Unit 3: Glimpses of the Past

The opening lines of the original song in Hindi are:

“Aye mere watan ke logon, tum khub laga lo naara

yeh shubh din hai ham sab ka, lehralo tiranga pyaara

par mat bhulo seema par, veeron ne hai praan ganvaaye

kuchh yaad unhe bhee kar lo – (2)

jo laut ke ghar naa aaye – (2)

This beautiful heart-touching track was sung by Lata Mangeshkar.

In the picture, we see great leaders of India, namely – Lal Bahadur Shastri, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rani Laxmibai of Jhansi, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Bahadur Shah Zafar, Lala Lajpat Rai, Bhagat Singh, Mahatma Gandhi and Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose.

The East India Company’s “superior weapons” refers to the arms and ammunition such as guns and cannons, wit, strict rules and regulations and diplomacy of the British rulers.

An artisan is a skilled craft worker who manually creates decorative or functional items. The artisans suffered as the British were extracting high taxes from them, because of which they were facing an economic loss on their products. Moreover, the British were importing machine-manufactured items from England and selling them on a large scale, thereby ruining the existing market of hand-made products made by the artisans.

Picture 7 – The Sparks (1855-57) reveals the first sparks of the fire of revolt.