You want to know why Rabindranath Tagore (left) thought that Gandhi’s idea of spinning the charkha was silly? You want to know why Bhagat Singh believed that there was a “state of war between the British nation and the Indian nation”? You want to know why B.R. Ambedkar thought the Indian village to be “the very negation of a republic?” Well, you’ll find these answers and much more by reading the excellent books from Penguin India’s new Words of Freedom: Ideas of a Nation series.
The slim books take out the middle-men (historians, commentators, politicians) and bring us the words and ideas straight from the horses’ mouths. Apart from those mentioned above, others in the series include Rajendra Prasad, Sarojini Naidu, Periyar E.V. Ramasamy, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Vallabhbhai Patel, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, C. Rajagopalachari, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and Aruna Asaf Ali. And each book is priced at a very inspiring Rs 99.