Posts

Showing posts from December, 2007
Image

TEHELKA ARTICLE- SATURDAY 22ND DECEMBER 2007

‘The elite today are the ones who supported the British in 1857’ Amaresh Misra’s book on 1857 offers startling hypotheses. LAKSHMI INDRASIMAN talks to him about his findings Your book is massive. What new information have you unearthed? An all-India picture of 1857, the first war of Independence, I will not call it the mutiny. Its pan-India scale has not been examined in any book so far, everything that happened from north to south and west to east. I wanted to cover the entire nation in one work, including small incidents that happened in Manipur and Nagaland. What is each volume about? The two volumes have a timeline. The first three chapters give a background of what was happening in India and in England. The first chapter, ‘A Pathan in London’, speaks about Azimullah Khan going to London to lobby for -- pension. He emerges as a major 1857 leader later. He’s interacting with the top personalities of his age. So I’ve drawn a portrait of Victorian London in 1854 -- Victorian morality,

10 million people killed in 1857 India: Guardian Article

1857 mutiny revisited India's secret history: 'A holocaust, one where millions disappeared...' Author says British reprisals involved the killing of 10m, spread over 10 years Randeep Ramesh in New Delhi Friday August 24, 2007 Guardian A controversial new history of the Indian Mutiny, which broke out 150 years ago and is acknowledged to have been the greatest challenge to any European power in the 19th century, claims that the British pursued a murderous decade-long campaign to wipe out millions of people who dared rise up against them. In War of Civilisations: India AD 1857, Amaresh Misra, a writer and historian based in Mumbai, argues that there was an "untold holocaust" which caused the deaths of almost 10 million people over 10 years beginning in 1857. Britain was then the world's superpower but, says Misra, came perilously close to losing its most prized possession: India. Conventional histories have counted only 100,000 Indian soldiers who were slaughtere
Hey guys Pick up your copy from the nearest Book Shop- "War of Civilizations: 1857 A.D" by Amaresh Misra 1857 was an epic confrontation of race and politics between the colonial new-Western secular-positivism now in alliance with Western Christianity and the indigenous new, the forces of peasant-aristocratic Asian capitalism and modernity. Till today it remains the only event, which gives a glimpse of lost possibilities of a non-western, free, unfettered Asiatic personality and development. It outlines in detail the machinations and mindset of Imperial-liberal fundamentalism, its promise of liberty turning into a nightmare of oppression and cruelty. Amaresh Misra is a specialist in modern Indian history, written from a new, indigenous Asiatic perspective. Within Indian history, Misra is considered an expert on 1857, the first war of Indian Independence, also called the 'Indian Mutiny', by British historians. It is in 2 volumes-- an amazing sight! Happy reading!