Books | Tuhin Sinha, author of The Great Tribal Warriors of Bharat

 I Don’t Think That a Sense of Alienation Which May Have Existed a Decade Ago, Exists Anymore

Since so little material is available on these tribal leaders, what was the most difficult part of writing this anthology?

Writing about subaltern history or recording a part of history that has not been documented with authenticity is always a challenge. Both, my co-author Ambalika and I were aware of it. I am not a professional historian, so I was aware of the limitations of that front also. We have quite essentially referred to the research papers on freedom fighters. There is immense material in public domain on freedom fighters who belonged to the later part of the movement. We have documented stories starting 1784 but as we come to the more recent movement, especially the 20^th century for example, Alluri Raju, who led a movement in parts of present state Andhra Pradesh, or of we refer to Komaram Bheem, or Dashriben Chaudhury, who was a Gandhian by nature and who dedicated her life to Gandhian pursuits, or if you refer to Jaipal Munda, a lot of material was available on these freedom fighters who belonged to the later part of the freedom movement. We have done a mix of various resources. Not only have we referred to research papers, where not enough was available in public domain. My co-author was in touch with some of descendants of the more recent freedom fighters. Helen Lepcha was one of the freedom fighters covered in the book. She again was Gandhian, who played a crucial role in shielding Shubhash Chandra Bose when he was in hiding. We followed different modes of digging out information. The stories are short because we were conscious of the fact that it is better to keep a story short than to reveal information which cannot fully be authenticated. The book intends retelling of stories with a ready reckoner of sorts for the present generation who are not aware of a parallel freedom movement which existed but was never brought to the fore.

What was the criteria in selecting these 17 names and no more or no less?

We have tried to be as inclusive as possible. Three of the stories are from the northeast, five are from present Jharkhand and Bihar, one story is from Orissa and there are stories from every part of the country. This has been the first collection of its nature. While experimenting with this new domain, we were conscious that we did not want it to be a very lengthy book and specifically because we wanted to bring it out this year, when India celebrates her 75^th Independence Day.

Would it be fair to say that for tribal in India, resistance to outsiders was resistance to outside influences and invasion of their way of life? And in some form this resistance continues till this day?

In fact, the fr