India, Aug. 16 -- A country approaching its centenary should be comfortable with a larger memory of itself and its diverse leaders.

For a long time, the popular telling of India's freedom struggle revolved around a select leadership of Gandhi, Nehru and some others. Lately, we see discourse developing around Patel, Ambedkar, Subhas Chandra Bose, Savarkar, and S.P. Mukherjee among others. Their place in our history is enduring and rightly deserves the attention it receives. However, there are still some questions worth asking as we celebrate the 80th Independence Day and look ahead to the centennial Independence Day in 2047: how many of the people who helped shape India do we actually remember?

The history is rarely comprehensive and inc...