My own introduction to India’s first national uprising against the British rule happened at a young age. And it happened through a remarkable book by a remarkable writer, both having become inseparable from the legend of 1857. I was a schoolboy of 14 in Karachi in Sindh, the city of my birth where I spent the first 20 years of my life before migrating to this side of India after Partition. I was already touched by the winds of the freedom struggle in Sindh. Due to my interest in patriotic literature, I came to know about Vinayak Damodar Savarkar’s book 1857: The War of Independence. It was banned by the British and hence unavailable. Someone told me that I could get it from a person selling underground literature. I purchased it from my accumulated pocket money — for Rs 28, which was a lot of money those days.

I met Savarkar (1883-1966) only once — in November 1947. I had gone to Bombay for two days, on what was my first visit to the city. The person I was staying with asked me which places of attraction I wished to see. “Take me to Veer Savarkar’s house,” I said. As I sat in awe of his magnetic presence at his Shivaji Park residence, he asked me about the situation in Sindh and the condition of Hindus after Partition.

The book’s journey

I have still not forgotten the effect Savarkar’s book had on me. This book truly deserves the appellation “incendiary”, which is an honour when used by a foreign power that was so frightened by it that it was banned even before its actual publication. The story of the journey of the book’s manuscript from India to England, France, Germany, Holland and back, and the role it played in inspiring revolutionaries after its clandestine publication, is as thrilling as any of the battles fought in 1857. Savarkar wrote it in London, where he had gone to study law but soon got involved in revolutionary activities, when he was only 25. The original text in Marathi was completed in 1907, to mark the 50th anniversary of 1857, and was secretly sent to India. But it could not be printed in India because the British authorities, who had come to know of it, raided the printing press.

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