What do private letters and autobiographies tell us about an individual? How are these sources different from official accounts?

Private letters as well as autobiographies are a crucial source of people’s views and life. Many of the freedom struggle leaders wrote letters and autobiographies which provided a great record regarding them as well as history.

The letters and autobiographies detail the following things regarding an individual:

(A) They throw light on the people’s interests. For example, Nehru wrote letters for his daughter Indira explaining the events of world history which today is known as Glimpses of the World History. These letters exhibit that Nehru possessed great interest in history. These letters also demonstrated the views of the author. For example, Nehru speaks highly of the socialist government of USSR in his autobiography.

(B) These letters as well as autobiographies are one good source of information of the social life of such days in India. Dr. Rajendra Prasad has provided vivid description of the village life which he saw as a toddler in his village.

(C) Above all, these letters and autobiographies are one great source of history as well. Nehru in his autobiography has described in details regarding the obstinate approach undertaken by the Muslim League towards solving the minority issue in India.

These sources showed dissimilarity in comparison to the official accounts which is manifested in the following pointers:

(A) The official accounts are created by individuals who worked under government’s guidelines. Thus, perspectives that run against the government stay stifled. Furthermore, the author would not possess the freedom of the focused region. He would be needed to write only on such topics that were already defined. However, in letters and autobiographies, one can select anything of personal interests. Dr. Rajendra Prasad provides a vivid description of his college and school days in his autobiography which is not possible in government accounts.

(B) The autobiographic letters tend to throw light on the person life of leaders as individuals and exhibit these events moulding the thought procedure of such leaders in future life. Gandhiji explained how he was thrown out of the initial class compartment of the train in South Africa since he was not White. He explains the struggle within on how to protest and later how he considered non-violent approach of protest.