About his new The Last Heroes: Foot Soldiers of Indian Freedom, the Magsaysay Award-winning journalist P Sainath told Frontline that “if we do not know where we came from, we do not know where we are going.” He chose to recount the stories of 17 freedom fighters specifically for the benefit of young Indians – the full 50 percent of the country’s population still below 25 years of age – because “idealism is the default mode of youth. And they have been robbed of their history, their story, of what happened in the freedom struggle.”
Sainath added this penetrating insight: “There
is a government website called Azadi ka Amrut Mahotsav. The astonishing
achievement of this website is that it does not have a single photograph,
quote, video, or illustration of a living freedom fighter. There are videos and
photographs of Narendra Modi. A teenager would be forgiven for thinking of Modi
as a freedom fighter. You do have people who believe this. [If this is the
situation] what will you know about the freedom struggle and Independence?”
I have been thinking a lot about Sainath’s
sentiments this past week, in the run-up to yesterday’s delightful centenary
celebrations for Vaman Balkrishna Naique Prataprao Sardesai, whose immensely
inspirational story has been kept alive in our 21st century consciousness
almost entirely due to the tireless efforts of his amazing comrade and life
partner, the great Libia “Libby” Lobo Sardesai.
Let’s review a few facts about this brilliant man: always
literary and poetic in bent, he completed his school education at the Lyceum
and joined the Escola Médica in Panjim, but was caught distributing
anti-colonial literature, after which he spent months in jail and had his civil
rights suspended for five years. That is when Sardesai moved to Mahatma
Gandhi’s famous Sevagram Ashram at Wardha.
In her own words earlier this week, Libby told the media the
intense young intellectual eventually headed in Bombay in order to offer
satyagraha in the Goa freedom struggle, which had become much more intense due
to the dictator Salazar’s stubborn refusal to acknowledge the winds of
political change sweeping the world. Actually, it had also been Lobo’s own
heartfelt intention – this self-described young “chit of a girl” had grown into
an implacable anti-colonial radical under the influence of the inspirational
revolutionary M N Roy – but both of them and many others were prevented from
marching into Goa, in the aftermath of Portuguese firings and violent
atrocities on the border.
Libby explains that Sardesai joined All India Radio (where she
was already employed), where he worked for the External Services Division,
creating programming about “the problem of Goa” to be beamed abroad. But there
was an inherent frustration, because he could see no impact on his homeland:
“all communications were suspended. The people of Goa had to rely only on the
propaganda of the Portuguese, and they could not know anything about what was
happening in the outside world, and how the [freedom] movement was going on.
The people were getting desperate, and they were losing their morale. There was
no way of communicating with the Goans or educating and enlightening them in
any way.”
That is when several pieces of an extraordinary puzzle fell into
place. During the liberation of the tiny Portuguese enclaves of Dadra and Nagar
Haveli – which, uniquely, established a de facto “free state” until annexation
in 1961 – the Indian authorities had confiscated powerful wireless
transmitters, and a plot was hatched to use them to break the Portuguese
embargo on news in Goa. A small team of volunteers was assembled, comprising of
Libby Lobo and Vaman Sardesai along with the older anti-colonial intellectual
Nicolau Joao Menezes and his wife Alda.
Under the pressure of severe hardship conditions in the Western
Ghats, this initial quartet proved short-lived. The Menezes couple (who happen
to be my grand-uncle and aunt) quickly retreated, but not so Lobo and Sardesai,
whose resolve only increased, and they went even further into isolation, where
they remained undaunted for six long years, keeping up daily broadcasts of the
“Voice of Freedom” (Sodvonecho Awaz in Konkani) in what would become one of the
crucial interventions in the final demise of the colonial state. Rather
incredibly, via the fiat of the defence minister Krishna Menon himself, the
elated duo was sent aloft by the Air Force on 19th December 1961 to fly across
their newly liberated homeland, broadcasting the message that Goa was free.
All this is the stuff of legend, ready-made for Bollywood, but
the truly exceptional thing about Lobo and Sardesai is their commitment to each
other – eventually marrying on the anniversary of liberation in 1964 -and
ceaseless service right into the 21st century. Vamanbab became an IAS officer,
the co-convenor of INTACH, and the Ambassador of India to Angola (from where
the accompanying photo shows him receiving a medal for meritorious service from
that country’s prime minister). In addition, he continually served the cause of
literature, with just one example being the fine book released yesterday, who
won the Padma Shri award in 1992.
About Libby Lobo Sardesai, there is much more to be studied,
said, understood and celebrated, and it must be noted with deep regret that it
is Goa’s lasting shame that this incredible lady is not constantly consulted by
the so-called “leaders” who have inherited the state she helped to liberate. We
would be much better off, but perhaps there is some solace that we are still
blessed by her continuing presence, and razor-sharp understanding of our
society and culture.
Here,
another of Sainath’s comments bears dwelling upon: “All the people in the book
make a distinction between independence and freedom. When I ask in journalism
schools, why we fought for freedom, the responses and ignorance are appalling.
Independence [was] a project of liberation from empire. Freedom is much larger.
The finest distillation of the freedom struggle is enshrined in the ideals and
dictates of the Constitution of India. Justice for all, social, economic,
political. We have not attained any of it.”