Rewrite freedom movement to hail grassroot tyagis: Governor

TIRUCHY: Governor RN Ravi appealed to the researchers here on Monday to re-write freedom movement history which was narrated by the Indian National Congress. The narrative has left lots of freedom fighters at the grassroots level who had really fought challenging their lives out of it, he said.

Speaking at National College here, Governor Ravi termed that English was not the only option for communication during the freedom struggle. Those who were fighting at the grassroots level communicated in regional languages. Hence, he called upon the researchers and academicians to collect the literature in regional languages on the freedom movement.

“The basic narrative of national freedom movement does not do justice to those who fought on the field,” he said adding “The national freedom movement was available in folklore and the other narrative literatures in regional languages, but they are not documents and the researchers and academicians should work more on trying to collect those literatures.”

Charging that there is no clarity in the national freedom movement narrative documented by the Indian National Congress, Ravi said, “The national freedom movement was a mass movement and it was not only by the Indian National Congress, but there were far more people who fought for the country and we should not forget them.”

Meanwhile, the Governor said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched a campaign of unsung heroes and he, after assuming charge as the Governor of Tamil Nadu, could collect only less than 30 unsung heroes from Tamil Nadu. But, originally there are more numbers and the list has started to increase now, he noted.