India, May 30 -- The defining event of the Lost Generation in Europe and the Americas was the Great War.

It is harder to pinpoint a single event that served the same function for that cohort in India.

Most of the giants who led the freedom movement - Mahatma Gandhi, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Lala Lajpat Rai, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Bipin Chandra Pal, Sarojini Naidu - belonged to previous generations. But their influence on those who followed saw the struggle for independence become truly national, with the Indian equivalent of the Lost Generation eventually becoming the architects of a new, independent nation.

The battles of this younger cohort were different from those that shaped Ernest Hemingway, JRR Tolkien and Ezra Pound in the West....