HarperCollins, 348 pages, Rs 499

 

Social media and the age of the internet have opened new vistas for storytelling. Creative memes and quirky humour, citizen journalism and detailed analysis: Twitter/X and Instagram are full of content that would amuse and astonish. But few have done what a team of youngsters from Kolkata has been doing. The Paperclip narrates stories of a particular kind – from the world of culture or politics, business or trends. Usually going back in history. This is not about looking at the world from some ideological viewpoint. It is somewhat like chatting with an exceptionally well-informed friend: you pick up something – say, a packet of Parle-G biscuits, and this friend gives you the background story. In this case, it would be replete with references, sepia photos and URLs. (In a release, the Paperclip team says, “Paperclip was born out of late-night conversations during the pandemic, sparked by a group of friends who refused to let India’s hidden histories fade away.”) The story is told, with an engaging presentation, in a few tweets. The length is not too short though it certainly goes counter to the trend of ‘long-form’ storytelling. The choice of themes is eclectic, and they are treated in a right tone – neither frivolous nor serious.

 

In short, the Paperclip team has pioneered a refreshing form of journalism of its own. 

 

To get them to write a book in the similar vein was a brilliant idea. Instead of recycling its popular stuff, the team has looked at telling stories that can best be told in a book. There are fifty chapters here, each fewer than ten pages long, bound by the theme of India’s freedom movement. But the stuff here is not what can be found in history textbooks. Surprising, heartening and irresistibly readable, this is the history of India’s freedom movement like we have never read before.

 

Consider the titular Robin Hood of Kathiawar. He is Kadu Makrani: full name Qadir Baksh Rind Baloch, from Makran (now in Pakistan), hence the moniker. A 19th-century outlaw who fought against the British and helped the poor mostly in Saurashtra (Gujarat). A character so legendary, with folksongs and folktales devoted to him that an average Gujarati should be forgiven to think kadu is a myth. Jhaverchand Meghani, sometimes called the national poet by Gandhiji, made him immortal in a long tale. There have been not one but two Gujarati films about him. 

 

It can only be an innovative attitude to finding stories worth retelling that would have placed Kadu Makrani in an English-language book in the twenty-first century.

 

There are forty-nine more stories of this kind in this book, offering vivid, lesser-known vignettes view of India’s independence struggle. It shifts focus from podiums and parliaments to football fields, forest hideouts, film studios, factories, photography studios and immigrant cafés. The volume follows rebels, workers, tribal leaders, courtesans, industrialists, artists, athletes and exiles who turned everyday spaces into arenas of resistance – often far from the spotlight.

 

The book traces episodes such as the Rodda arms heist, barefoot footballers defeating British regiments, women like Begum Hazrat Mahal, Gaidinliu and Pritilata leading armed uprisings, exiled revolutionaries building networks from Mexico to Japan, and swadeshi entrepreneurs whose ships, radios, raincoats and ploughs powered the movement. ‘Robin Hood of Kathiawar’ brings together politics, pop culture, sport, cinema, industry and underground action in a way that makes the freedom struggle sharply contemporary and highly compelling for modern readers.

 

Here we discover how a humble beedi brand featuring Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s image inspired the Azad Hind Fauj; how a widow smuggled a Mauser pistol under the noses of British police officers; why a pepper that grows in Trinidad is named ‘Barrackpore’; and how Rabindranath Tagore’s trailblazing niece helped India score its first football victory over a colonial team.

 

The Paperclip folks say, “We’ve always believed that storytelling has the power to connect us to our roots, and our first book is the heart of that mission. This book is our labor of love, and it’s been fulfilling to give voice to some overlooked figures of the time who played a massive role in shaping the world we live in today.”

 

One can look forward to their second book now.