Today is a sacred day in the long history of our Motherland. A day becomes sacred when it is associated with the life of an outstanding historical personality — a hero or a martyr, a saint or a social reformer — who meant a lot to the nation. But its sacredness grows manifold when it is associated with the heroism and sacrificing spirit of an entire nation struggling unitedly to recover its freedom from foreign rule. May 10 is one such super-sacred day in the history of India for it marked, 150 years ago, the beginning of what subsequently came to be regarded as India’s First War of Independence.

I pay my respectful homage to all those brave sons and daughters of India who fought in that war to liberate India from the yoke of an alien people from a faraway island, who had come to India as traders but became its colonial rulers. We know some names of the leaders and martyrs of the war of 1857 — Mangal Pandey, Bahadur Shah Zafar, Rani Laxmibai of Jhansi, Nanasaheb Peshwa of Kanpur, his close confidantes Azimullah Khan and Tatia Tope, Raja Kunwar Sinh of Jagdishpur in Bihar, Maulvi Ahmed Shah of Oudh, and many others. But the names of countless others have either entered the oblivion of history or are still lying unexplored and unsung in local histories across the vast expanse of the then united India. All of them deserve to be gratefully remembered.

Of course, on this occasion, we should not forget that in several places in India the flame of the struggle for freedom had been lit by patriots well before 1857. Two great names that come to my mind are: Veerapandya Kattabomman of Tamil Nadu, who waged a guerilla war against the British and sacrificed his life in it, and Rani Chennamma of Kittur in Karnataka.

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