My father was an Indian “Freedom Fighter” who was imprisoned three
times. But England, for him, represented scientific modernity. He
inspired me to visit England to study scientific Sanskrit literature –
preserved in the British Museum. Because he believed: “Modern scientific
ideas and technology was copied from our ancient Sanskrit manuscripts
and that was the secret of technological advancement of the English (and
European) nations” thus claimed the late pundit patriot.
I too had participated in “Quit India” movement in 1942 by organizing
“Monkey Brigade” (vanar sena) passing on underground messages to the “
anti-British revolutionaries”. Ironically, England was still a model of
intellectual movements and “ the British were the most civilized people”
in my father’s judgement. A great Sanskrit scholar he had provided us
with life stories of English writers, and of scientists and inventors.
Often he would talk about mythological Puranic science fictions that had
now come to reality in the English inventions of Telegraph, telephones,
esteem engines and flying machines. The Moon flights had not yet taken
place.
I was still an anti-British young man when arrived in England ( December
1953). But to my surprise, the son of an anti-British agitator was free
to speak, and raise anti-British slogans in London’s famous Hyde Park.
With radical students groups I marched in anti-government demonstrations
in Trafalgar Square, and joined Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND).
Along with firebrand Socialist leader Rt. Hon. Tony Benn, I took part in
many demonstrations and joined the Aldermaston March. In a public park,
near Russell Square (London) we installed Mahatma Gandhi’s statue. It
was in London that I organized protest marches To Free Mandela of South
Africa, celebrated Liberation of Goa by the Indian forces, and
demonstrated against the invasion of Suez Canal by the Tory government
of the United Kingdom. I was politically and culturally a totally free
man to think and act according to my free will and right judgement.
I frequently visited the Science Museums, and studied in the London
University and Senate House Libraries. In the British Museum I offered
my homage to the chair where the messiah of Social Revolution Karl Marx
(1818-1883) sat for more than decade to write Das Kapital. Exiled from
European countries and his own homeland Germany, Marx freely criticized
England’s politico-economic system. Karl Marx is buried in the Archway
cemetery at the outskirts of London.
Critical ideas of dissent which I learned from my father under the
British Raj were consolidated in my later years in England where I
worked and received my Ph.D. at the University of London in 1960.
