BAGHA JATIN 1

The valiant soul who attempted to free India from the pernicious British rule at the onset of the First World War. How significant that Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose attempted the same thing towards the end of the Second World War! Their burning patriotism and endless sacrifice for the Motherland ignited a million souls and won India her freedom.

VIDYASAGAR 1

One of the stalwarts of the Bengal Renaissance who after the demise of Raja Ram Mohan Roy went about reforming society with a singular zeal and great enlightenment. He was the principal personality behind the British move to enact the Widow Remarriage Bill in 1856. He founded a number of schools, pioneered women's education and was along with Ram Mohan Roy one of the founding fathers of the modern Bengali prose. A selfless worker who sacrificed his all for the emancipation of his countrymen, Vidyasagar was crowned with the glory of the Avatar of the Age Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa gracing him with a visit to his house. What followed was sheer poetry, sublimity at its beauteous best. Our prostrations to this leonine soul, another of the forgotten heroes of the Nation. Jai Hind !

INDIRA GANDHI 1

She was the female energy that manifested to guide our Motherland through troubled times, fortifying her against foreign aggression and safeguarding her borders through effective strengthening of the armed forces. Our nuclear status we owe it to her vision. India has not since her demise seen the like of her again. Our salutations to Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi for her courage, indomitable will and, above all, her intense love for her beloved India. We owe a lot to her.

KHUDIRAM BOSE 1

This mere boy should put us to shame that we do not do enough for our motherland and live lives of ease and indolence when the crying call of the hour is 'Arise, awake and stop not till the goal is reached'. The goal is the rebuilding of our motherland along the spiritual lines set by our ancient and our modern rishis who have laid down for us the blueprint of India's destiny.

Take courage, my friends, from the supreme self-sacrifice of this young lad, not even out of his teens, and rebuild your own selves by observing the brahmacharya needed to feel the pulsations of the mother-heart, Bharatvarsha. Let the ruddy drops shed from the holy bodies of these heroes for their beloved Mother not go in vain. Love India intensely and help build her from the ruins of ages of tyranny.

Our martyrs look towards us anxiously. May we fulfil their unfulfilled dreams! May we rise to become the true children of our motherland and not Macaulay's descendants! We owe it to our nation, we owe it to our martyrs, we owe it to our higher selves. Therefore, onward. Down with indolence and up with the work. Jai Hind!

MISSION INDIA 4 ... WHEN THEY FELL APART

Netaji was arguably the greatest personality of India's struggle for freedom. He was far ahead of his times despite the fact that he was immersed in the thick of battle. His early advocacy of Purna Swaraj or complete independence was later adopted by the Congress. In the 1938 Haripura Congress Session Subhas Chandra Bose as Congress President aired his view that the Congress needed a disciplined army of workers that would carry on the struggle along non-violent lines. His idea was that sporadic movements based on impulse and the sudden need of the hour were unlikely to be effective against the disciplined might of the British empire. To combat British imperialism the freedom struggle had to be well-organised, planned and activated along lines of martial discipline even if it was a non-violent struggle. However, his views were rejected by Gandhiji who set up Pattabhi Sitaramayya as his candidate for the Congress presidency the following year against Subhas Chandra Bose. When Bose emerged a clear victor in the elections, the Mahatma admitted that Pattabhi's defeat was his own defeat. However, this meant that Gandhiji could not get his way through democratic means and had now the remaining option of ousting Subhas through unconstitutional means which he readily applied violating all norms of political civility. Expediency was the criterion and not ethical propriety and the Mahatma, ever the non-member dictatorial leader of the Congress, resorted to the vilest political maneuvering to see to it that Bose, the duly elected Congress President, was left with a non-functional executive apparatus as the Mahatma's flattering followers resigned from the Congress Working Committee to paralyse the machinery. Gandhi, surely, must have mischievously justified his political pawn-play of perverting the members of the Congress Working Committee to resign from it on the basis of his flawed spiritual philosophy of non-violence and truth in their applied mode. The Congress President was now left with an empty house and had to resign. Thus, the leonine soul who could have unified India and, perhaps, prevented Partition, was sidelined from mainstream Congress politics, a myopic move of the Mahatma whose catastrophic consequence he lived to see in his twilight years. Subhas Chandra Bose and his 'pernicious' radicalism had been got rid of, so the Mahatma must have mused.

But Bose had other ideas. He quickly organised a section of the radical wing of the Congress to build up a new party, the Forward Bloc. He carried on his campaign for organised mass struggle against the British and was imprisoned for sedition. What followed was one of the epic tales of real-life history, a single man taking on the might of the British empire against all odds, worst of all, the political indifference, even animosity of the very Congressman he admired and had worked with all his life, Gandhi, Nehru, Patel and a host of others who did nothing to help his great mission of liberating India with the Indian National Army which he raised abroad and marched on to India. The hero came to the very doors of India, liberating 150 miles of Indian soil, and was then driven back by the British Indian Army owing to the INA's lack of supplies when cooperation and coordinated effort by the Indian leaders like Nehru could have turned the tide of the Indian Revolution. But Netaji's men were driven back as Indians, who had been rendered passive by the conjoined anti-Bose British propaganda and pernicious Congress policy in strong opposition to the Japanese-aided INA assault on British India, could not come to their aid at a time when they could have liberated India and prevented Partition. Thus, Netaji withdrew and has remained untraced till date. Who can tell what happened to India's greatest son? But more of that later. Jai Hind!

MISSION INDIA 3

Once more I stand on the shore of a new awakening. The sun has circumambulated the heavens yet again. Again I stand at the junction of a dual path with their respective claims on me. India I choose this solitary time as the destiny of my dreams. The royal avenue I traverse today has been trodden by sages of yore, the path of dharma. Sanatana Dharma is in the fabric of my being, is the substance of my soul. Here on the banks of the Saraswati, in the high hills of the Himalayas, in the Naimisha forests was discovered the pristine philosophy of the Vedas, the mother of all religions of the world. Like the rolling waters of the Ganga, herefrom have emanated the loftiest principles of human thinking, revelations divine, spirituality sublime. Such a pilgrimage I choose to make today in my dreams and deeds, my hopes and aspirations, my mission for my Motherland. Myself am an insignificant being but the Nation matters and the life of India is the life of the world for herein is throbbing the life-blood of spirituality. The world is in oblivion of its deepest self and India holds this pristine truth in her bosom right from the dawn of civilization, from the remotest antiquity where history dares not peep. The highest principles of life and living are entrusted to India since time immemorial and she has enshrined them in her sanctum sanctorum for ages that she may inundate the world with them whenever times are propitious. India has gathered spiritual energy for millenia and her very nerve-fibre is loaded with the thought-current of the sages for which she must render account before the nations of the world for it is the common heritage of humanity, these principles of the Spirit, these vibrations of God. Time it is when our national heritage must become the property of the world, our Vedanta philosophy must be the bedrock of progressive world thinking and the Sanatana Dharma (The Perennial Philosophy of the Vedas ) must become dynamic for in it are contained the seeds of survival and flourishing of the human race.

Standing today at 53 orbits of the sun from the moment of my first inspiration, I pledge to dedicate the dying embers of my soul towards the fulfilment of this one dream, the propagation of the message of the sages of India across the wide world for the spiritualization of the human race. My hours are up but my hopes are large for as yet an army of workers will carry forth the message of the Vedas across the corners of the earth. As yet will rise Vivekananda's youth brigade that will conquer the materialism of the world with the spirituality of the Upanishads. The gurgling sound of the Ganga, the soft murmur of the Sarasawati, the gentle breeze from the Himalayas, all bear the Music of India, the Symphony of the Soul. It is for us to dive deep in this ocean of spiritual treasures that our Mother has enwombed for us to be rejuvenated and for us thereon to march unto distant lands carrying the message of peace and harmony and of the divinity of all existence. India must live to save the world from extinction. The way the world is poised, it might lead to another cataclysmic war that will spell the eventual doom of man. Or, perhaps as Einstein feared, an environmental holocaust will seal the fate of man. Either way, India is the solution. The Sanatan Dharma (The Perennial Philosophy of the Vedas) holds the key to the survival of humankind. Herein lies the global significance of India and her spirituality. The world must seek guidance from the spiritual masters of India and make a deep study of the Vedanta Philosophy that it may arrive at the life-giving principles enshrined in the sacred texts of India and adjusting them to their respective needs, the nations of the world must emerge triumphant in this hour of greatest peril when the future of humankind hangs by a slender thread above the yawning chasm of deep destruction. Shall India fail to deliver her message in this her hour of trial, at this perilous hour when humanity stands at the edge of an abyss, when civilization is poised at the crossroads of its future existence ? The world expectantly waits on. Arise India and save the world. Unto you belongs the key to the future of terrestrial human life. Jai Hind !

MISSION INDIA 2

Towards the end of his life Swami Vivekananda seemed to have summed up his Gospel in one word --- MANLINESS. This was quintessentially Swamiji's message to mankind --- 'Above all be strong and manly...I have respect even for the wicked for his strength will one day bring him to goodness...Strength, strength, this is the watchword of the Upanishads.'

Today, India is beset with a myriad problems topping which is national security. Terrorist attacks which are proxy wars of Pakistan against India are a recurring phenomena. Negotiations of peace, summit meetings and periodic pleas to Pakistan for handing over to India the masterminds of the terrorist attacks have failed to draw the desired response and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future for these terrorist leaders are but the carriers of the commandment of the extremist sections of the Pakistani establishment. Deception, disruption and denial --- these are the magic mantras that guide Pakistan's India-policy and this has been characteristic of Pakistan right from Independence. After having dominated India's political scene since 1192 with the capitulation of Hindu power at the hands of Muhammad Ghori in the Second Battle of Tarain till the Britishers established their suzerainty in India, a section of the Indian Muslim community spearheaded by Muhammad Ali Jinnah started the propaganda of impending Muslim subjugation at the hands of the Hindus in post-independence India. This fear was fuelled by the Britishers who designed to permanently impair free India by dividing it along communal lines to suit their long-term strategic interests in the subcontinent. Accordingly, they gave allowance to the persistent demand of the Muslim League to partition India at the time of her independence. And when the hour came, India was partitioned. On the 14th of August, 1947 Pakistan was born. A day later India gained her independence. The civil war that Nehru and the Britishers had, so to say, wished to avert by allowing the Partition of India could not be averted. The transfer of population, the greatest in human history, that followed, as the Hindus and the Muslims by the tens of millions got uprooted from their homelands and migrated across the borders that demarcated the two countries to seek relocation in their new homelands, led to the loss of millions of lives through communal riots, deprivation and disease. The ensuing blood-bath was unparalleled in its scale and monstrosity in the history of India. Indians killed each other in their abortive bid to set right the political adjustment that gave birth to the two nations, India and Pakistan. The horrors of Partition shook the subcontinent like never before and an integrated landmass and people was broken into two nations that have since independence fought four wars and a continuous skirmish along the border characterizes the relations of the two nations.

The question arises as to why the Muslim community that seceded from India could not trust the Hindus, a fact that led to Partition? The reason is but obvious. It is a well-known principle in psychology that what one does towards another one fears the same in return from that quarter. Following the Second Battle of Tarain in 1192 the invading Muslims began to dominate the political landscape of India and started systematic subversion of  the Hindu people by destruction of their temples, confiscation of certain basic rights of decent living, exaction of unjust taxes and forced conversion into Islam. Mahmud of Ghazni had earlier desecrated the famous Somnath Temple in Gujarat and plundered its wealth. Ghori, the Slave Dynasty rulers, the Khiljis, the Tughlaqs, the Sayeeds, the Lodhis and the Mughals barring Akbar, all in varying degrees kept up the religious persecution of the Hindus and their sub-sects like the Sikhs with the malicious motivation of conversion to Islam. For nearly six centuries this oppression of the Hindus by the Muslims continued till the British gradually gained political mastery over India. The meek Hindu race silently suffered this cruel fate save for occasional resistance when a Maharana Pratap or a Shivaji or a Guru Gobind Singh surfaced as their saviour for fleeting moments and that too in no great measure for the might of the Mughals then was mammoth. The British Raj established a certain element of religious stability, true, but the wedge the Britishers drove into the heartland of India in their bid to divide and rule the land eventually led to the Partition of this great land along communal lines. The British made great efforts to keep the Hindus and the Muslims disunited and cleverly used the Muslim League against the Congress to sow seeds of disaffection and distrust among the members of the two communities. The ploy worked, for the Muslims, long used to dominating the Hindus, now began to realize that their days of political mastery of the Hindus was over and that they would be relegated to minority status in independent India at the mercy of the majority Hindus. Such a view was really uncalled for. Once the British left, India could have evolved into a multicultural secular democratic State and the projected fears of the Muslim League about the safety of the Indian Muslims was largely politically motivated and not grounded in reason or in historical experience suggesting such a possible pathetic state. But the Muslim League aided by the British Indian government was successfully able to drive home paranoia into the Muslim mind about their security in a Hindu-majority free India. And so the Partition did take place with its horrific consequences and a permanent state of political tension in the sub-continent. But why did the Muslims accept the bait offered by the Muslim League? Could it be that deep down they were afraid of Hindu reprisal to their age-old tyranny? Was it that they saw things through the prism of their intolerant past and given the way they had historically treated the Hindus, they could not imagine a better fate for themselves? There were liberal voices among the Muslims but their feeble protestations got drowned in the general melee that prevailed. Thus was humanity defeated yet again at the hands of fanatical forces feeding on age-old irrational ideological indoctrination and Mother India was cut up in halves. Gandhiji was assassinated soon after. His dream of a free united India had been dashed to 'pieces' and in his last days he witnessed the precipitous fall of his beloved India into the clutches of the violence he abhorred. China and Pakistan carved out by deceit 50 % of the State of Kashmir and India, paralysed by policy, stood to watch this decapitation of her geographical form. In 1962 China occupied a large portion of Arunachal Pradesh which it continues to unlawfully hold, and it dares Indian Prime Ministers in the face should any such pay a visit to Arunachal which is a legitimate part of India despite Chinese propaganda about its proprietorship over the same citing the McMahon Line dispute with India.

Such then is the predicament we as a nation face with over 1.3 billion people, the second-most populous country in the world now, veritably, a multicultural, multilingual, multi-religious continent of men and minds maturing into the most vibrant democracy in the world, a nation of infinite possibilities whose role in the world has been set out by the Rishis ages ago, that of spiritualizing the whole of humanity in the ages to come. But to achieve this stupendous spiritual objective India must be united. As Swamiji had once famously said that what India needed was an Islam body and a Vedanta brain. By Islam body he meant that India would have to have human solidarity with its diverse races, communities and groups coalescing into a united whole which was to be the State of India. And by Vedanta brain Swamiji had meant that the universal principles of the Vedanta that had the divinity of all of humanity as its focus was to be the the core of our national consciousness, a vast catholic conception of life which was inclusive and never exclusive or sectarian. Thus would harmony be achieved in this land of a myriad diversity and the destiny of India fulfilled, that of spiritualization of the whole of humanity along non-sectarian philosophical lines and not sectarian religious lines. This is the destiny of India and its fulfilment is possible only by the spiritual resurgence of India along Vedantic lines. May this be the national mantra --- 'Vedanta brain, Islam body'. May the greats of all races, all nations, all cultures, all religions and all times bless our Motherland that she may foster her children into a unified brotherhood full of the light of the Vedas, the Mother of all religions and spiritual civilizations! May we love each other and build an ideal nation which shall yet teach the world the glorious principles of the Vedas! May we all gain in vigour through amity, peace and mutual goodwill! May good sense prevail in all our endeavour and not blind bigotry! May we address each other as Indians and not as Hindus or Muslims or by any other special denomination! This country is ours. May we safeguard its integrity and stability by right thinking, right living and right action! May we, the children of Mother India, all unite to preserve our rich heritage, our tradition of peaceful co-existence with our neighbours and harmonious living within our borders despite the aberrations that have crept in from time to time in our long and and protracted history! And for all these we need strength. National valour, manliness and not cowardice masquerading as virtue is the need of the hour. May Swamiji bless us with his ideal of strength! Jai Bharatatma Vivekananda!

May Peace prevail everywhere! Om! Shanti! Shanti! Shanti! (Om! Peace! Peace! Peace!) Jai Hind!