Azaadi and where do we go from here? | Sagari Chhabra

As we celebrate 77 years of freedom and head towards our 78th Independence day on 15th August 2024 my mind flashes back and remembers all the freedom fighters I have met and recorded over the years. I met Kannusamy, at his modest residence at Prai in Malaysia, who was with Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s Indian National Army. I asked him that since he had been born and raised in Malaysia and had never set foot on Indian soil what motivated him to join the freedom struggle for India? He lost his temper and rebuked me, ‘It’s a funny question to ask an Indian! Once an Indian always an Indian’. Still fuming he added, ‘you get a chance to do something for your motherland, you must do it.’

In Maymyo, now named Pyin U Lwin in upper Myanmar, I met D.R Sharma in a wooden cottage surrounded by a small garden full of flowers. “I was born in Pyin U Lwin in 1925. I was politically minded you know… I felt for India…. All my people were there at that time. I joined the Swaraj Young Men’s Training Institute’. This according to British Military intelligence reports was a ‘holding centre’. The boys crossed over to Arakan border and told the soldiers of the British Indian army about the INA with the motive to inspire them to join. I asked him how many boys joined from Maymyo and he said eight. ‘Did you get paid?’ I queried. ‘No, no we were all very idealistic. We just got paid for food and toiletries.’ Then his voice crumbled, ‘In sixty years no one has come to meet me. I feel like crying now.’ He wept with tears running down his face, ‘I want to thank you for coming from India to meet me.’ I touched his feet and assured him I would not be walking in free India if it were not for him.

The people who got overlooked and neglected were members of the Rani of Jhansi Regiment; the first all-woman regiment of the world. In Kuala Lumpur, I met Janaky Thevar who was the second person to command the Rani of Jhansi Regiment as Lakshmi Swaminathan later Sahgal, was despatched to Maymyo where there was a medical unit. Janaky Thevar recounts the gruelling training in Singapore and the bombing of the Red Cross hospital in Rangoon, by the British. She broke down crying when she recalled how they risked their lives to get the wounded soldiers out of the burning hospital.

Gouri Bhattacharya Sen recalled in her husky voice, ‘the Ranis wrote a petition in their blood and asked me to give it to Netaji’. The petition said they wanted to fight at the front and give their lives for the freedom of India. Gouri Sen met Netaji in a garage that was camouflaged and presented him the petition but he said, ‘when it’s the time we will call you.’

Gouri recalls, ‘It was the saddest day of my life when Netaji disbanded the regiment’. The Ranis were divided into two groups but as the train lines had been bombed and destroyed they had to trudge through the forests of Burma and across swollen rivers. One group was led by Janaki Bai of Seramban, and the other by Netaji and Janaky Thevar. It was a gruelling 21-day walk with a heavy haver-sack cutting into their shoulder blades and barely any food.
Janaky also recalls how two Ranis, Stella and Josephine were killed by strafe bombing by low-flying planes.

I have met innumerable freedom fighters over the years and have had the privilege of recording so many across India, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Burma. In India I recorded Sushila Nayar who was in jail with Gandhi at Agha Khan Palace which served as detention camp, who witnessed the death of Mahadev Desai and Kasturba, but they never ever reneged. She said her feeling at being imprisoned, was that of ‘utsah (courage) and umang (hope) that we got the chance to go to jail and do something for the country.

Today that spirit is lacking except when we see our Olympic sportspersons giving it their all. However let us recall wrestler Vinesh Phogat and fellow women wrestlers had accused the very person who was supposed to support and nurture them of sexual harassment and were bodily removed from the protesting site. What support and dignity do we give our women? At the time of writing this protests are breaking out over the rape and murder of a junior doctor in Kolkata. When will we learn to treat our women as equals and not turn predatory when seeing an opportunity? And why are the TMC women parliamentarians not protesting about this rape?

The economy is in shambles and immigration is a preferred route for employment amongst the educated. A university teacher laid off from her work put up a stall with the caption, ‘Phd Pakoriwali’ – frying pakodas is the only option for a woman holding a Phd degree? However, her stall was removed from the University area. Did she get an appropriate job but then do we have any empathy for our women and the young?

What is most disturbing are the layers of hate that have been spread with 77 people being lynched by random mobs. They are all minorities. The most cherished cornerstone of our Constitution and culture is secularism but there are attempts to make our country, one language Hindi, one religion Hindu and one ideology Hindutva. This is not only an electoral project but an ideological one and earnest efforts are on to create a dominant religious country ruled by majoritarian precepts. While several cadres are at work to demolish a mosque and build a bhavya indeed gorgeous mandir, I do not see the non-BJP parties creating a space where people who are being marginalized and attacked can address their grievances and situational risks. The project of saving the plurality, diversity and secularism of India has to be addressed in concrete terms and not only by a Bharat Jodo yatra on the eve of elections. The soul of India is intact but young people do need leadership and a space to go towards to have their concerns addressed in a calm, rational and long-term manner within the framework of the Constitution. Freedom of press is in peril; if journalists are to be given an income tax notice or have their mobiles and laptops seized, where are they supposed to go?

Of great significance with the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the prolonged war in Ukraine is to create a zone of peace in South Asia. The Partition was the holocaust of South Asia but we now need to create a South Asian vision which will transcend borders and make this a zone of peace. I recall my visit to Pakistan in 2000 as part of a women’s peace delegation led by Nirmala Deshpande and Mohini Giri and received with so much love on the other side. The outpouring of affection from the people of Pakistan is still palpable and brings tears to my eyes. Even shopkeepers at Anarkali bazaar would refuse to be paid when they learnt when we were from India, ‘tum hamaari vatan ki ho’ – you are from our homeland. The perfume of the ittar lingers on my wrist and memory. I returned to write a tribute to the women who had embraced me with so much love, Asma Jehangir and so many others.

But the year 2000 seems to be another era. We have no peace and friendship conferences or visits and need to remember the violence of Partition not as a Horrors Remembrance Day but as something both unleashed on each other out of fear and a random line drawn out by the colonial Raj. We now need to build bridges. I am happy that the Agaz-e-dosti bus will be going to the Wagah border to light candles a tradition started by Kuldip Nayar and Rajinder Sachar but we need to do much more. The function at Gandhi Peace Foundation on 12th August was a lack-lustre one and the hall was three-fourths empty. The silver lining was that two young people Evita Das and Randhir Gautam who were awarded for their peace efforts. But the josh and energy of the earlier days was missing.

With the turn of events in Bangladesh and Mohammad Yunus taking over as advisor we need to redouble our efforts for a people to people exchange and a South Asian vision with poets, artists, singers, musicians and writers ushering in the words of peace.

Azaadi is about aman (peace) and dosti (friendship) amongst all of us, Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis as we are one people as we reach another independence day and the status and safety of minorities in Bangladesh and Pakistan will depend on how well we treat our minorities In India. May we carry the values of the freedom struggle forward.

Azaadi mubaarak!

(Author: Sagari Chhabra, Award-winning author & filmmaker, Director, Hamaara Itihaas freedom archives)