The magnificent seven

Ramachandra Guha's work on westerners who devoted themselves to the cause of Indian freedom lives up to the high standards set by his earlier books

Rebels Against the Raj Western fighters for India’s freedom

Author: Ramachandra Guha

Publisher: Penguin Random House

Pages: 476

Price: Rs 799

India has no dearth of academic historians or their scholarly works. What it lacks is narrative history. This term refers to highly readable accounts of events or personalities, even while adhering to strict norms of historical research. Barbara W Tuchman’s story of events leading to World War I (The Guns of August) or General Joseph Stilwell’s life in China, or Doris Kearns Goodwin’s portrayals of Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Lyndon Johnson are examples of this genre. Our sole practitioner of this craft is Ramachandra Guha, with his well-known and well-read works on different phases of Mahatma Gandhi’s life. The book under review concerns seven westerners who devoted themselves entirely to the cause of India’s freedom. It lives true to the high standards we have come to expect from the author.

The book includes sketches of Annie Besant, B G Horniman, Samuel (later Satyanand) Stokes, Madeleine Slade (later Mira Behn), Philip Spratt, Ralph Richard Keithahn, and Catherine Mary Heilemann (later Sarala Devi). They all came to India from varied backgrounds from Europe or America but were thoroughly assimilated and became Indian not only in their lifestyles but also their missions. They all suffered imprisonment and/or externment by the colonial government. The author explains why these seven and not others have been included, but that is not at issue here. The reader is happy to learn about whoever the author has chosen.

Besant the Irishwoman came to India on a lecture tour in 1893 for “perhaps six weeks” but stayed on 40 years. She brought the Theosophy movement with her, but was an ardent campaigner of women’s rights and one of the founders of the Home Rule League. She became the first woman president of the Indian National Congress in 1917. She alone among the seven subjects of the book was senior to Mahatma Gandhi in age and standing and could talk down to him when she thought it was necessary.

We know of Spratt, a card-carrying communist, as an inveterate champion of workers’ rights and later a critic of Indira Gandhi government’s economic policies in the 1960s. Keithahn, an American missionary, lived in Kengeri in the then Mysore state, but was forced out of there and was among the founders of the Gandhigram Institute in Dindigul, modelled after the Hochschules of Denmark specialising in rural studies. He was thoroughly involved in Vinoba Bhave’s Sarvodaya movement. Mira Behn, an admiral’s daughter, appointed herself Gandhi’s daughter and took charge of the Sabarmati Ashram. Sarala Devi was extremely vocal in her concern for the trees and mountains, becoming among India’s first environmentalists. Her book, republished in 1982, is titled Revive Our Dying Planet.

This reviewer must confess he had little knowledge of Horniman and Stokes beyond their names before he read this book. Horniman was a young journalist who came to India in 1904 to work for The Statesman, then the foremost English newspaper in India published from the seat of the Raj, Calcutta. He later moved to the other end of the subcontinent, to work for The Times of India. He found the atmosphere stifling, since the Times then wholly supported imperial rule. In 1913, Sir Pherozeshah Mehta and other liberals wanted to start a new paper, The Bombay Chronicle, which would be more sympathetic to the Indian point of view. They invited Horniman to be the editor. The Chronicle took a radical position and Horniman wrote fiery pieces, both signed and unsigned, critical of the local and imperial governments. He was a huge thorn in the side of the authorities. They finally succeeded in deporting him 1920.

He was unhappy in Great Britain and kept trying to return to India. All these efforts were thwarted. He finally came back via Colombo and returned to The Chronicle. But this time around, while he remained steadfast in his attitudes, The Chronicle management did not offer him the same support. Many ups and downs later, he died in 1948, much mourned by nationalists and journalists alike.

Stokes came to India in 1905 from staunch Quaker stock in Pennsylvania. He quickly took to the Himalayas. He settled down and married an Indian Christian woman. All along, his concerns were of reviving India.

In 1903 he wrote India “can become truly great …by reforming, building up and perfecting its ancient civilisation”. He believed that Indian prosperity “will find its expression in the quiet prosperity of her children in towns and villages”.

He spent a year in 1914 in Pennsylvania studying apple cultivation, which he introduced in Himachal on his return. He became a Hindu and took the name Satyanand.

He was active in local politics and in the Congress, at times disagreeing with Gandhi. This father of Himachali apples was jailed for his beliefs but that did not change him at all.

The unsung hero in all these profiles is, of course, Mahatma Gandhi, the single greatest influence of India of the first half of the 20th century. So it should come as no surprise that Guha’s rebels were all Gandhians in one form or another. I wonder if the history of any other country under colonialism which became free about the same time as India —  Indonesia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria among others — had such a roster of rebels. But then, they did not have Gandhi either.

Guha calls this work a “morality tale”. Horniman had warned in 1917, after Besant’s arrest, “you may strike down, imprison, put in fetters, the leaders of great causes a hundred times …but …the banner of freedom, once unfurled,…will always be uplifted afresh, to be borne and carried forward by brave and willing hands.”

Guha concludes his inspiring tale thus: “So many years after the last of these rebels passed on, what they did and what they said still speaks to Indians today.

If only we could listen.”

Amen to that, brother Guha.