History against the grain

Indians are a study in contradiction.

- AJAY VIR JAKHAR

We remember selectively, forgive conveniently, and are culturally conditioned to avert our gaze from inconvenient truths.We lionise freedom fighters, yet uncritically revere the royal lineages that helped crush the 1857 uprising. The Battle of Narnaul weaves threads into a compelling story of Rao Tula Ram and his gallant colleagues at the Nasibpur ka Yudh, which was a part of the uprising of 1857, popularly remembered as India’s first war of independence.

Though this is not the central intention of the book, one cannot be spellbound by the betrayal of the ruling principalities of the times. Principalities such as those of Patiala, Jodhpur, Bikaner and Jind chose to side with East India Company against rebels who wanted to remove the yoke of company dominion over the subcontinent.

One of the most unsettling truths of Indian colonial history that the book brings out is not merely that a foreign power ruled the subcontinent, but that Indians were repeatedly deployed to suppress Indian resistance to that rule. Books on historical characters tend to be patronising to the protagonist, this one is no exception. The authors have written the book in a narrative nonfiction style to make it engaging to the lay reader.