Indian Struggle for Freedom

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The book deals with various facets of the history of freedom movement in India--a movement of profound importance in human history. The Indian people over the hundred years or so before it achieved independence on August 15, 1947 had experienced a mass awakening and finally came to realise that time had come to ask the British rulers to "Quit India".

The book relates to the hectic events that preceded Independence-- the Muslim League demand for Pakistan; Subhas Chandra Bose's Great Escape from India and his subsequent formation of Azad Hind Government and Azad Hind Fouj abroad and his regular broadcasts to his countrymen; the Cripps Mission and its failure; the Quit India Movement and large scale arrests of Congress leaders; Gandhiji's fast against the Communal Award; the Bombay Plan; the Non-official Industrial Delegation to England and its off- spring: the Wavell Plan; the failure of Simla Conference; the Cabinet Mission and its proposals and deliberations; its failure to solve the communal problem; the great Calcutta Killings of 1946, the June 3rd Plan, and finally India's Independence. All these events have been vividly recorded with an appropriate sense of history and its understanding. The book contains numerous rare photographs of national heroes.

Prof. Satyavrata Ghosh was born (1914) at Barisal, now in Bangladesh, in a family of outstanding educationists, His elder brother, Principal Devaprasad Ghosh, was a household name for his scholarly qualities. Later on he became an all-India political figure as the President of Bharatiya Jana Sangh.

Prof. Ghosh stood first in M.A. Political Science from Benaras Hindu University. He was under detention without trial and externment from the provinces of Bengal and Orissa for seven and half years in the thirties. He was released in 1938 when there was a general amnesty of political prisoners. He became a Professor of Political Science and gradually rose to the position of the Principal of a government college in Madhya Pradesh. He has always been associated with Social and Cultural activities. After his retirement he shifted to Bombay and started a life of 'post-retirement journalism'. His special field of interest is the role of the revolutionaries in our Freedom Struggle. He has been a prolific writer and powerful speaker.

I consider it a privilege to write a foreword to this work by my friend Prof. Satyavrata Ghosh. His book concerns itself with various facets of the history of the freedom movement in India - a movement of profound importance in the history of humankind.

For Prof. Ghosh the writing of this book has been a labour of love. He has covered, comprehensively, dif- ferent aspects of the freedom struggle and has provided his own interpretation of the causal factors underlying various events. The emotional message of the book is, in my view, as significant and relevant as the factual material in it.

Innate to India's freedom struggle was a subtle but sweeping change that occurred in the Indian psyche over the hundred years or so before we achieved independence. The Indian people in this period gradually experienced a mass awakening and came to an acute realization of the need to cast off the foreign yoke by forging nation- wide unity and giving their all in the struggle for freedom. Those were the days when millions upon millions of people from all walks of life all over the sub-continent - people in the villages and people in the towns were metamor- phosed into a massive force exerting intense moral and intellectual pressure on the national ethos and on the colonial ruling-class. Against the might of the most powerful empire of the world, the saga of the freedom struggle in India is replete with countless sacrifices, individual and collec- tive; accounts of great moral and physical courage, per- severence and dedication.

**Contents and Sample Pages**