It was a court battle between the first Prime Minister of India Jawahar Lal Nehru and Organiser, an English weekly backed by the RSS that led to restrictions on freedom of expression which we are debating today. The RSS had defended the sacred Sikh Shrine ‘Darbar Sahib’ at Amritsar twice when Muslim League led mobs attacked it in 1947. Did you know that one single anti-India and pro-China book ‘India’s China War’ written by Anglo-Australian journalist Neville Maxwell shaped the global narrative against India for more than five decades. It was a Swedish journalist Bertil Lintner who challenged it and turned the tables on Chinese propaganda with his book ‘China’s India War’ but even Indians don’t talk about it. Everyone remembers the 1962 war when India lost to China but there was another war in 1967 on Sikkim border where India took the revenge of 1967 and defeated China. Most of us don’t even know about this great victory! Indians have been made to remember the 1962 defeat and forget the glorious victory of 1967. Many such stories which comprise the forgotten history of India are part of this book. This forgotten history of India has been buried deep down in the dusty archives waiting to be told.
I read this book twice, to get a better understanding about the topics discussed. Almost every incident/story was unheard of until I read it in here. This book needs to be read by every Indian, be it a Hindu or Muslim. RSS is not about hardcore rightist Hindutva, it is one of the things that needs to be understood by everyone in India. Rather than fighting over our political Outlook, we should try to understand each other's political ideologies which will help spread brotherhood. This book does exactly that when it comes to "the Hindu ideology". All we know about is HM roits that have happened in the past. We need to know more about the atrocities that have happened in different minor pockets of India which have never been reported, be it the killings of Muslims during partition, the meenakshipuram conversions, the Moplah genocide or the " never mentioned, No where mentioned" atrocities against the Chitpawan brahmins in Maharashtra.
The title suits the content of this book i.e " the forgotten history of India"
Collection of interesting anecdotes. Arun Anand has covered a wide spectrum of subjects that shaped the contemporary post independence India, including the role of RSS in shaping it.