THOSE FAIREST FLOWERS OF HUMANITY

Young Bhagat Singh gave his life for the freedom of our country. What more can I say than that the blood of these valiant ones freed us from the vile force called British imperialism? We owe it to these heroes for our laughs and our joys and the air we breathe, untainted by colonial exploitation, unhindered by racist repression, unfettered by vulgar subjugation. Their sacrifices ought not to go in vain. We must stand up as living memorials to their honour, as the guardians of the freedom they had bled for and as rightful heirs to their glorious legacy.

Barely 23 and the hero, along with his two associates, Sukhdev and Rajguru, was hanged, so redolent of Kshudiram Bose who had entered a like martyrdom even fresher at 18. The rear wall of the jail was broken to surreptitiously cremate the bodies before daybreak and dispose of the ashes in the Sutlej, lest the corpses created a terrible reaction in the masses that would gather outside the jail on the morrow.

These and so many other heroic sons and daughters of Mother India bled to their deaths to remove her shackles and set her free. It was not merely non-violence that brought us freedom but glorious violence as well, for often it was that the protagonists of non-violence were so very violent in their mind and modes in a variant way, and these fairest flowers of humanity that sacrificed their all for the freedom of their Mother, were armed in the strength of genuine non-violence, that of the Spirit that knows no meanness but has the avowed objective, liberation of the Motherland. The history of the freedom struggle ought to be rewritten setting its various movements in perspective as significant factors contributing to India’s eventual liberation and not as footnotes as hired historians would have us believe. Socio-political processes are inexact sciences and so elude mathematical formulation whereby the exact contribution of each of these movements towards the liberation of India could be ascertained. Since independence we have been fed routinely the Gandhi-Nehru version of non-violence as being the primary cause for freedom with other mainstream movements such as the one initiated by Netaji and his INA relegated to being of marginal importance. In this carefully conducted indoctrination of half-truths and untruths it becomes difficult for the average unsuspecting citizen to sift the grain from the chaff and only a discerning few among the citizenry may be able to arrive at the right historical conclusions. Even there one will face insurmountable barriers to overcome as a great deal of vital historical information is kept out of bounds of the common man as highly classified material to which none may be privy. Such careful orchestration of statecraft may prolong the reign of falsity for a while more and preserve the powers that be at the helm of affairs but cannot forever suppress the voice of truth.

The blood of the martyrs will be avenged and history will reveal its secrets at an opportune moment. The declassification of the Netaji Files by the West Bengal Government is the indication of the onset of such a sprightly season when the seeds of secrecy will have germinated and the sapling of truth will sprout through the cover of the dense foliage that can no longer conceal it. The Bose family along with the eminent researcher who has done such a yeoman’s service to the cause of the resurrection of our national hero is scheduled to have conference with the Prime Minister at his 7, Race Course Road residence on 14 October, 1700 hours when they will demand declassification of all Netaji Files held at the Centre and possibly the tabling of the Mukherjee Commission Report before Parliament for due deliberation on its contents.

The hour draws near and we must be prepared either for release of the files or for a deferment of declassification on the usual grounds that have been staple to the discussion in the past. Either way, the ground is laid and the ball has been set rolling too. Now, who can stop its motion? Today or tomorrow, the files will be out and God alone knows what shall surface. For once we may be sure that Netaji and his leonine followers will be rendered their true place in history and with it shall all the masculine breed of revolutionaries be redeemed and their glorious sacrifice for the freedom of their Motherland sanctified. The boy Kshudiram, young Bhagat, Sukhdev and Rajguru, their souls will finally rest in peace when they have known that the India of their dreams no longer negates their lonesome struggle for freedom but warmly embraces them as the heroes who dared the might of the Empire and shook it off for good when at a later date their acts echoed in their brethren, the INA led by Netaji, and led India to freedom.

And may I here call in all to salute the young Bhagat, the boys Kshudiram and Prafulla Chaki, Sukhdev, Rajguru, Chandrasekhar Azad and Ram Prasad Bismil, Jatin Das, Bagha Jatin, Masterda, Benoy, Badal, Dinesh, Pritilata Waddedar and Batukeshwar Dutta, and those countless mothers and sisters who gave their all, their love and care and shelter to these fairest flowers of humanity who perished in the bloom of their lives that we may see the sunshine of life and freedom!                  

IS IT CIVILIZED TO SNOOP ON INDIA’S PREMIER FREEDOM-FIGHTING FAMILY?

Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s family was snooped on for 20 long years (1948-1968) by the Government of India and the West Bengal Government. Recent declassification of 64 Netaji Files by the West Bengal Government has confirmed this dastardly act, first brought to light by the earlier declassification of two of the Netaji Files by the Union Government. The question arises as to why this was done. What was the paranoid that prompted the Nehru Government to initiate this surveillance process and, thereafter, to persist with it for over two decades when the innocuous members of the Bose family were neither anti-nationals nor potential political threats to the ruling Congress Party either at the Centre or at the State? Why were the Intelligence Agencies tapping their telephone calls, opening their letters, following them wherever they went and constantly watching their activities? Were the Boses deemed dangerous on account of their kinship to Netaji? But, then, Netaji was dead since 18 August, 1945 according to the official Government version! Or, was he not? Should we then surmise that the Government of India was sceptical of its own propagated line that Netaji had died in a plane crash at Taihoku Airport in erstwhile Formosa and was apprehensive of his possible return to India on account of which it was consistently snooping on the Bose family round-the-clock for 20 years or so in the hope that the hero might contact his kith and kin someday which would offer the Government clue as to his whereabouts? If so, this was the most heinous offence against a family whose seminal contribution to the freedom struggle has few parallels for the brothers Bose had literally rocked up the foundation of the British Empire.

If snooping carried on till 1968, it meant that the Government of India entertained the idea that Netaji was alive till then for Sarat Chandra Bose was no more and, in absence, surely, posed no political threat to the Congress Party in any way that would require such an elaborate intelligence machinery to monitor his family’s movements. It was Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose then that the Government was evidently trying to track down but, perhaps, unsuccessfully. Finally, what was it that caused this surveillance to stop abruptly in 1968? Had the Government finally given up or was there some other sinister motivation behind it which may be revealed only when all Secret Files on Netaji are eventually declassified under enormous public pressure for it does not seem that the Government will of its own volition do it in national interest as it keeps on citing bogus reasons related to national security whenever it has to defend its otherwise indefensible position regarding the Classified Netaji Files?

The moot point remains, however. Was it in keeping with democratic propriety when the Government headed by Jawaharlal Nehru proceeded to surreptitiously monitor the movements of India’s premier freedom-fighting family? Was this the price this leonine lineage of patriots had to pay for the transfer of their political bondage? For what else was this sort of surveillance tantamount to if not subservience to the other great family of India’s freedom struggle, the Nehrus? If this was not breach of trust, pray, what else was? Is this what they deserved at the hands of comrades-in-arms once in the freedom struggle when the freedom had been won? A perfidy more pernicious than this has scarce visited this land of purest dreams whose brightest star had been blighted by the powers that be from the devious days of the Mahatma and his machinations at Tripuri. Nehru is gone and gone is Gandhi. Indira Gandhi is gone as well, the one that had subjected a nation to the ignominy of her version of ‘self-rule’ and not what Tilak had vouched for. Now who will answer for these terrible indiscretions on the part of successive Congress Governments at the Centre and at the State? Who may be held culpable for the offence that befits not a civilized society to indulge in and, that too, from its premier Prime Minister whose ungentlemanly actions hardly justify the appellation of the ‘gentle colossus’ ascribed him by a biographer (refer: ‘The Gentle Colossus’ by Prof. Hiren Mukerjee)? Will the present-day Congress Party rise above its sycophantic adulation of its leadership, past and present, and for once show political maturity to rescue the Party from being a personality cult, and, in so doing, pronounce its judgement on the misdemeanours of its tallest figures, thereby, resurrecting the Party from its age-old familial line? Or, is the personality cult so deeply embedded in its functioning that it is well-nigh a settled fact that history will avenge its manifold wrongs at the hands of this political organization by the obliteration of its very existence? For no Party in a democracy may substantially subsist if it is devoid of the collective will and the individual runs it autocratically thrusting his/her will on the collection comprising it which in abject servitude bows down to the will of the Chosen One. Now is the time for the Congress to make amends for past misdeeds of its leaders and show a semblance of real love for the nation and veneration for the family its governments have successively snooped on in such an unceremonious manner that patriotism takes a beating at the hands of blatant self-interest masquerading as national necessity.

What transpires in the coming days may shape history as popular sovereignty stamps its authority on this largest democracy of the world. Netaji’s family has been fouled and Netaji virtually obliterated by the diabolic designs of a single political party which has ruled and misruled our Motherland for over five decades. The citizens of this country demand not only declassification of the Netaji Files but also an answer to the holding ransom of a billion destinies at the scaffold of familial farce. Netaji and his family have been denied justice and the vengeance of history is on. And now, do not plead on behalf of a ludicrous minority within the family that has chosen to desert reason and good sense for whatever motivations impel them. The people are on the rise and the ghosts of the copper tablets buried beneath the ground during Mrs. Gandhi reign seek fulfilment at a deferred date for the touch of the hero’s march through the terrible terrain of the Burmese jungles enroute to the battlefields of Imphal. History will be rewritten soon and all the forces that have gone to wipe out Netaji and his valiant INA will be resolved to nought. Snoopgate will remain a blotch on the Nehru family as fresh data on Netaji continually surfacing in the public domain resurrects the Bose family’s enormous contribution towards the cause of the freedom of this land. They presented the nation Netaji and Netaji brought us freedom. Salutations to all that have suffered at the altar of freedom and prostration before the mothers that gave birth to these children of light but for whom the darkness in our lives would never have gone! Jai Hind!

CHALO DILLI!

How corrupt this world is! That the foremost of our national leaders, the one that made us free of the British yoke, should lie in obscurity through the heinous hand of treachery of his Congress colleagues is a perfidy that passes all parallels. And that too in a country that prides itself in spiritual values, that blazons at international meets the words of the Buddha and holds ‘Satyameva jayate’ (Truth alone triumphs) as its guiding principle, a nation that supposedly built its freedom movement on Satyagraha (Truth force / Enthusiasm for truth) but whose first footsteps into political maturity were blighted by this barbarous act of treason by its leading lights against its most lustrous leader, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, all these set one thinking as to the validity of these high-sounding theorems on morality and ethics in the active life of our nation’s founding fathers. Thoughts galore stream in but resolution there is none for the nation’s destiny lies buried beneath heaps of historical suppressions and distortions the like of which the world has not witnessed anywhere this century.

70 years have rolled on since the day of his mysterious disappearance and, yet, the citizens of this land must go with a begging bowl to the governors of their fate, seeking the whereabouts of their beloved hero who throbs in their hearts like a pulsating dream that never breaks but weaves on fresh fabric in the absence of concrete evidence about his life’s story, evidence and information galore carefully kept out of bounds of the common man, so volatile must be their content. Such secrecy surrounding the Netaji Files legitimately raises doubts about the intentions of successive Congress Governments at the Centre which chose to suppress a plethora of information classifying them as top security material unfit to be divulged to the nation. Even the State Government of West Bengal did scanty little till the present government in an unprecedented gesture disclosed all the 64 files on Netaji in its custody. One of the files, though, is missing and another, mutilated. Why all these years the Government  of India is sitting on these Netaji Files remains a mystery, to speak in polite terms, but it is anybody’s guess who committed such a heinous crime and why so. By whose orders were destroyed two very crucial files in the third decade of Congress rule is also known to all. These are the leaders who were supposedly the harbingers of a new age and would take us to the millennium, but blighting the career of the brightest of them all, they are now facing the judgement of a people long betrayed, and while their party may still vociferously defend their treasonous actions, covering them up with festering flowers, the mandate of the people will spare nor prince nor pauper and history will avenge misdeeds in the fullness of time. Attempts to obliterate the very memory of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose will permanently etch him in the consciousness of his people and history written afresh will assign him and his I.N.A. their due place as the clinching condition for the capitulation of British colonialism in India and elsewhere. No wonder he was Enemy Number One of the Allied Forces during World War II for while motivated, and mischievously so, politicians might dub him fascist falsely, the Anglo-American political hawks knew his power and his hold over the imagination of the masses in India and, therefore, could not rest in peace till they had seen his end, but the Divine had another dispensation unfolding, so it seems.

Now that the hour of reckoning has come, how far are we going to engage ourselves in pressing for the forthwith declassification of all Netaji Files? Is it a momentary sensationalism that is working up the masses to a heightened animation or is it something more stable and secure in content that may be depended upon to carry on the struggle for the resurrection of Netaji from the Secret Files? These are pertinent questions and need soul-searching for adequate answers. Else, history will dubiously repeat itself and the case will be shelved indefinitely as in the past. Decades have rolled on in this way and this time we must not let the same recur. A massive sustained campaign needs committed people by the thousands who will devote their all to the Cause of the resurrection of their hero and so may the masses be moved on a grand scale for long to set the seal of victory eventually on the movement. Instead of frenzied fury and frothy emotionalism let a concerted effort emerge to learn about the issues involved in the case and let an integrated movement avert the danger of dissipation of energy. ‘The enemy has already drawn the sword. He must, therefore, be fought with the sword.’ These words are chilling in their connotation in independent India when the Government sits pretty on the Netaji Files and the masses move the conscience of the leaders to disclose them.

At this critical hour we have to unite our forces for the tide is on and we must make fullest use of it. We have confidence in our Prime Minister and in his Government that they will fulfil their pledge to the nation and to the Bose family to declassify the Netaji Files for it was they who in Atal Behari Vajpayee’s tenure had set up the Justice Mukherjee Commission to investigate the Netaji Disappearance Case, a Commission whose Report was subsequently tabled and unceremoniously dismissed in Parliament as untenable by the then U.P.A. Government led by Dr. Manmohan Singh without citing sufficient reason for such summary dismissal. The present government is bold and open and has nothing to lose politically as well in bringing about the disclosure of the Netaji Files. Our honoured Prime Minister may win his place in history should he exhibit character enough to forge ahead and reinstate Netaji and the I.N.A. to their rightful place in Indian and World History by ordering the complete declassification of all Netaji Files held in India and, thence, diplomatically creating the base for such declassification of all Foreign Files on Netaji as well. The nation needs to know what happened to their Leader, their Liberator in the aftermath of the Second World War. The Secret Files on Netaji hold the answers to these questions for sure and merit their freedom from life-long captivity. The conscience of the nation has again been struck by the chord called Netaji and now there will be no looking back. Onward then to Declassification! Chalo Dilli!

 

The demands that ought to be made to the Centre are as follows:

1. Declassify all Netaji Files lying with the Central Government and its Intelligence Agencies.

2. Reopen the Justice Manoj Mukherjee Commission Report before Parliament for due deliberations on it.

3. Appeal to all foreign governments like those of Russia, UK, USA, Japan, Germany, Italy, China, Chinese Taipei, Vietnam and Myanmar for declassification of the Bose Files held classified there.

Friends, raise your voice now that the curtain rises on this secret phase of Indian history and with it ends all speculation that has plagued this country for seven decades. May the blood of the martyrs of the I.N.A. find fulfilment in the sunshine of truth streaming forth through the pages and the letters of these secret documents even as the heroes had once streamed into India through the jungles of Burma and hoisted the tricolour on Indian soil, and may the hallowed leader of this, the final onslaught on British imperialism that uprooted the Raj and freed our Motherland, our beloved Netaji, stand transfigured in the revelations thereof, a patriot nonpareil, a soldier to the very soul, a saint in a warrior’s garb, the hope and joy of an entire nation, the veritable Spirit of India! Jai Hind!

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE PRIME MINISTER OF INDIA, SHREE NARENDRA MODI

Honoured Sir,

The West Bengal Government has done the needful by way of declassification of all Netaji Files in its custody today. We, the citizens of this country, now exhort you to do the same with all Classified Netaji Files in the possession of the Central Government. It is high time that the nation gets to know everything about the tallest hero of our freedom struggle and, you, being the representative of our highest hopes and aspirations cannot but redeem your pledge to the nation to declassify all Netaji Secret Files. The people are alive with expectation now and no amount of political expediency or reasoning that domestic peace may be disrupted and international relations may be affected will hold ground now. Truth will surface today or tomorrow. History has chosen you to be the deliverer of this deed and you shall forever endear yourself to the people of this land by bringing to light the truth.

In no nation of the world perhaps, their greatest leader who has brought them independence has been so discredited of his achievements as in India. Netaji and his I.N.A. have not been given their due place in the history of independent India and their contribution acknowledged as being paramount in bringing India independence in the final phase of the freedom struggle. It is time now to set right these imbalances of the past and rewrite the history of the freedom movement and post-independence India on the basis of researched truth and not fabricated falsities. To achieve this end, I, Sri Sugata Bose, on behalf of the whole country and countless Indians and Netaji admirers scattered across the world, appeal to you fervently that you in your good sense shall forthwith make room for the declassification of all Netaji Files held in in the custody of your Government. This is my humble petition to you, Sir, and may I remind you those glorious words of Swami Vivekananda who Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose considered his guiding light in life and who is your life's inspiration as well: "Truth does not pay homage to any society, ancient or modern. Society has to pay homage to truth or die. Societies should be moulded upon truth, and truth has not to adjust itself to society. That society is the greatest, where the highest truths become practical. That is my opinion; and if society is not fit for the highest truths, make it so; and the sooner, the better."

With these letters of gold fraught with the highest wisdom of the patriot prophet of India and with the ruddy drops spilled from the bullet-ridden bodies of the 26,000 martyrs of the I.N.A., I, along with countless others, remain in expectation of the Declassification of the Netaji Files and in the resurrection of our beloved Netaji.

Yours in Truth,
Sugata Bose.





       

COMETH THE HOUR, COMETH THE MAN ... 2

Less than 24 hours are left before the Netaji Files in custody with the Government of West Bengal are declassified. There is a vibrancy of expectation among the people which is building up by the hour as their hero, long buried under the debris of falsity and fabrication, seems to be on the verge of resurrection. History will turn on its head if it is categorically proved that Netaji was the victim of an international conspiracy in which his own nation was complicit as well. A new appreciation will emerge of world events if even a fraction of what his protagonists have been claiming so long is proven true. It is now known that he was alive till at least 1949 but where was he and in what state? Did he survive beyond that? If so, where and in what capacity? A politician in hiding in foreign countries trying to muster support for the revolutionary cause? A prisoner of Stalin in a Siberian gulag? A fugitive wandering across Asia seeking harbour somewhere? A mendicant monk in North India endlessly roaming from place to place to avoid attention, or, shall we say, detection? Or was he executed by Stalin in full knowledge of the Indian Government for which even today there is so much secrecy over the Netaji Files? These are so many pertinent questions whose answers lie in the womb of these Secret Files now seeking deliverance in the fullness of gestation.

Why has there been so much secrecy about the entire episode of Netaji's supposed death to warrant the maintenance of 200 odd classified files in his name for nearly 70 years despite unilateral affirmation by the Government of India as to its date, place and mode as submitted by the Japanese authorities? Why was his 'dead body' not photographed or flown over to India to his family? Whose ashes are interred in the urn at the Renkoji Temple in Tokyo, Netaji's or Ichiro Okura's? If they are of Netaji's, then why have successive Congress Governments that ruled over India for decades never gone for its DNA test to settle all doubts about its identity and bring them over to New Delhi to give the hero his honour due? Why was the Mukherjee Commission Report unceremoniously dismissed in Parliament by the U.P.A. Government headed by Dr. Manmohan Singh as an unacceptable document without even bothering to give a sufficient reason for such a peremptory act or engaging in a civilized discourse or debate over the validity of its contents or otherwise, especially, when the subject of the Report was India's leonine patriot Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose? Why has the Congress Party been so apprehensive about divulging all the 'death' details of a person who as per their assertion had met with an accidental death in Taihoku Airport from an air-crash on 18 August, 1945, an event which, in the official view, had multiple witnesses? Why classify cartloads of documents in the 'dead' man's name who brought India independence, and that too, do so when the nation has become a sovereign power? Who does the Government fear, foreign nations or the people of India? If so, why? Is there a vast international conspiracy behind the so-called disappearance of the 'Enemy Number One' of the Allied Powers? And where did he disappear? He could not have simply vanished into thin air, or, did he? And, last but not the least, why was the Bose family snooped on for 20 long years (1948-1968), an act initiated and sustained for the darker part of 16 years (1948-1964) by the Nehru Government? A final hammer, why did the Indira Gandhi Government destroy two classified files on Netaji?

The Netaji Files are pregnant with these details for sure and successive Congress governments at the Centre have played foul with the life and legacy of our greatest national hero for reasons we all suspect but have no documentary evidence to legally substantiate. But their hour is come and Friday, 18 September, 2015 will have irreversibly set the ball rolling the other way and the sequel to the Crucifixion of Netaji will have begun, his Resurrection. Now there can be no turning back for the Government of India from declassifying all classified files on Netaji as it will have to face the people's wrath and no government in a democracy can go against overwhelming public opinion. We all hope that the Modi Government will live up to its promise made to the nation and to the Bose family about revealing the truth hidden behind these documents and so make good, even if partially, the badly tarnished image of the Indian politician who has been fabled for pulling the strings the wrong way right from the days of the Mahatma when in most uncivil a manner he had conspired with his Congress cronies to bring down the duly elected Congress President, Subhas Chandra Bose, at Tripuri on the eve of the Second World War, a machination that only a 'Mahatma' may succeed in executing but which robbed the character of the Indian politician for good through its dubious setting up of precedent for posterity. Thus was one man laid aside by the collective conspiracy of the rest led by a person priding himself on principles but shorn of all scruples when confronted by a superior soul who called him the Father of the Nation only to be dubbed the Robin Hood of India in return. What magnanimity of spirit the hero had to yet name the brigades of the Indian National Army in the names of these very political adversaries who had spared no means to ruin him! The Gandhi Brigade and the Nehru Brigade bear testimony not only to Netaji's undiluted love for the nation and for all those forces that were at work for its liberation but also to a rare capacity to be able to rise above personal considerations in the pursuit of the larger national objective of the achievement of freedom. This indeed is Karma Yoga, the ability to detach self from the work equation which Netaji eminently did in the thick of battle with all his political adversaries, never once stooping low to secure an undue gain even as the Mahatma and his entourage dipped their non-violent hands in the blood of the Bengal boy who was way ahead of them in political sagacity, statesmanship and vision, not to mention, strength of character and nobility of being.

This then is the narrative one must bear in mind when one sits in judgement over the bygone days of the freedom struggle gluttonously appropriated by the Gandhi-Nehru brigade, not of the Azad Hind Fauj though. The seed was rotten to begin with, the soil depleted of nutrients and the elements hostile for healthy growth of the national tree. The conspiracy of the Mahatma at Tripuri and the spineless capitulation of the envious members of the Congress Working Committee who resigned in abject surrender to the dictates of the Mahatma and their own personal vendetta against the brighter Bose sealed the fate of future India resulting in the untold misery of Partition from whose horrors we are still recovering. The Mahatma was an astute politician masquerading as a saint and Bose was the one nationalist leader who not only measured up to him in every way but actually outdid him in intellectuality, moral integrity, political sagacity, patriotic purpose and, above all, vision of the future nationhood of India. So many embellishments in a non-Gandhian in the Age of Gandhi? No, it was impossible to digest and Bose's wings had to be clipped for sure, else how could the Gandhians rest in non-violent peace? The rest of the story is for another day, but right now, the hour cometh, and hark, cometh the man with it.

Jai Hind!

BRITISH BEWARE!

A shameful exhibition of Allied propaganda so symptomatic of the colonial-imperialist powers and their malicious bid to keep subject nations under their heels at all cost. This diatribe is a clear indication that Netaji was the most feared Indian nationalist leader who had driven the wits out of the British before he and his I.N.A. drove the foreign occupiers out of India...Rejoinder by Sugata Bose (In defence of the Motherland and her greatest hero).

Recently former Supreme Court judge Markandey Katju has called Subhas Chandra Bose a 'Japanese agent' and on national television decribed him as a 'running dog'which seems to be a literal translation into English of the Chinese/communist pejorative meaning lackey or lapdog, an unprincipled person who helps or flatters other, more powerful and often evil people. Katju's comments made for reasons best known to himself, has in his own words created a situation like throwing a stone in a beehive, that has send people swarming like hornets for his blood. In this context I am sharing the profile of Subhas Chandra Bose as published in the Collier’s Magazine dated 30th September 1944 along with a caricature by Miguel Covarrubias. Unlike Gandhi and Nehru and for obvious reasons, Subhas Chandra Bose was not in the good books of the British or the Americans which will be evident from the views published. In this case the stark similarity between the British-American view of Bose and Katju's remarks is noteworthy. Read the unedited transcript -

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The methods of Mohandas Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru may be questioned, but the purity of their motives is not open to doubt. The fight of the two for an independent India has never been soiled by shameless bargains for the advancement of their selfish interests. No such lenient judgement can be passed on Subhas Chandra Bose. Throughout the whole adult life of this man, patriotism has been a cloak for a ruthless ambition that took no account of honor, honesty or love of country. Not once has he ever risen above baseness.

Even with the opportunities offered by war, Gandhi and Nehru held back from the offers of Germany and Japan, the former declaring that “we do not seek independence out of Britain’s ruin.” Repeatedly, vehemently, Nehru has said that Allied victory was the one hope for a free world. Bose, on the other hand, took German money and is today a “general” in the Japanese army, fighting in Burma, sweatingly eager to have India brought under the rule of Japan so that he may be her quisling.

Bose’s utter lack of character is his country’s tragedy, for the force and brilliance of the renegade may not be denied. Born in 1897, a native of Bengal, he was an honor student at Cambridge, and rose to high place in the Indian Civil Service. Quitting in 1921 to become a follower of Gandhi, he rose rapidly, and soon stood at the Mahatma’s right hand. More and more, however, it became apparent that he put his own personal fortunes above loyalty to the cause, and in the early thirties he was expelled from the movement for his insubordination and secret plotting.

Straightaway Bose attacked the Mahatma as a muddleheaded old mystic, preaching a mealymouthed gospel, and he began the organization of terrorist gangs for the avowed purpose of pillage and massacre. All India was scoured for lawless, desperate men, and to swell his strength, the rabble-rousing Bengali went into the universities and attracted a following of reckless students.

Now began a series of outrages that made Gandhi’s policy of mass disobedience seem tame and futile. Trains were wrecked, buildings fired and mothers cut down by hatchet men as they fought to protect their children. As if to flout the Mahatma’s insistence on nonviolence, there were outright massacres in Bombay, Malabar and the village of Chauri-Chaura, where twenty-one policemen and watchmen were drenched in oil and burned alive.

Prison sentences only served to increase Bose’s popularity with the masses. While in jail, for example, he was elected mayor of Calcutta. By 1938, he was strong enough to win the presidency of the Indian National Congress over Gandhi’s opposition, and would have served a second term but for certain shrewd tactical moves by the Mahatma that forced his resignation. At the outbreak of war, Bose formed an All India Anti-Compromise Congress of his own, and raced up and down the land, screaming that the Empire’s peril was India’s opportunity. Open in his praise for Germany, Italy and Russia, Bose advocated for his country a government that was a combination of Nazism, Communism and Fascism.

That Bose had been in secret communication with Hitler soon stood proved. Fleeing India, he escaped to Berlin and took his place as a stooge of Doctor Goebbels, side by side with the Mufti, Haj Amin El Husseini, the perjured old Arab. Even as the Mufti broadcast to the Moslem world, urging a holy war against the British, so did Bose call on India to rise in revolt, skillfully inferring that the Fuhrer was waging a war in behalf of the world’s subject races.

Pearl Harbor, however, changed the picture. Overnight, Japan became the country that was to give India her independence, with Germany standing by to aid and protect. Plentifully supplied with Nazi funds, Bose made his way to Tokyo and, after conference with Tojo, was sent to Singapore as the best field for his operations. Preaching the war as one between colors, he painted the paradise that would come into being for every native race when the white man was driven out of Asia. Americans, no less than the Dutch, the English and the French, were cruel and rapacious, despite the pretense of democracy.

With the Japanese invasion of Burma and the desperate attempt to capture India’s Imphal Plain, Bose’s activities gained in size and importance. Made a general by Tojo, he formed an Army of Liberation, and is now at the front-not as a fighting man, of course, for he was always careful of his own skin, but as a propagandist. Day in and day out, he broadcasts to India, damning Gandhi and Nehru as false and discredited leaders, and urging the people to kill and burn.

In the hour of Allied victory, it is certain that Subhas Chandra Bose will plead patriotism as his defense. It is a lie and has always been a lie. Repudiated by India’s patriots, the Bengali stands revealed as a criminal type, ever willing to stoop to any baseness out of an insane egoism and passion for power.

Remember him!…

G.C.

FABRICATION OF LIES, FALSIFICATION OF HISTORY

The Netaji Secret Files lying with the Government of West Bengal are going to be declassified at last this fateful Friday, 18 September, 2015. What emerges is a matter of conjecture now but what is already an established fact is that Netaji did not die in the supposed air-crash at Taihoku Airport on 18 August, 1945. In fact, there had been no such air-crash at all at Taihoku Airport that day. The Justice Mukherjee Commission Report categorically denies the Air-crash Theory of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose's death as there is no conclusive evidence to support the thesis. The Commission also could not find the record of Netaji's cremation at the local crematorium where Netaji had supposedly been cremated after having succumbed to third degree burn injuries following the rumoured air-crash. Given the lack of sufficient evidence to justify the Air-crash Theory of Netaji's supposed death, the Mukherjee Commission debunked the theory and, though dismissed in a most unparliamentary way in Parliament by the then Congress Government led by Dr. Manmohan Singh, opened the Pandora's Box of doubt about the official version regarding Netaji's disappearance and the entire tale fabricated by the Gandhi-Nehru brigade about the negligible contribution of Netaji and his Indian National Army towards India winning her independence.

And, as it so often happens that the misdeeds of the past are exposed by subsequent generations of truth-seekers, that the best covered-up secrets eventually see the light of day despite the diabolic designs of devious dupers, so also in this poor country of ours, pillaged and plundered as it has been by unscrupulous foreign occupiers for centuries and then dismembered and, so, desecrated by complicit connivers conspiring for collaborative control of the collective consciousness of citizens, truth is at long last surfacing. The very buoyancy of truth makes its triumph inevitable in the fullness of time and it seems that three generations of fabrication of lies and falsification of history by the power-mongers at the helm of national affairs could neither stamp out suspicion about their malicious intent nor stifle the conscience of an awakening nation as it throws up the challenge to the founding fathers to validate their stance on this supreme patriot this nation has ever seen.

Electoral compulsions notwithstanding, the West Bengal Government has done a commendable act in declaring the Netaji Files open for public scrutiny. In a thriving democracy people may not be kept out of important national issues and it is a travesty of democratic justice that the Netaji Files should have remained 'classified' for so long. When the country prides itself on the golden principle of 'Satyameva Jayate' (Victory to Truth) and the Mahatma had made 'Satyagraha' (Enthusiasm for Truth / Truth Force) his ideological and political weapon to supposedly oust the British from India, why has the Government of India resorted to the darkest lies over the protracted period of close to 70 years to obliterate the very memory of India's greatest hero who was the true liberator of India from the shackles of the British? The nation seeks an answer from the perpetrators of this crime and popular sovereignty demands that the Congress Party who initiated and carried on this malicious misinformation campaign to the people of this land about India's greatest hero should come up with adequate explanation and expose the masterminds behind this smear campaign however tall they may be in the hierarchy of the Party. Else, history will avenge the injustice meted out to Netaji and his I.N.A. whose deeds shine not in letters of gold but in drops of blood spilled from their throbbing hearts aching for freedom.

Friday is but 48 hours away and the countdown has started for the resurrection of the hero. The stage is set, the die is cast, the tide is on, now who can thwart its course? Netaji looms large on the national scene once more as he had during those tumultuous days when his shadow darkened the wits of the British at the I.N.A. Trials at the Red Fort and sent them home scurrying for cover. Jai Hind!             

IN RESPONSE TO A PLEA FOR PATIENCE BY ANKITA BOSE ON THE ISSUE OF DECLASSIFICATION OF THE NETAJI SECRET FILES

Indeed we ought to wait before we hazard our hopes. Right you are Ankita Bose and perceptive your observation founded on a long experience of constant disillusionment about the commitment of governments in delivering the job. However, if some startling revelation does surface on the basis of the findings from the proposed declassification of secret files on Netaji, it remains to be seen how history reshapes and political parties that have thus far played false to this Patriot Perennial cower under the cover to evade public wrath. All these are mere conjectures though and one feels apprehensive as to the finality of the outcome in the light of past injustice meted out to the one who could have set up India along the very lines which his spiritual ideal, Swami Vivekananda, would have wished with further embellishments brought about by his own inventive genius.

When young people like you feel despondent and even cynical, one wonders to what depth of degradation generations of politicians who wielded power have reduced our country to and one feels sorry for the blossoming hope of our Motherland, the efflorescent youth of this nation which you, Miss Bose, so elegantly epitomize. The hero has been crucified by his very own men and the resurrection shall also fulfil in the fullness of time for such has ever been the law of cyclical evolution. The times are pregnant with possibilities and the seed, so long dormant to the apparent eye, has ever been maturing for fruition in its autumnal spring. It is meet indeed that we meet now, kindred spirits in fraternal flow, to light up this torch that our hero lit in his triumphant circuiting through the warring world, but which, through dusty decades, is bare aglow with the heat of the hearts of a few that have lived and breathed the very pulse of this Messiah of the Motherland. Revelations as to the endless end of this immortal Spirit will rewrite history if ever they see the light of day.

Primrose promises are best reserved for New Year's Resolutions but they have now become the staple for perverse politicians pressing for popular opinion in their bid to parry their opponents in the securing of the people's mandate. It is a total loss of sensitivity to the glorious sacrifices of the martyrs of the Freedom Struggle that makes a mockery of their leonine strength in the form of these populist exhibitions fraught with falsities fashioning as fellowship to the Cause of the resurrection of the hero. But still there is need for all these and the dialectics of human evolution demands that deeds are done and undone alternately before they synthesize into a beauteous whole revealing more of the inner light of freedom of the spirit. And so must it be in the case of our tragic hero, for the greater the soul, the sharper the price Nature extracts for daring to oppose Her. The ordinary person wallows in the mire of material existence and then is heard no more, but the soul extraordinaire rises high in the heavens to wage war with the elements. This daring to tear up the veil of delusion Nature cannot forgive. Retribution is quick and severe and those that then become the agents of the destructive fury of Cosmic Nescience against the hero are given the prize of possession of the people's dominion to keep them in indefinite bondage. This is the cosmic plan, my friend, and through this maze of Maya we must steer our boat ashore. There is no other way.

No one loves Netaji more than the common masses of this vast and wondrous land. They have neither lineage nor learning but they have the profusion of love with which they hold the hero to their hearts. These are the descendants of Netaji, the mute suffering millions who toil away daily under the scorching sun of the tropics, whose freedom is a distant cry, who have never heard of declassification or destruction of files but who at a moment's notice are ready to sacrifice their all when the Call comes from a one like our hero, whose forefathers rose as one man to drive the British away when the Azad Hind Fauj stormed into the citadels of the Motherland. Such are always the salt of the Earth and such are the warp and woof of the fabric that nationhood is. Let us then salute the martyrs of the I.N.A. and all those millions who resisted the tyranny of the British or, shall we perhaps bend down and take the dust of their feet, these supreme sons and daughters of the soil?

Netaji is alive and vibrant in our souls. We shall dip in this confluence of cultures which he was and purify ourselves and so build a vibrant India, the Motherland of his dreams. Jai Hind!
  

DECLASSIFY NETAJI FILES 2 ... UPDATED TILL 14 SEPTEMBER, 2015

70 years have rolled by since the mysterious disappearance of Netaji and even today the Government of India is apprehensive about the repercussions it will have to face from the people of India if it declassifies the 130 odd Netaji files in its custody and 64 more such files in the custody of the Government of West Bengal. The Russian KGB files on Netaji are classified as well and  so are all such files on the hero in Great Britain, China and Japan. What is the real reason behind such secrecy? Did Netaji then not die in the reported air-crash at Taihoku Airport on the 18th of August as has been consistently maintained by the Government of India? Was the air-crash report an elaborate hoax to help Netaji escape to a safe destination once the INA had surrendered to the British at the end of World War 2? Did the men in political power in India then gain anything from such a disappearance of Netaji from the national scene and did they thereafter connive with the powers that be to keep Netaji away from India for good? After all, Netaji’s return to India post-independence, in the hypothetical case of his survival till and beyond 15 August, 1947, might have spelled the political doom of many a shrewd contriver in the then Congress Party including its top leadership. So, did anyone within the hierarchy of the ruling party then play foul with Netaji and, with the help of foreign powers such as the erstwhile Soviet Union, prevent his return to his Motherland to take his rightful place at the helm of national affairs? If so, who? Where did Netaji go after 18 August, 1945 for we all know that there had been no air-crash on or within a few days of 18 August, 1945 at Taihoku Airport nor is there any crematorium report to validate the claim of Colonel Habibur Rahman and company that Netaji had succumbed to third-degree burn injuries subsequent to the crash and had been hurriedly cremated there in Taihoku, and this we know on the basis of the Government of India instituted Mukherjee Commission investigating into the Netaji disappearance? The Mukherjee Commission has categorically rejected the Air-Crash Theory and has thrown the doors of investigative research into the disappearance case wide open for serious students of history and political thinking to come up with plausible alternative theories aided especially as they today are by the Right to Information Act which allows them to be privy to many an erstwhile inaccessible State document. But here the researchers are facing the stumbling block of the Netaji Files being held as classified by the Government of India and so long as this impasse continues there is absolutely no chance of the truth to surface. The BJP Government is likely to be more helpful in unearthing the truth as opposed to the last Congress Government which rather unceremoniously had rejected the Mukherjee Commission Report without citing any sufficient reason for such summary dismissal and, therefore, it is being urged that all those who admire, love and honour Netaji should today join hands to press on the demand for declassification of all Netaji files so that truth may at last prevail as to what happened to our missing hero. After all, he was truly the liberator of India from British subjugation as Clement Attlee, the Labour Party British Prime Minister who had presided over the Transfer of Power leading to Independence, had later confided to a legal luminary in India. Attlee had said that it was Bose’s INA offensive that had started a train of revolts among the armed forces serving the British in India that made British rule untenable beyond August 1947 and the British quit in a hurry. They found Gandhian non-violence much easier to negotiate but the nation-wide repercussion of Bose’s armed struggle impossible to contain for the very armed forces they had historically used to suppress the Indian freedom struggle had now turned on them. History ought to be re-written in India whereby Netaji and his INA’s epic struggle to successfully liberate India will be given its due place and rightful honour. And for all this the Netaji Files must be immediately declassified so that truth may shine on our country and shed its lustre for the progress of the Motherland. Jai Hind!

P.S. It is heartening to hear that the Government of West Bengal has taken the initiative to declassify all the 64 Netaji Secret Files in its possession on 18 September, 2015, that is, 5 days from now. It then stands to reason to expect that the Union Government of India will follow suit and do tomorrow what Bengal does today, remembering reverentially what Gopal Krishna Gokhale had once prophetically said about this great land that had led the revolution for freedom. We may now or never come to the unearthing of the truth about the missing hero if we fail the hour that has arrived at our door. Let us, therefore, conjointly work towards the dissolution of this mystery surrounding our Great Liberator and settle the dust of history once and for all. In his resurrection lies the last lingering hopes of a renascent India. Else, all is gone in the mire of material and political contamination. Jai Hind!    

IN APPRECIATION OF BHASKAR MUKHERJEE'S BEAUTIFUL REMINISCENCE OF NETAJI ON THE 'ARISE NETAJI' GROUP WALL

Oh, sheer poetry, sheer bliss and what pain, O Bhaskar, in your writing to recall those days when the hero did march across the jungles of Burma enroute to Delhi! And what apathy of the Congressmen to his Herculean efforts to liberate India! I am moved by the feeling you have generated in me through this piece, spontaneous, pure, pouring through your heart and resonating in the corridors of my heart as well. You have articulated what many of us feel but fail to express in so many terms for all are not gifted to write as you are but all, nonetheless, feel, benumbed sufferers of the soul, when we remember him who gave his all for us, who liberated us from the British yoke and then passed into oblivion through the treachery perpetrated by his own countrymen, once comrades-in-arms for a common cause. Thanks Bhaskar for thus obliging me at my request and so have you made us all indebted for this beautiful piece of reminiscence of the one who is our Pratahsmaraniya Purush (the one who is reverentially remembered at dawn).

EIGHTH SUNDAY SESSION, 19 APRIL, 5-8 P.M.

The Eighth Sunday Session was held on 19 April. Attendance was once more poor with only Dwaipayan Bhattacharya turning up to accompany me for the discussions. However, the proceedings got rationalized as we stuck to our schedule determined in an earlier session.

We began with a reading from 'SRI SRI RAMAKRISHNA KATHAMRITA' with brief discussions on it and then proceeded to read from 'IS VEDANTA THE FUTURE RELIGION?', again with deliberations on its content.

No philanthropic cause could be discussed though.

FUTURE SESSIONS WILL BE FROM 6.30 P.M. TO 8 P.M. EVERY SUNDAY TILL FURTHER NOTIFICATION IS PROVIDED.

President Maharaj is ailing. Let us all pray for his recovery.

TENTH SUNDAY SESSION, 6 SEPTEMBER, 2015, 3-8.30 P.M.

The Tenth Sunday Session was held on 6 September, 2015 with Arpita Ghosh, Sarbani Deb​ and Sayantan Mukherjee​ attending it besides yours truly who moderated the discussions. The Upanishads, significance of temple architecture and Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Movement in its various phases were discussed. Sayantan threw a flood of light on the subject of museology which is his area of specialization and delighted us with his scholarship which humbled us all. We wished him success in his forthcoming career. Later, Shanti Kar and Chandana Sen also joined in the discussions.

The Pranam Mantra 'Om! Sthapakaya cha dharmasya...', composed by Swami Vivekananda as a tribute to his Master Sri Ramakrishna, was discussed in detail and its spiritual significance sought in the deliberations through delving deep in the cultural past of India. The different statues of the Sun God at different locations within the Sun Temple at Konark depicting different phases of the solar journey through the day was also a subject of depth discussion. Religion and culture got beautifully fused in the discussions and one understood the composite character of the Indian cultural experience.

Overall, it was a delightful evening , very stimulating, informative and uplifting and we all look forward to an even brighter evening this week on 12 September, 2015 when we propose to hold our Eleventh Sunday Session. All participants are requested to ring Sri Sugata Bose​ up before coming for the programme as last-minute cancellation of the programme is always a possibility on account of unforeseen circumstances. 

THE LIGHT OF A MILLION SOULS

This inimitable monk of sterling strength of character was hardly ever ruffled even in the thick of political trouble in West Bengal that rocked the Ramakrishna Mission in the 1970s and 1980s, and maintained an evenness of temperament so uncommon among men that one wonders if this is what is meant by the term 'sthitaprajna' (of stable realisation) in the Bhagavad Geeta. Swami Gahanananda was a jewel of the Ramakrishna Order and, like many of his predecessors who he emulated, he has also left behind a rich heritage for us to emulate and so uplift ourselves to supernal heights of spiritual glory whereby we may duly serve the Mission of the Master, that of rejuvenating the whole human race with the pristine ideals of the Upanishads made flesh in the very fabric of our being and actualised in our everyday intercourse of life. In later life when he blessed over 142,000 devotees with spiritual initiation, Swami Gahanananda's spiritual prowess became evident. He silently transformed these lives forever and countless more who had the occasion to interact at length with him. Such a karma-yogi rarely visits our earth and it has been a privilege for so many of us to have seen him from close quarters and witness the effulgence of that Spirit that was ever engaged in the work of the Master, salvaging souls from the mire of material existence and setting them on the royal avenue of godhead.

Swami Dayananda had founded the Shishu Mangal and had found in Swami Gahanananda an able lieutenant to carry forward the Hospital Project and give it final fruition in the form of the Ramakrishna Mission Seva Pratishthan, a 550 bed General Hospital which has now expanded with a Paediatric Section to a 600 bed hospital. The tireless efforts of Swami Gahanananda, his fortitude and vision, have given shape to this premier centre of health-care and so set up new standards of hospital service in Kolkata, worthy of emulation by like institutions.

Swami Gahanananda, despite being an indefatigable worker for the cause of Ramakrishna-Vivekananda, ever stressed the importance of spiritual practice and contemplation as the primary source of vitalisation of the system whereby great labour of love for the cause may be effected. He always reminded monastic and lay workers that the centre and focus of their lives was Sri Ramakrishna and it was his work that they were privileged by his grace to be doing. Therefore, it was binding on everyone to humbly perform their duty to the best of their ability and leave the fruits of their labour to the Master to determine. There was no reason to panic or get stressed over work, for essentially the work was Thakur's and he would get it done in his own inscrutable way in the fullness of time. However, this was not a prescription for laxity in work for it was a divine injunction that soldiers of the soul were bearing in Ramakrishna's name and it was their utmost obligation to render justice to the cause.

As the Centenary of Swami Gahanananda draws near every passing day, it becomes an imperative for his disciples and devotees to cast in their lot to celebrate his great life and works and to dedicate their own lives, which were so very much shaped by him, for the great cause of Sri Ramakrishna as exemplified by his leonine son, Gahanananda.

NETAJI ... 2

At the age of five Subhas went to school, a missionary school (Protestant European School) at that where he could master the language of the British masters. It is interesting to note that the pupils there were lengthily taught the Bible along with British history and geography instead of that of India, Latin instead of Sanskrit and Western music instead of Indian. It was but obvious that these missionary schools were primarily meant for European and Anglo-Indian children and they aimed to turn them into British end-products with little affinity to anything Indian, though they operated well within the Indian heartland. This sense of alienation of the British-Indian system of education following the minutes of Macaulay never let the British integrate themselves with the Indian culture nor allowed the free flourishing of the children of the land and the cultural divide inevitably fostered in sensitive Indian minds a reaction later regarding the efficacy of the foreign systems operating within our beloved Motherland. And this in turn grew in momentum to ferment feelings for freedom from the British yoke.

In 1909 Subhas joined the Ravenshaw Collegiate School in Cuttack. Here he came to learn at length his mother-tongue Bengali and also some Sanskrit. Here Subhas met his boyhood idol Beni Madhav Das who was the headmaster of the school. The latter evoked in him a sense of ethical idealism and it was a touching farewell that he bade the boys when he took his leave off them on being transferred. Beni Madhav Das left an indelible impression on Subhas for life. He learnt to appreciate Nature in a new light, his aesthetic eye opening up and stirring him to his depths even as he embarked upon the stormy phase of adolescence.

NETAJI...1

Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose was born on 23 January, 1897 at Cuttack in Orissa to Prabhavati Devi and Janakinath Bose. His father traced his ancestry from the Boses of Mahinagar while his mother traced her lineage from the Duttas of Hatkhola.

Janakinath Bose, born 28 May, 1860, was an illustrious man and made his mark in life. He joined the bar, rose to the position of Chairman of Cuttack Municipality, then became Government Pleader and Public Prosecutor. Further on, he became a member of the Bengal Legislative Council and was awarded the title of Rai Bahadur. In later life, in protest against governmental repression, he relinquished the title though.

Janakinath was engaged in philanthropic activity as well. He built a charitable dispensary and a library in his ancestral village besides undertaking extensive charity in Orissa, supporting many a student with pecuniary help. He was also abreast with the latest political developments in the country though he was never an active politician. He sympathized with the national movement for freedom. To sum it up, Janakinath was of a religious disposition and ever strove to help the poor and the needy.