BOOK REVIEW In The Battle For Liberation Major Jaipal Singh, In the battle for Liberation: Memoirs, National Book Centre, New Delhi, 1990, pp. 144, Rs. 20 Pbk The official hostotiography of the Indian national movement has tended to give undue prominence to Congress leadership for its success. Those who did not follow the official Congress line are conveniently ignored, or relegated to the background, or even discredited as sabo-taeurs. It should be clearly recognised that it was a struggle for liberation from internal and external oppression waged by masses with their numerous lesser known or unknown heroes. A part of the unwritten chapter of liberation struggle is narrated through these memoirs by one of the leaders who played a key role in the political awakening of the Indian armed forces and consolidation of anti-imperialist organisation in the colonial army. He was an eye-witness to the brutalities of the British imperaliism and treacheries of the Congress leadership. This autobiographical sketch of Major Jaipal Singh shall be an illuminating source of inspiration to young people still engaged in uncompromising battle for human emancipation from oppression and social injustice. Major Jaipal Singh was a nationalist first and a radical later, according to his own confession. When he deserted the army, he did so simply under the deep patriotic impulse. When he came out from the underground life after the achievement of so-called 'independence* he was detained by the Congress regime at Fort William for a year without trial till he jumped out and went underground again for nearly a decade. The story mainly revolves around the years of barrack and underground. The prevailing poverty and exploitation in the countryside left a deep imprint upon his young sensitive mind and strenthened his resolve to overcome it. The village life had taught him to hate imperialists, the university life had taught him to hate the upper classes. Gandhism repelled him as a political ideology, and he was deeply influenced by revolutionary terrorism though he did not quite like the idea of individual terrorism and desired collective action. He decided to join armed forces to shake the British rule from within. The Second World War brought in a large number of fresh recruits including emergency Commissioned Officers, who unlike senior servile Indian officers of aristocratic make, were hostile to the British Social Scientist, Vol. 18, No. 5, May 1990