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The Indian freedom struggle is an event that is both over-determined and under-determined. Books – both laudatory and critical – abound about the Indian National Congress-led political movement for independence. Certain events and characters – the Revolt of 1857, the Dandi March, the Quit India Movement, the revolutionaries of the 1920s and 1930s – Bhagat Singh, Chandrashekhar Azad and their compatriots – have achieved the status of legend. But at the same time, other events and characters remain obscure.

How many people know, for example, that the Indian communist movement and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh were both born, almost together, in the first decade of the 20th century, in a Savarkar-run house in London called India House? Until recent books by Kavitha Rao and Ole Birk Laursen, the contributions of the Indian anarchists – Virendranath Chattopadhyaya, M.P.T. Acharya and others – were virtually unknown.

The Indian freedom movement is like one of those back-lanes in a city, parts of which, at night, are cast in an almost blinding illumination, and parts in deep darkness.

Abeer Kapoor (writer) and Ujan Dutta (illustrator)Zoraver and the Lost GodsBloomsbury Publishing (September 2025)

Abeer Kapoor’s Zoraver and the Lost........

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