Thread by @lilastories

We now see how a book is banned even before release. A certain British gentleman seems responsible for this.

This is not new.

It happened before in 1907.

An Indian wrote a history book.
Brits banned it even before it released.

That Indian? Veer Savarkar.

#bloomsburyindia

It's funny to me because I'm writing the chapters about how Savarkar tried to get his book published but found it impossible as the British empire threatened and scared every publisher.

The modus operandi hasn't changed in 113 years. #bloomsburyindia

Savarkar wrote a book about the history of the 1857 revolt, and was the first one to call it the First War Of Indian Independence, as opposed to Sepoy Mutiny.

Obviously the British didn't like that. #bloomsburyindia

He wrote it in Marathi at first, in London, using sources from the British library's India Office. He even won over a racist librarian who then opened up secret documents to him, like proceeds of the parliament from 1857-58.
#bloomsburyindia

Anyway. He wrote the book. He was already on the radar of Scotland Yard, and when they heard he was writing a book, they inserted spies into his boarding house, who stole a few chapters of his manuscript. #bloomsburyindia

And then they proscribed it. Basically banned it. Anyone possessing a copy in India would be prosecuted and it was illegal to bring in copies into India by land or sea.

Not air, air travel wasn't a thing so I'm tempted to insert Amelia Earhart airdropping copies into Mumbai.

So he sent the manuscript to his brother in Nasik. And when he tried to get it published, every publisher he tried to publish it with ended up getting raided and ruined, and the rest got scared enough to say they wouldn't publish it.

So he sent back the manuscript to Savarkar. He and his friends tried getting it published in France. But every publisher had a lawyer tell them they would get into deep trouble with British authorities for publishing it. Welp. They all said no.

So then they went to Germany, because as a center for Sanskrit and Indology, it might be easier to get devanagari fonts to print in.

It wasn't as easy as "download font". You actually had to have the metal letters available and set them manually

But German efficiency didn't translate into accuracy, and the copies weren't readable.

Damn.

So Savarkar and gang decided to translate it into English and get it published again.

Now the translation ran into the same problems, on a much larger scale, because now publishers in Europe could actually read the content and know it could be problematic for them.

They traipsed all over Europe and didn't find anyone willing to publish them.

Finally they found a small publisher in the Netherlands. And to keep this operation out of trouble, they spread rumors that the book was getting printed in France!

Now that they had a whole lot of copies, it was on to the next challenge: actually getting it to people!

They could sell it in England and France, because it was legal to. But they had to do it secretly. They sold it for a few shillings each, at small secret events. #bloomsbury

But the real challenge was, how do you get it to India?

They shipped it with fake book covers, like "Pickwick Papers" and other popular pulp books, and then distributed it using their networks.

This was all in 1908-1910. In the '20s, another great Indian patriot got it reprinted and distributed widely.

That Patriot?

Bhagat Singh.

Not only that. Reading the book was a prerequisite to joining his Hindustan Republican Association!

In the barracks of Netaji's Indian National Army in the 40s, you found several copies of The First War Of Indian Independence..... In their Tamil translation!

Such was the reach.
#BloomsburyPublication

Why was this book so popular?

Because it took inspiration from the war of 1857, to get the British armed forces, which was heavily Indian, to revolt.

The British empire could not be sustained without these boots on the ground. They just needed to be made aware of their power.

That was Savarkar's whole intent with the book - to use our history to awaken Indians to their own power.

It sparked revolutionary movements in the 1910s (Gadar, Hindu-German Conspiracy), the 20s and 30s (Bhagat Singh, Rashbehari Bose) and the 40s (INA, Naval Mutiny).

Most of these didn't work as planned, but they could well have!

And eventually, Bose's INA and the Naval Mutiny of 1946 scared the British enough to realize they couldn't rely on Indians in the army to maintain their empire. The empire unravelled soon after.
#bloomsburyindia

Sources for this thread: @vikramsampath's book on Savarkar and @sanjeevsanyal's Ocean Of Churn.

#BloomsburyPublication

So yeah, this sort of censure is just a new chapter of The Empire Strikes Back. But this time, we have technology on our side, and @GarudaPrakashan.

Anyway. This is one of the reasons my novel about India House, which contains this story of the publication of Savarkar's book, as well as the story of how he eventually ended up at Kalapani, will be self-published.

To support this effort, I need your help and feedback! Subscribe to my Substack to read novel excerpts and other tidbits about history and the writing world!

lila.substack.com

Two emails a week max. Uplifting content. No angry rants. No current affairs commentary.

This is so I can reach y'all when my novel is ready. It's half done now and I'm hustling to get my first draft done before the end of this year!

And support indie
authors! Off the top of my head
* @greatbong who y'all know, but read his fiction and support his patreon!
* @ShaunakSA who writes contemporary Desi spy thrillers
* @authorAneesh whose history books are top-notch.
* @HUFToday who has a great book on Vijayanagar

What a fun time to be alive - you can read Savarkar's banned book now. Online. For free. And criticize the crap out of it. And rate it as many or as few stars as you want on Goodreads!

columbia.edu/cu/lweb/digita…

Enjoy!

And while she is very mainstream and very popular now, she started off indie and self published and is a strong encouraging force for up and coming Indian authors.

Buy the books of @Sai_swaroopa if you are among the five people who haven't yet!