kolkata a historical slipup in the central governments biweekly online news magazine new india samachar about swami vivekananda being among those who influenced indias first war of independence in 1857 has raised hackles of wellread kolkatansduring the bhakti movement saints and mahants of this country whether it is swami vivekananda chaitanya mahaprabhu or ramana maharshi were concerned about its spiritual consciousness it served as the precursor to the revolt of 1857 states new india samachars first edition of 2022 published on tuesday vivekananda was born on january 12 1863 while the first war of independence took place between may 10 1857 and july 8 1859 when pib tweeted this erratum as part of the azadi ka amrit mahotsav celebration kolkata took it to heart on wednesday coinciding with the 159th birth anniversary of the philosopher many ridiculed the journals lack of sense of history while some appeared to read between the lines pibs twitter handle has since regretted and corrected the error but it has been far from forgotten in kolkatahistorian rajat kanta ray didnt rule out politics at play behind the move the first supposition of this being a simple error is so improbable that one might resort to a second interpretation there is a trend of taking refuge in imaginary and abstract history where time is not a factor this is done to confuse the readers he said ray drew a parallel between this historical fallacy and books mentioning that the taj mahal was a hindu palace i find a similarity between this and the kind of mentality that equates the two epics with history since there was no contribution of rss in the freedom movement all this could be a ploy to change the narrative and distort history to suit their own purpose tmc mp jawhar sircar said one pities them that they have so few learned people and thus the ruling group reveals its level of ignorance of history