six months in jail before Independence ldquoThe way they went about it they excluded far more people than they included A lot of freedom fighters didnrsquot go to jail What about those who belonged to Netaji Subhash Chandra Bosersquos NIA and similar organisations or fought underground In the Satara Uprising not many went to jail and even though Captain Bhau was jailed he was out in 45 days Secondly you are putting the onus on people to prove that they went to jail This categorically excluded those who fought voluntarily Prove that you were a proclaimed offender during British rule they said Hilarious You are asking the colonial power to certify the authenticity of your freedom fighters So my question is what constitutes participating in Indiarsquos freedom struggle Is it only being jailed taking up arms going on a satyagraha With this limited criteria we have missed out on millions of women who didnrsquot go to jail but were in the thick of struggle like Bhabani Mahato With this book I am looking at people who were actively resisting colonial rule and did it in ways other than what is defined by official laws and schemesrdquoSainath seen here with Lad decided to make Bhau sit beside the tracks at Shenoli railway station where he had looted the PuneMiraj train in 1943 to help jog his fading memory