In Search of Freedom: Journeys through India and South-East Asia

9 August 1942: a group of women raised the tricolour inside the Lahore Women’s Jail, but this act of heroism went unrecorded. Inspired by ordinary people doing extraordinary acts of courage, Sagari Chhabra journeyed across India, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore and Burma, seeking out men and women of the INA – forgotten freedom fighters of India, joined for a time in a universal human quest. In Search of Freedom is an account of how the story of India’s independence marginalizes people who do not ‘officially’ belong to independent India. This include the brave hearts of the Rani of Jhansi Regiment, the world’s first all-woman military wing which had women from the Indian subcontinent and South-East Asia who had never been to India, many of whom, after the army disbanded, went back to their ‘regular’ lives. It also chronicles the many quiet acts of courage that don’t feature in history textbooks, but without which the history of this land would have been different. It asks important questions: Why did these freedom fighters remain silent? Why were they not recognized and honoured? Why did they not receive even the paltry pension that is the due of freedom fighters? Personal and political, historical and contemporary, this in an invaluable account of India’s unknown and unacknowledged freedom fighters, of what it meant to fight for the freedom of the country and yet remain largely in oblivion. It is also an insightful narrative of the contemporary situation in India and South-East Asia, particularly what it is like to live in Burma under the military regime.