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News18
8 hours ago
- Politics
- News18
Independence Day 2025: Essay Writing Tips And Ideas For 15th August School Competition
Independence Day essay writing: Get inspired this I-Day with essay writing tips and topics for students. Explore India's freedom journey, heroes, and patriotic themes for 15 August Independence Day essay writing tips for students: On the 79th Independence Day, schools across India will be organising cultural programs and dance performances to celebrate the patriotic fervour felt by citizens and create awareness among young minds about India's great freedom struggle. While the traditional pre-Independence Day function remains a common form of 15th August celebrations in schools, many educational institutes also arrange essay competitions for students to take part in. Through these competitions, students learn about our freedom fighters and how the democratic and secular country we live in today came to be despite 200 years of British dominance. Here are some of the tips and essay ideas that students can follow and give their best shot at winning their school prize for Independence Day. An essay detailing how the British colonial rule began in the mid-18th century and expanded aggressively through the East India Company before it was first challenged by the Revolt of 1857. Figures like Bahadur Shah Zafar, Rani Lakshmi Bai and Mangal Pandey fought with bravery against the British army and awakened the nationalist sentiment against the white narcissists, laying the foundation for the freedom struggle. Writing on Freedom Fighters While unsuccessful, the Revolt of 1857 laid the groundwork for civil resistance led by several of our political leaders and revolutionaries. Students can write an essay on how Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA) leaders such as Bhagat Singh and Chandrashekhar Azad gave the British a taste of their own medicine by opting for violence to protect the rights of the citizens from unlawful practices. They may also focus on the peaceful civil resistance movements led by Father of the Nation, Mahatma Gandhi, including the Non-Cooperation Movement (1920), Salt March (1930) and Quit India Movement (1942). Students are also advised to learn and write about Jawaharlal Nehru, Subhas Chandra Bose and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, among other leaders, to truly expand their understanding of the freedom struggle and underline how youth can take inspiration and take part in the national welfare today. Role of Women In the Independence Struggle The brave women of India were not behind and fought for the country's Independence with equal courage. Students can write an essay on how the journey and bravery of Rani Lakshmi Bai during the 1857 Revolt inspired women across the country to take part in the freedom movement. Whether it is Sarojini Naidu, who broke stereotypes as a poet, speaker, and political leader, or Kasturba Gandhi for her participation in civil disobedience movements alongside her husband. Students can also write about Aruna Asaf Ali for fearlessly leading protests and becoming a national icon during the Quit India Movement. About the Author Nibandh Vinod Nibandh Vinod is a seasoned journalist with 26 years of experience, specializing in covering events, festivals, and driving SEO content for A tech-savvy person, Nibandh works closely with a young More Stay updated with the latest education! Get real-time updates on board exam results 2025, entrance exams such as JEE Mains, Advanced, NEET, and more. Find out top schools, colleges, courses and more. Also Download the News18 App to stay updated! view comments First Published: Disclaimer: Comments reflect users' views, not News18's. Please keep discussions respectful and constructive. Abusive, defamatory, or illegal comments will be removed. News18 may disable any comment at its discretion. By posting, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Mint
06-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Mint
Why writer Yashpal's feminism provokes thought 50 years on
The plot of Dada Comrade, the Hindi communist writer Yashpal's (1903-76) debut novel (originally published in 1941), was informed by the events of his own tumultuous youth. As an idealistic young student in Punjab in the 1920s, Yashpal joined the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA) alongside revolutionaries like Chandrashekhar Azad and Bhagat Singh. Some of his colleagues, however, did not appreciate the young Yashpal's romance with the 16-year-old Prakashvati Pal (later his wife) because they viewed marriage and domesticity as obstacles in the road to revolution. After a group of HSRA members unsuccessfully attempted to assassinate Yashpal in 1930, the organisation was torn asunder and never really reunited, mirroring the rift between Yashpal and Azad. These events are fictionalised to varying degrees in the book, and the female lead Shailbala is based on aspects of Prakashvati. In the introduction to her 2022 English translation of Dada Comrade, scholar Simona Sawhney had written, 'Today, many readers may question the ways in which Yashpal conceived of equality, revolution and gender. Yashpal's feminism, for instance, is not the same as mine, but that does not prevent me from recognizing it as a feminism: a discourse that wrestled, in its own way, with questions of gender, sexuality, power and equality." Sawhney's introduction sought to contextualise Yashpal's unique and complex engagement with gender politics. This endeavour is more fully realised in the recently released essay collection, Yashpal: On Gender and Revolutionary Thought, published by Orient BlackSwan and edited by Sawhney alongside Kama McLean. The 17 essays collected here are based on some of Yashpal's best-known works: novels like Divya (1945), Gita (1946), Manushya Ke Roop (1949), short stories like Holi Ka Mazaak ('The Holi Joke') and Tumne Kyun Kaha Main Sundar Hoon? ('Why Did You Say I Am Beautiful?'), as well as landmark essays from the journal Viplav, which the writer founded in the 1940s. Three different essays, of course, are devoted to his magnum opus Jhootha Sach, a novel published in two parts in Hindi over 1958-60, and translated into English as a single, 1,100-page novel by his son Anand under the name This is Not That Dawn in 2010. What makes Yashpal such a compelling subject of study from both literary and the historiographic points of view? (Sawhney and McLean, after all, are professors of literature and history, respectively.) For one, he was one of the rare male Indian writers of his era—and this is doubly true for Hindi literature—who not only centred women's stories, but through dark humour and satirical techniques, exposed the collective complicity of Indian society in the oppression of women. Set in the 1st century BCE, Divya follows a high-born woman who decides to become a prostitute after realising that she is living in a gilded cage and that, in several meaningful ways, the courtesans and prostitutes of the era have more agency than her. This is Not That Dawn begins on the following tragicomic note, where a pair of daughters-in-law are trying their level best to 'perform" grief to the satisfaction of the men around them. 'Both daughters-in-law were present when the old woman breathed her last. The elder told the younger to announce the death of their mother-in-law with a scream of unbearable pain, mindful of the ritual at the hour of terrible grief. The younger one was at such a loss that she could not do this right. To observe the tradition properly, the elder went to the window herself and cried out in the required loud, heart-rending voice, as an eagle might cry in agony when pierced with an arrow." Second, as some of the essays in On Gender and Revolutionary Thought prove, Yashpal's engagement with gender issues was also reflective of the way his overall politics evolved with time. Xiaoke Ren, in his essay Narrative Critique of the Congress Rule in Yashpal's 'Jhootha Sach', shows us how the writer's caricatures of self-centered, predatory politicians use gender relations to underline Yashpal's views on power and its corrupting influence. In Jhootha Sach, the protagonist Tara Puri, a Partition refugee and rape survivor from Lahore now building a new life in Delhi, is crudely propositioned by a politician who promises her that he can get her a job working in the movies—suggesting, additionally, that Punjabi women ('free with their bodies") like herself have done very well in that industry. The implications about both Tara, in particular, and Punjabi women, in general, are painfully clear. A bittersweet and touching portrayal of Yashpal and Prakashvati's marriage is provided by their son Anand in Yashpal, My Father, which is the last entry in the book. Francesca Orsini, in her essay On Her Own Terms: Viplav, Women and Prakashvati Pal, describes how Prakashvati charted her own intellectual path through essays in the journal Viplav. Orsini's entry is particularly interesting because Dada Comrade, the female lead Shailbala isn't really allowed by Yashpal to develop revolutionary strands of thought by herself—both her romantic and political awakenings follow the lead of her beloved, Harish (based on Yashpal himself). My favourite essay in the collection, however, is Punjabi Refugee Women in Urban Spaces in 'Jhootha Sach' by Ritu Madan, because it looks at the bigger picture presented by Yashpal's portrayals of Punjabi female refugees in 1950s Delhi. We see how they are viewed with suspicion initially. Many of them are unfamiliar with the gendered social mores of Delhi, especially in terms of what to wear at which place, which lanes are to be avoided after dark, et cetera. But once a section of educated, driven refugees manage to place themselves in 'respectable", often English-speaking jobs, their 'foreign" bodies (alluring and a-threat-to-the-social-fabric in equal measure) acquire the blunting, assimilatory edge of the white collar. These women, then, have a hand in shaping the very foundation of Delhi's modernity, a modernity that gives them a place in society, but under strictly demarcated terms. Madan writes, 'As Delhi is transformed in the novel from refugee city to capital city by the labour of the Partition migrants who settle into new homes and occupations, Punjabi migrant women become increasingly invisible in the city. By discipling their bodies into 'normative femininity', they forfeit unconditional access to public space, and inhabit it purposefully, for education, employment or shopping. As they occupy the city with their disciplined bodies, waiting at bus stops in their clean and starched saris to reach places of work where they labour honestly (…), these Punjabi women redefine the city as the modern and developing capital of a new country." The emphasis on educated, upper-caste characters in Yashpal's corpus, however, is also the key to understanding the limitations of his feminism. As Sawhney explains in her own essay (which opens the book), upper-caste protagonists like Tara from Jhootha Sach encounter two kinds of supporting characters quite often—the oppressed lower-caste woman who is usually a peer, and the bitter, long-suffering woman who's usually from a generation above. Both these recurring 'types" in Yashpal's fiction are flat, unconvincing portrayals because they seem to exist only to further the education of the young, educated, idealistic upper-caste protagonist. 'If education is the single most important factor shared by the women protagonists of Yashpal's novels, it is also what sets them apart from other women, including their own mothers and aunts who are never able to provide guidance or support to these young women," as she argues. Aditya Mani Jha is a writer based in Delhi.
Scroll.in
26-04-2025
- Politics
- Scroll.in
‘Pratap: A Defiant Newspaper': A thrilling account of a persistent voice of dissent in India
Chandar Mohan and Jyotsna Mohan's Pratap: A Defiant Newspaper opens with a tense and unfortunate moment in the history of Pratap, when its Jalandhar newspaper office became the target of a parcel bomb on June 24, 1983. Chandar Mohan had dismissed the tightly packed, difficult to open parcel when the peon first brought it into the office: 'Thinking that it must be the usual propaganda stuff that newspapers were being flooded with in those days'. However, 'The package had exploded – three employees were grievously injured, two of whom died in the nearby Civil Hospital'. Receiving a parcel bomb at a newspaper bureau was unprecedented, and the Pratap office became its unfortunate first victim. However, this terrible incident was immediately coded in the language of sacrifice. The authors record that Indresh Kumar, one of the employees who died, said on the way to the hospital, 'Sir, I have also made a sacrifice for the country.' This poignant snippet sets the stage for the book that presents the Urdu language daily Pratap and its Hindi language counterpart Vir Pratap as two of the most persistent voices of dissent in both pre- and post-partition India. Revolution and freedom The book's authors, journalists Chandar Mohan and Jyotsna Mohan, are very much part of the history of the newspaper that they set out to recount – Chandar Mohan ran the newspaper till it closed down in 2017, and his grandfather, Mahashay Krishan, established it in March 1919 in Lahore. Pratap' s story is interwoven with the story of the city's anti-colonial struggle. Mahashay Krishan's son Virendra was a college-going student when he encountered the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA). HSRA was a prominent revolutionary organisation boasting strident members like Chandra Shekhar Azad, Bhagat Singh and Raj Guru, revered household names today. The authors recount HSRA events from the point of view of Mahashay Krishan and Virendra. At several points in the book, the authors paint the figure of the revolutionary as exceptional – 'Indian revolutionaries led a life less ordinary'. However, the book's specific contribution lies in situating Virendra's story: he was one of the relatively minor protagonists in the constellation of glistening HSRA figures whose stories are often better documented and celebrated. Virendra was part of the sea of dissenting figures who grieved Lala Lajpat Rai's death following the brutal lathi charge in Lahore. He was also one of the students who was immediately arrested after prominent HSRA members carried out the murder of John P Saunders to avenge Lala Lajpat Rai's death. He was apparently taking an examination when Saunders was killed, but was immediately locked up as one of the perpetrators who carried out the murder. Here, the authors signal at another experience, far more common perhaps, of the revolutionary who, like Virendra, was many times young, able-bodied, never lacking in zealous anger or energy, but 'exhibiting the distance between their passion and experience'. Historians like Kama Maclean, Daniel Elam and Aparna Vaidik have in recent years engaged with the potent idea of uncertainty, tentativeness, and failure embedded in the anti-colonial revolutionary impulse: not all went to plan, yet it was significant and mattered. Virendra himself went to jail nine times in the anti-colonial struggle for freedom. The book brings to life some other vivid details of unknown almost-heroes and almost-foiled plans. The authors recount a plan that Virendra and his friends Durga Das and Ranbir made to bomb the ballroom at Lahore's Lawrence Gardens. They did the recce, found the execution too ambitious, and decided to target instead the Governor of Punjab. Of Virendra and friends, the only one who knew how to shoot was married with a one-year-old child, which disqualified him. The friends then recruited a student of Law at Punjab University called Kamala to do the deed. Kamala volunteered to learn shooting, but they ultimately dropped the plot because of Durga Das' misgivings: 'The three revolutionaries…would be branded cowards for using a woman for such a dangerous mission – more so if she were to name them'. The authorial voice turns sardonic here with respect to women's roles in these revolutionary spaces, writing: 'The time had not yet come, after all, for Bhagat Singh's female counterpart to rise'. Kamala remains entirely anonymous: she went by her pseudonym and promptly got married after this incident: 'the chapter of the mysterious Kamala ended there'. Witnessing history Another meaningful recovery the book makes is its lingering focus on language politics, particularly significant given that in contemporary Indian imagination, Hindi and Urdu have been neatly divided along religious lines. This is a book about pre- and post-partition Punjab and makes an evocative point about Punjab's relationship to Urdu, where it was widespread: 'In Punjab, if a report was not published in the Urdu press, it was not credible enough from an Indian nationalistic perspective'. Naturally, therefore, the Urdu Pratap came first, followed by the Hindi Vir Pratap. (It also must be noted that these newspapers are not related to Kanpur's better-known Pratap, under the editorship of Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi). The book is pieced together from a variety of sources: scholarly research, first-hand accounts, personal interviews, Virendra's memoir Ve Inqalabi Din (Destination Freedom) and Chandar Mohan's own memory of working in the company. One rich source is the newspaper/s itself, which readers can catch some tantalising glimpses of via accompanying images. For instance, Pratap 's editorials being left open as big blank white gaps during the Emergency serve as a spectacular source that palpably places Pratap 's protest against press censorship. However, given the undeniable access both authors possess to the primary archives, we find barely any information about what Pratap actually published through its century-long run. This gap should perhaps serve as an invitation to scholars and writers interested in an investigation of these newspapers. The book often reads like a thriller, with fearful twists and turns at every corner. It also reads hurriedly, as if it needed to be pieced together fast, and the narrative needed to run uninterrupted. It sometimes leads to giving us a strong sense of urgency about the time. This particularly holds true for the years a young Virendra was actively participating in revolutionary politics – his incarceration years make for poignant reading. At times, however, this urgent writing style also makes it difficult to follow. Overall, the book provides an accessible way to delve into the history of a notable newspaper house's anti-colonial struggle against the British in India.
