Pramod Kumar Srivastava, a professor of history at Lucknow University, chanced upon the idea of oral history when he was working on India’s militant freedom movements — an important but neglected stream of the independence struggle. In the idolisation of non-violence, Indians, he believes, don’t know much about the militant movements. So threatened was the Empire by militant ideas that they banished the leaders of such movements to faraway Andaman and Nicobar Islands, at the Cellular Jail, or Kala Paani. Between 1987 and 1996, Srivastava interviewed some 20 militant freedom fighters who were sent to Kala Paani. He now plans to make those 25 hours of recorded conversations available on the internet. Read more……..