Give Me Blood and I Will Give You Freedom Book PDF Free Download
Excerpt From The Book
Last April, two Indian students visited my high school for a few weeks and joined my world history class.
One day, during a discussion of the Indian independence movement, I asked all of my students in the class to hold up their hands if they had ever heard of Bhagat Singh or Subhas Chandra Bose.
Only two hands went up, those belonging to our visitors from India.
Our Indian guests expressed shock and dismay that their American peers had never heard these two names that are so familiar to Indians.
The vast majority of Indians view Bhagat Singh and Subhas Chandra Bose as critical figures in India’s struggle for independence, and many
Indians view them as equally important as the Mahatma, Mohandas K. Gandhi, the individual most closely associated with the Indian independence movement.
A history teacher at one of India’s leading secondary schools describes Bose and Singh as “British India’s most loved and most controversial figures.”
In 2006, the top-grossing movie in India was Rang de Basanti, a Bollywood film about a group of disaffected college students in today’s India who find inspiration in the legend of Bhagat Singh.
High school history textbooks in India often devote an entire chapter to Subhas Chandra Bose, whom many Indians call the “George Washington of India.
The tenth-grade text used at the aforementioned prestigious private school calls Bose’s contributions to Indian independence “unforgettable” and describes
Singh was a prominent revolutionary “who will be remembered by history” for his contributions to the Indian struggle for independence.
While most historians, whether Western or Indian, agree that Gandhi should be recognized as the most important figure in India’s independence movement,
few Americans understand the critical role played by Singh and Bose.
Most Americans are taught that Gandhi brought about Indian independence virtually on his own, mostly through his deep commitment to nonviolence (ahimsa).
Gandhi, the Academy Award winner for Best Picture in 1982, captures this thoroughly Western view of India’s long and tortuous struggle for independence.
Westerners who view the Indian independence movement as the victory of nonviolence over oppression may be quite surprised to learn about
Bhagat Singh and Subhas Chandra Bose because these two figures were anything but nonviolent.
Singh assassinated a British police officer in 1928 and then a year later threw two bombs onto the floor of India’s fledgling legislature.
Bose, once a prominent figure in the Indian National Congress, collaborated with the German and Japanese governments during World War II to raise an army of Indian soldiers with which to fight the British.
| Author | Thomas Lamont |
| Language | English |
| Pages | 6 |
| PDF Size | 3.24 MB |
| Category | Literature |
| Sources | asianstudies.org |
Give Me Blood and I Will Give You Freedom Book PDF Free Download