DURGA, RAM, KRISHNA, NETAJI

Durga Puja is at our door-step, no irreverence there though, for Mother Durga is ever enshrined in our hearts. The demon of ignorance will soon be slain and so is it every year. But the demon resurfaces and the routine continues of the rise of evil and its destruction. Each time, though, Mother Durga slays the demon with her arms and ammunition and does not go pleading for mercy to the demon, enter into parleys with it or resort to passive resistance to do away with it. She declares an open war against the demon which will see no other reason but that of force, of armed resistance against it. The very method the demon applies to win victories against its adversaries, it responds to when applied against it and capitulates when war is valiantly waged against it. There is no attempt by the Divine Mother to convert Mahishaasur to the path of righteousness by appealing to its higher self through the practice of passive resistance, non-violent non-cooperation, civil disobedience or even bearing upon it the peremptory call to quit the terrain. Mother in her omniscience knows the limitations of the potency of passive struggle against the deep, dark ignorance of the demon and hence, does not foolishly resort to such trivial measures to attempt to annihilate evil. She annihilates the demon by the very means it applies against the gods and now against her. So much for Mother Durga’s winning independence for us through non-violence!

Now we come to Raghupati Raghava Raja Ram. Mother Seeta has been abducted by the Rakshas Ravan. Ram, her beloved husband is in inconsolable grief. Does he resort to prayers, petitions, pleas and parleys with Ravan through emissaries beyond diplomatic bounds? And do such passive methods work against the redoubtable Ravan? No, the wondrous discoveries of the future devotee of Ram fail miserably as Ravan throws the open challenge of war to Ram if he wishes to manfully rescue his beloved wife. Now what does he do? Does he stubbornly hang on to his feeble methods, foil friends who may be valorous enough to attempt the rescue of their Mother Seeta, conceive of opponents in friends and thwart them in their every bid to carry out the rescue mission, pretend to be the apostle of peace before his demonic adversary and try to move his heart to be a second apostle or does he with military vigour build up an alliance against Ravan and march on to Lanka to wage war? Does Ram stop till he has almost annihilated the entire Rakshas race that has sided with evil? Does he exhibit effeminacy in combating his counterpart in war or does he exude true kshatriya valour in eliminating evil that will remain as a beacon for future generations to seek direction from whenever a crisis of civilization confronts them consequent upon the rise of evil? Votaries of Gandhian non-violence, ponder!

Finally, the flautist perennial. The Kauravs have committed unnumbered blasphemy against their cousins, disrobing sister-in-law Draupadi, daring to burn alive the Pandavs and depriving them of their legitimate right to kingship through the dice-deceit. War is imminent. Yet, last minute deliberations for peace are on. Krishna, as ambassador for the Pandavs, tries appeasement with a most unequal offer, seeking a mere five villages for the five Pandavs, in the bargain giving away the rest of the kingdom to Duryodhan. But the latter does not budge an inch and threatens to imprison the diplomatically immune ambassador. War is declared between brothers.

On the battlefield of Kurukshetra Arjun turns timid at the sight of the huge Kaurav army commanded by the ablest generals of the land. He cites many a reason to support his cause of abstinence from war but Krishna sees through the trick. He strongly advises Arjun to take up arms and manfully destroy the enemy. After a prolonged debate the disciple is convinced and rises to deliver death-blow to the enemies of civilization. Why does Krishna not advocate non-violence through and through to set up order in the decadent India of his times? Why does he not advise Arjun to take up passive resistance as the righteous method of setting things straight with the Kauravs? Why does he allow the carnage of war as the legitimate means of establishing righteousness on Earth? Is he then wrong? What is the position of Gandhians on this?

When all peaceful means to bring about reconciliation between adversaries fail as if so the often the case in history, war remains the only option to bringing about the resolution of many a contentious issue. Not that it does not have its terrible consequences but that a war that is fought in national defence against foreign aggressors or that is waged against foreign occupiers of one’s nation to liberate the motherland cannot be simply dubbed as so much violence and nothing more. Such a war is the holy duty of a nation to wage and failure to do so is cowardice and irreligion. Netaji waged such a war against the British Raj with his Indian National Army.

Let the people of this land on the eve of Mother Durga’s war against Mahishaasur wake up to the fact that the British resembled the demonic forces of the day and Netaji was empowered by the gods, so to say, to crush them and evict them permanently from the holy soil of Bharat. Gandhian non-violence was, like Arjun’s plea, a cowardly capitulation before the might of the British Raj which was totally unjustifiable on the grounds of ethics, morality and spirituality, unsupported by the Ramayan, the Mahabharat and the Chandi and the great kshatriya tradition of this land. Netaji, however, listened to the call of the Krishna of the Age in the form of Vivekananda who had exhorted Tilak to blow off the British with bomb from India. He had famously said to him, “What India needs today is a bomb!” Netaji and his INA was that bomb that burst upon the British in 1944-45 to scurry them home like sick babies that needed the nursing of their mother. Jai Hind! Jai Durga Ma! Happy Durga Puja to all!