The year-long celebration of the 75th anniversary of India’s Independence provided a course correction opportunity for the country to revisit its original history and resurrect the many unsung heroes of the freedom struggle against British rule, Tamil Nadu BJP president K. Annamalai said on Friday. Delivering the key-note address at the “Bharat Shakti Pondy Lit Fest 2022”, Mr. Annamalai said several valiant sons of the soil who fought the British in spite of the knowledge that they would soon be captured and eliminated had either been omitted, obscured or relegated to the footnotes of the history textbooks. Noting that the three-day literary festival coincided with the 75th Independence anniversary and the 150th birth anniversary of Sri Aurobindo, he underlined the importance of orienting the young generation with the true history of their land. On his own travels through rural Tamil Nadu to honour the lesser known freedom fighters over the past year as part of ‘Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav’ programmes, Mr. Annamalai said it led to the realisation that the Tamil land had given innumerable nationalists to the country. Referring to a recent visit to Odanila in Erode to pay homage to Dheeran Chinnamalai, a Kongu chieftain who fought against the British and was later hanged at Sankari forest in Salem in 1805, Mr. Annamalai said there were many more villages like this with a history of over 1,000 years and deeply connected with the freedom struggle. Stating that the arc of history has to bend towards moral justice, Mr. Annamalai said the 75th Independence anniversary was an occasion to propel India’s rise as a “moral superpower” whose governance was guided by ethical values and sense of dharma. Nothing illustrated this ethos better than the selfless manner in which India delivered COVID-19 vaccines across the world, never differentiating the ally from the adversary in choosing the recipient, he said. Pointing out that Tamil Nadu was home to an estimated 4 lakh temples, over 400 of them with a history of over 1,000 years, Mr. Annamalai said he hoped that the State which had seen a “moral decay” would one day recover its stature as a spiritual centre in the south. Home Minister A. Namassivayam said Puducherry which was host to revolutionary figures like Subramania Bharati and Sri Aurobindo, was taking several measures during the 75th Independence anniversary to memoralise freedom fighters. Jayanti Ravi, Secretary, Auroville Foundation, spoke on the unique Auroville universal township established by The Mother who was Sri Aurobindo’s spiritual associate which was India’s divine gift to the world. During the event, the SmaRT Swarajya awards were presented to Mr. Annamalai (S.P Mukherjee Award for Politics), S. Vijay Kumar (Ustad Bismillah Khan Award for Culture), Harsh Gupta Madhusudan (Dr. B.R. Shenoy Award for Economics) and Aramvalartha Nayagi Sevai Mayyam (Sree Narayana Guru Award for Social Work).
