The Forgotten Ram: Lore and Legend of Sir Chhotu Ram is a quasi-fictional biography centered on the stalwart peasant leader Chaudhary Chhotu Ram. It is woven out of folklore and oral narratives gathered about him. The book includes about twenty- two chapters spanning his life that illustrate a watershed time in the history of undivided Punjab. The text blends narrative, dialogue, sketches and commentary to imaginatively reconstruct the rural life of Punjab in 1900s. It also illustrates the political scene of the day where Chhotu Ram’s Unionist Party came with a thumping majority, changing the established equation between the farmer and the Raj forever. Though an eminent part of the lore in Haryana, Chhotu Ram has been relegated from mainstream historical accounts. His radical thoughts, rare agenda and the agrarian renaissance he ushered, however, demand to be chronicled. For Chhotu Ram, reforms could have a lasting character, only if the farmer changed too. He brought in momentous legislations monitoring the economic and social life of the day. He was unfazed by serious and offensive opposition that tried to stall his programme. Furthermore, he urged the farmer to assume the role of a forerunner rather than a mere follower in the freedom movement. His arch-antagonist was not a person but the system of ‘compound interest’ that fleeced the farmer, but there was also Jinnah on the horizon slowly closing-in. Chhotu Ram perceived his destructive potential and undertook a blitzkrieg march from Peshawar to Hodal that should have concluded in a grand rally at Lyallpur (Faizlabad, in current Pakistan), had he lived. The fate took an unfortunate turn and after Chhotu Ram’s death due to high fever and fatigue, Jinnah was able to make a rapid headway in Punjab politics, breaking the secular bond that Chhotu Ram, Mian Fazli Hussain, Sir Sikandar Hayat Khan, and Khizr Hayat Khan had built dedicatedly over decades. About the Author: Dr. Divyajyoti Singh teaches English at the YMCA University of Science & Technology, Haryana. She earned her degree in English (Hons.) from Miranda House in 2000 and received her post-graduate and M.Phil. degrees from the University of Delhi in 2002 and 2004 respectively. She was awarded the Ph.D degree in English literature in 2011 by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar University, Agra. She has published papers in national and international journals and convened a national conference in 2012. In 2013, she published an article “The Communalist Manifesto” in The Tribune (September 23, 2013) defining Sir Chhotu Ram’s role against the communal forces in Punjab. In 2008 and 2014 two plays written by her on the life of the ‘Deenbandhu’ were also performed by student amateurs from Nehru College, Faridabad and YMCA University, Faridabad. She runs a blog on Sir Chhotu Ram: sirchhoturamforfarmers.blogspot.com and is an ardent admirer of the great man. This book is her dream project.
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