{"id":7437,"date":"2007-07-09T15:48:00","date_gmt":"2007-07-09T10:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.indiauncut.com\/?p=1341"},"modified":"2019-05-15T10:00:12","modified_gmt":"2019-05-15T04:30:12","slug":"salil-tripathi-on-burma-boy-by-biyi-bandele","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/indiauncut.com\/salil-tripathi-on-burma-boy-by-biyi-bandele\/","title":{"rendered":"On the periphery of Indian history"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"bookdetails\">\n<div id=\"bookimage\"><span class=\"wrap-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/uploads\/images\/burma-boy-biyi-bandele.jpg\" alt=\"image\" width=\"71\" height=\"112\" \/><\/span><\/div>\n<div id=\"bookmaininfo\">\n<p class=\"booktitle\"><strong>Title: <\/strong>Burma Boy<\/p>\n<p class=\"bookauthor\"><strong>By:<\/strong> Biyi Bandele<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><!-- bookmaininfo --><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><!-- bookdetails --><\/p>\n<p>There is a Nigerian renaissance in writing, it seems. Helon Habila won the Caine Prize last year, and Helen Oyeyemi, 22, has written two novels about ghosts and spirits of the kind Wole Soyinka alludes to in \u201cAke\u201d. But to see how global African writing is, try <a title=\"Biyi Bandele -- biography\" href=\"http:\/\/www.contemporarywriters.com\/authors\/?p=auth56892222165d521178TgL308BB1E\">Biyi Bandele<\/a>\u2018s <a title=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/www.fantasticfiction.co.uk\/b\/biyi-bandele\/burma-boy.htm\">\u201cBurma Boy.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a name=\"more\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Growing up in Bombay, I learnt how Subhas Chandra Bose reached Hitler\u2019s Berlin, seeking his support to overthrow the British from India. Hitler was preoccupied &#8211; he had millions of Jews to kill, Britain to bomb, and Russia to swallow, so he asked Bose to try Japan. Bose went east, and in Singapore he took over the Indian National Army, formed earlier by Mohan Singh. The Japanese offered words, and not much else, to the INA, and its march towards India began late &#8211; by then the Japanese were stretched, and Wingate\u2019s Chindits succeeded in halting the INA: its sole incursions in India restricted to a few surreptitious flag-hoisting ceremonies on Indian soil.<\/p>\n<p>Burma excites novelists: Melvyn Bragg, in \u201cThe Soldier\u2019s Return\u201d, told a nice story about the British soldier in Burma. Amitava Ghosh, in \u201cThe Glass Palace,\u201d brought to life the men who joined the INA. But what we don\u2019t learn in either is the role of Africans &#8211; boys like Ali Banana, who was 14, and modeled on Bandeye\u2019s father.<\/p>\n<p>These soldiers, yanked from tropical Africa, suffered humiliation, racism, and were scarred for life. Their stories have remained hidden. Bandele\u2019s writing is important precisely for casting light on that periphery of Indian history, to show how complex and global the world already was in the 1940s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Title: Burma Boy By: Biyi Bandele There is a Nigerian renaissance in writing, it seems. Helon Habila won the Caine Prize last year, and Helen Oyeyemi, 22, has written two &#8230; <a title=\"On the periphery of Indian history\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/indiauncut.com\/salil-tripathi-on-burma-boy-by-biyi-bandele\/\" aria-label=\"More on On the periphery of Indian history\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>On the periphery of Indian history - India Uncut<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/indiauncut.com\/salil-tripathi-on-burma-boy-by-biyi-bandele\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"On the periphery of Indian history - India Uncut\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Title: Burma Boy By: Biyi Bandele There is a Nigerian renaissance in writing, it seems. Helon Habila won the Caine Prize last year, and Helen Oyeyemi, 22, has written two ... 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