‘The struggle of man [humans] against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting,’ wrote Milan Kundera in one of his works.
This powerful quote is reminder of many things, of which one is the act of remembering. The very act of remembering is not a neutral act but laden with ideological considerations and biases. This hold truer when we remember historical events and figures of political importance. How we remember past events and figures, what are the things and acts that we omit or leave out from remembering and what we remember is motivated by our ideological considerations and political projects.
One such popular act of ritualised remembering is that of the great Santhal rebellion that took place in mid-19th century in British India.
Every year the Santhal rebellion and its leaders Sidhu and Kanhu Murmu are remembered in ritualistic way by different political parties and communities, all from different perspectives. But beneath all these different ways of remembering there lies a unitary theme; that the Santhal rebellion was one of the first expressions of revolt against the British colonial regime.
This framework, though true but limited, has become so dominant that the Santhal rebellion is now merely seen as a part in a series of similar such events that took place in
— source thewire.in | Harsh Vardhan, Shivam Mogha | 30/Jun/2022