Girls of Many Lands: Neela

Synopsis

This is a fictional story about a young girl in India in 1939. Her name is Neela and the story opens with her sister getting married. It's one of the arranged marriages, though, which still occur today.

There is a traveling bard who sings about India's move for independence from England. Neela's father decides to go to Calcutta, basically to see what is going on with the independence movement and maybe to join in a demonstration. While he is gone Neela befriends an young injured "freedom fighter". Later she decides to go to Calcutta herself and find out what happened to her father.

There she meets a young British girl who is sympathetic to the cause of Indian independence. She helps Neela try to find her father. Neela also works with the young boy she helped earlier and they find out that her father had been imprisoned and is about to be deported.

Neela, the young boy and other freedom fighters work together to try and ambush the British car carrying the prisoners in order to free her father.

Review

This is a really interesting book. I was already familiar with the move towards independence, typified by Gandhi who stressed non-violent protests. This novel puts the entire movement in perspective by focusing on the events surrounding a typical young Indian village girl.

There are some very good additional pages added about the actual history of that time in India, along with a very useful glossary of various Indian terms.

Gandhi's non-violent approach influenced Martin Luther King in his struggle to get Blacks equal rights in the U.S. Both men, of course, ended up being murdered.

This book is at the same time enjoyable reading and highly educational. Definitely worth taking the time to read.

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