This book is a bit more serious but very captivating .. It is called “Great Speeches of Modern India” Edited by Rudranshu Mukherjee. I’ve always loved the idea of reading history through speeches. One of my favourite books in this genre is “Penguin book of modern indian speeches” (I am yet to finish it though). This one is also good nevertheless. Some of these also feature in the penguin book.
This book is very well edited i should say. The editors interview can be found here. What i loved the most about the book is the political nature of most of the speeches. Some of them will give you goosebumps :)
- The first speech that took me by surprise totally was Syed Ahmed Khan’s 1888 speech titled “One country, two nations” .. It makes such a thrilling read! .. In parts of this speech he makes radical statements like “….. we do not want to become subjects of the Hindus instead of the subjects of the ‘People of the book’ .As far as we can we should remain faithful to the English Government” .It makes you sit back and wonder about how (politically speaking) the situation has remained the same even after over 124 years of the speech! In today’s India Hindu-Muslim question is as delicate as ever. Reference: The recent ruckus over religion based reservations
- The next speech is Mushtaq Hussain’s 1906 speech about the Muslim League. Here again are some startling lines. Some of which go like .. “… our own prosperity is bound up with, and depends upon our loyalty to British rule in India” . I’ve never read muslim league stuff before.. guess its time now ;)
- Speeches by Gandhi .. Tilak .. Vivekananda .. Lord Curzon .. Nehru etc follow
- Veer Savarkar’s “Dangerous cult of absolute non-violence” again is a riveting speech. I have started reading another book by savarkar recently and i am not surprised with his anti-gandhi tones in this speech now ;)
- Mohammad Iqbal’s 1930 speech proposing an Independent Muslim India also makes for a very interesting read.
- This is followed by M.Singaravelu’s speech called “The death of God” which has strong atheist overtones
- Shyama Prasad Mukherjee’s speech on Calcutta killings makes you clench your fist .. whichever side of the argument you are on. There is something about the right wing speeches in this book.. both Hindu and Muslim right.. they are all very powerful. Wonder how it was to the actual listeners back then! His other speech on the special status given to Kashmir also is equally captivating
- Then comes Jinnah’s speech which Advani quoted when he went to Pakistan only to meet with a lot of brickbats from the Sangh Parivar.
- Godse’s speech about killing Gandhi is famous by now. Kripalani’s speech against the Hindu code bill also exposes the hypocricy of the congress back then which some call pseudo secularism today. Even today we do not have a uniform civil code!
- Jayaprakash Narayan’s “Importance of NGOs” speech was very new to me and i enjoyed it thoroughly. He speaks of “snatching the initiative from the hands of politicians, from the Parliament and the Legislatures and giving it back to the people” .. Interesting!
- Indira Gandhi’s emergency speech in 1975 has the best one liner i have heard in a long time. “The president has proclaimed the emergency. This is nothing to panic about” !!!
- Speeches by J R D Tata, Satyajit Ray, Rajiv Gandhi, Manmohan Singh, P V N Rao etc follow
- Another BJP-Right wing speech which will catch you attention is L K Advani’s “Why Ayodhya is a setback”. I remember reading about this in his autobiography.
- The book ends with some more recent speeches by Sonia Gandhi, Vajpayee,Advani, Amartya Sen . The last speech is on Buddha by Gopal Krishna Gandhi
I read a library copy of this book. I dont mind buying it again once i make enough money :P .. But i somehow feel the book has mainly political speeches with strong religious overtones :P .. atleast those are the ones that strike you hard after your finish reading the book and look back at it :)
