Forgotten stories from my village, Harwai: The life and times of my father Pandit Ram Narayan Azad

The village of Harwai was barely one kilometre across, from end to end. Its people, like many others across India, toiled under the sun living a meagre existence of economic and caste oppression. As the Indian nationalist movement spread, there were many who worked relentlessly to guide the people of India towards lives of peace and dignity. When we think of the Indian freedom struggle, Gandhi, Nehru and just a few other names come to mind. There were thousands of people like Ram Narayan Azad who are no longer remembered though they gave their all for the country. Hari Govind Narayan Dubey is a skilled storyteller. The incidents and anecdotes he recounts take us beyond the shallow façade of the collective memory of the period and allow us to experience life in rural India under the British administration. “Jailed for breaking the Salt Law, my father returned home in 1931, but was imprisoned again and again, like so many others in the freedom struggle. He was away so often that we were on our own most of the time. “All through the years that I was growing up, from 1930 to 1945, government raids were a regular occurrence. I would come home and see the house surrounded by uniformed men. They would enter and confiscate everything they could find. “My mother got used to having nothing in the house. She kept provisions for just two or three days. She would cook, and as soon as we finished eating, we would run and hide the utensils in another place where they would not be found and seized.” This book can be enjoyed by readers of all ages. In particular, for anyone interested in a first-person account of the Indian nationalist movement, it gives us a ringside view of the Swadeshi movement, the Mainpuri Conspiracy Case, the early years of the Indian National Congress, how the salt law was broken, how the banned annual Congress session in Calcutta was conducted, how dhara 144 was overturned, the first elections held in British India, the Tripuri crisis and Pant Prastav, individual satyagraha and, most dramatic of all, Quit India and life in jail, followed by incidents that took place after Partition.