Penguin Random House India has announced the acquisition and publication of journalist P Sainath’s upcoming book on India’s freedom struggle, The Last Heroes: Foot Soldiers of Indian Freedom. The book will be released on November 21, a whole twenty-five years after the publication of his devastating study of rural poverty in India, Everybody Loves a Good Drought.
The Last Heroes remembers the lesser-known fighters from India’s freedom struggle. The book tracks the role of ordinary, everyday people in achieving Independence. Farmers, labourers, homemakers, forest produce gatherers, artisans and others who stood up to the British. The Last Heroes tells their stories, giving them they recognition they truly deserve.
Among other things, the book highlights the distinction between Freedom and Independence that these fighters spoke of. By revealing the spectacular diversity of these foot soldiers who fought the great battles of freedom – Adivasis, Dalits, Muslims, Sikhs, and Hindus; OBCs, Brahmins; men, women and children, believers and atheists – The Last Heroes contends that Independence was not the gift of a handful of Oxbridge elites.
Talking about his second book, author P Sainath, said, ‘In the next five or six years, there will not be a single person alive who fought for this country’s freedom. Newer generations of young Indians will never get to meet, see, speak, or listen to India’s freedom fighters. That’s why and for whom I wrote this book. For quite a while now, we see young people being robbed of their history, denied any knowledge of what India’s fight for freedom and Independence was about – and who it was who spearheaded that struggle.’
