Rudranghsu Mukherjee - The Great Speeches of Modern India

By the same author

Awadh in Revolt, 1857-58: A Study of Popular Resistance

Spectre of Violence: The 1857 Kanpur Massacres

Mangal Pandey: Brave Martyr or Accidental Hero?

The Penguin Gandhi Reader (editor)

India: Then and Now (co-author)

Trade and Politics in the Indian Ocean World: Essays in Honour

of Ashin Das Gupta (co-editor)

RANDOM HOUSE INDIA

Published by Random House India in 2011

Introduction and introductory notes Rudrangshu Mukherjee 2007

Introductory notes to speeches by Mani Shankar Aiyar,

Andr Bteille, Somnath Chatterjee, Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan

and Aruna Roy Rudrangshu Mukherjee 2011

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EPUB ISBN 9788184002348

For

Shobita

To talk and laugh, and to do each other kindnesses; to read pleasant books together; to pass from lightest jesting to talk of deepest things and back again: to differ without rancour, to teach each other and to learn from each other; these proceeding from our hearts as we gave affection and received it back, and shown by face, by voice, by the eyes, and by a thousand other pleasing ways, kindled a flame.

Contents

Part One
1880s1947

Part Two
19472007

Preface to the Paperback Edition

The fact that this book is going in for a paperback edition is ample proof that people are interested in reading speeches. One reason for this is that the text of a speech helps to capture a slice of history even though the speech-making aspects are lost in the written word. For this edition, I have corrected a few errors that were brought to my notice. More importantly, I have added five more speeches to the original. Two out of the five that have been added are previously unpublished and I am deeply grateful to Aruna Roy and Mani Shankar Aiyar for allowing me to read these speeches and for the permission to print them.

Introduction

For last years words belong to last years language

And next years words await another voice

Since our concern was speech, and speech impelled us

To purify the dialect of the tribe

And urge the mind to aftersight and foresight

T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding

Speeches are meant to be spokenand heard. For this reason, a speech is fundamentally different from other forms of written text, for it is not simply dependent on the words alonethough they are the vital components of a good speechbut on certain other skills to do with voice and even gesture. A good orator brings to a speech something more persuasive and moving than the power of the written word and these qualities often prove to be ephemeral, losing something of themselves in printed form. But there are certain speeches that retain their emotive charge. Think of Abraham Lincolns Gettysburg address and those wordsgovernment of the people, by the people and for the peoplewhich have become the most quoted definition of democracy. Or think of Winston Churchills memorable speeches during the Second World War. At the time they were made, Churchills speeches roused the British people and sustained their morale during their darkest hour. Even today, they make stirring reading and so many of the phrases and sentences that he used have become part of the English language. This book brings together some of the speeches made in India, from the end of the nineteenth century to the beginning of the twenty-first, which retain their power as written texts.