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!