The report of the open letter from historians and academics lambasting the Home Office for the history of empire content in the citizenship test (Home Office urged to correct false slavery information in citizenship test, 22 July) left me aghast, in particular the facile statement that there was “an orderly transition from empire to Commonwealth”. What a dismissive insult to the thousands of campaigners and freedom fighters in the colonies who fought and died for their elusive independence.
The Indian struggle has been included in selective bits in British history lessons and through romanticised films, but how many people have heard of the Ghadar party – formed by Indian expat workers on the west coast of the US and Canada around the turn of the 20th century? That movement made its way back to India to advance the cause of independence, and many of the activists were hanged or imprisoned by the British. By the way, 31 July is the 80th anniversary of the hanging in London of Shaheed Udham Singh, a Ghadar party member and the person who shot dead Michael O’Dwyer in Caxton Hall, in revenge for the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in Amritsar in April 1919.
Janet Lail
Nottingham
