In ‘The Great Ones’, a session moderated by Raghu Karnad that articulated upon the challenges of identifying men and women of stature from the long canon of Indian history, author Ira Mukhoty and India scholar Sunil Khilnani discussed the contrasting place these heroes and heroines occupy in our nation’s conscience.
Karnad, journalist and author of the Second World War saga, Farthest Field , set the pace with his comparison of two men — Chhatrapati Shivaji and Sardar Vallabhai Patel. “Shivaji was a symbol of defiance against the unifiers of that time, the Mughals, while Patel worked towards the integration of the princely states. It is ironic that these two, whose statues compete to be the largest on the planet, embody opposing principles.”
Karnad then invited the speakers to offer a glimpse into their books — Mukhoty’s Heroines and Khilnani’s Incarnations: A history of India in Fifty Lives — with an insight into a character selected by them who didn’t necessarily belong to the “canon of great ones”.
Mukhoty chose the courtesan Amrapali, a figure “very far in our past”. “She is symbolic of our problem with record keeping where women are concerned. It takes a lot of care for her fragile memory to be brought to life. That she is remembered at all is because she is contemporary with the Buddha.”
For Khilnani, writing on figures whose lives are more deeply inscribed in the history we remember, the task of elimination was more difficult. “I moved away from taking a human life and upsizing it, and tried to re-humanise these figures, often those who were not very triumphant, such as Chidambaram Pillai, an upcountry lawyer and a southern outpost of the Swadeshi movement, who is little known outside of Tamil Nadu. When he was put in prison, he lost his audience. We tend to think that in a nationalist story, prison is a great schooling ground as it was for Gandhi, Mandela or King. But prison was devastating for many. When we remember these figures, we must also remember those who didn’t turn up in the telephone book of victors.”
Mukhoty also spoke about women such as Mira Bai, whose character with time was either sanitised or deified that they bore little resemblance to whom they actually were. She addressed the popular perception of Rani Laxmibai leaping from the walls of Jhansi fort, a feat that is impossible given its height, and the queen’s thoughts that often bordered on suicide. “These were frail women who overcame their failures to lead, and that is where their heroism lies.”
The author said what made these women heroic was the love for a cause despite the price they paid for it. “Draupadi was a counterfoil to Sita. A lot more women need to be angry for things to change. We need to reclaim our image of these women to know who we were 5,000 years ago.”
Khilnani discussed how some figures are a constant in history although they reappear centuries apart. “The Buddha disappeared in 1 CE, but was back in 20th Century India, when his political message was part of a subterranean rhythm to our history. The common fact was that leaders such as Vivekananda, Bose and Bhagat Singh were rebels, but the irony is that they are being celebrated at a time when any form of dissent is seen as anti-national.”
