THE HISTORY YOU HAVE BEEN TAUGHT IS NOT THE HISTORY YOU SHOULD KNOW…

It is incredibly difficult to learn the real history and facts behind the Independence of the Indian subcontinent. Women were instrumental to the struggle, they’re rarely mentioned in the history books. S*x workers and those branded as such played vital roles in the freedom struggle, they are not ever mentioned.

I scrawled the words that are spoken after learning from a friend about Pritilata Waddedar who dressed as a man, picked up arms and led a group at the Pahartali European Club attack. Rather than be caught by colonial officers she swallowed cyanide and died a martyr age 21. Her story was somewhat reminiscent of Begum Hazrat Mahal, once a very well respected tawaif, who chose to be exiled in a nameless grave rather than concede to the British. There are countless names, those known and unknown. Those deemed pure enough for martyrdom and those not. Even before the more widespread freedom movements, S*x workers in India were protesting colonial authorities and demanding an end to a multitude of British imposed exploitations, including forced genital examinations. In fact, before colonisation, many s*x workers were very highly respected within society and after colonisation, many women began being trafficked and abused by British Soldiers in a Slave trade rarely spoken about.

There is a much bigger picture to the Quit India era, it includes palatable and non-palatable women. It includes Women like Matangini Hazra, who had no formal education but is famed for being shot and wounded yet still carrying a flag and leading an independence march. It also includes girls like Shanti Ghose and Suniti Choudhury, who in 1931 when aged 14 and 15, killed a British District magistrate for the cause of a free subcontinent. They became even more famous for their upbeat demeanour in court, refusal to co-operate and no-fear attitude. Although they were handed life sentences, they lived to see their exoneration and the withdrawal of western troops.