CROSS-CURRENTS ... 1

In life so many come in the guise of friends, so many professing love in the blossom of youth, but they all leave when their deal is done. The Guru alone abides forever in our hearts and never leaves us even in our direst hour of distress. He alone is the true friend, none else, none else.

It is time we actively propagate the teachings of Swami Vivekananda for it is our only national imperative if we are to survive as a self-respecting nation. Vivekananda's universality is the one thing so very necessary for amity in our storm-tossed world today where factionalism and sectarian violence are rending it apart. Friends, help spread the message of the Swami. His ideas need dissemination to the remotest corners of the world for humanity to feel secure about its future.

Sri Ramakrishna, they say, is the prophet of harmony. But harmony of spiritual ideas is not a new thing in India. It was not Ramakrishna who first discovered it. It has been the discovery of the Vedic Rishis that all of phenomena is wending its way toward godhead and that freedom from the causal chain is the goal of all. The sage of Dakshineshwar relived the spiritual experience of our entire historical and prehistorical past and reconfirmed the findings of the Vedas thereby re-validating the inviolability of Vedic transcendental truths. His was the affirmation of ancient truths suited to the modern age. And, after all, truth is timeless and truth is universal. Otherwise, it is arbitrary assertion without rational or intuitive basis which is the seed of future feud when decadence sets in. The Hindu embraces all within his fold without disturbing the faith of any for the Hindu is secure in his wisdom about the inviolability of absolute truth and a modicum of error in all relative truths. Ramakrishna traversed the diverse spiritual paths available to him and through his realisations arrived at his famous inference : As many faiths, so many paths. Let us study the life and message of this seer of the soul and so strive to make our attitudes more conducive to conjoint living where unity shall be the core principle amidst a myriad diversity.

The Manu Smriti has in parts become obsolete now and has been replaced by the Constitution of independent India which is the Smriti we ought now to follow. Being truthful to the Constitution is not only law-abidingness but is a moral duty for the citizens of India. Herein alone we have arrived at harmony as a nation and religious laws must now be subservient to the Constitution, be they Hindu Smriti injunction or Islamic sharia. Man must be unfettered to evolve freely at last.





  

PERFIDIOUS PAKISTAN ... 2

Was the Partition of India necessary? Was it absolutely an imperative? Could Gandhiji not have undertaken a fast unto death to stop it? Let us say, he would have failed. But ought he to have not attempted it to put emotional pressure on his errant countrymen to bring them to the correct path? For so many lesser reasons he had fasted on so many occasions. Now, on this momentous occasion when the history of the country was about to change for good for the worse, when the motherland was on the verge of being mutilated which would cause the displacement and devastation of millions, did he not think it to be his moral duty to put up his protest before the world in his characteristic way which earlier had reaped such lively dividends? Or, was he sure that this time it was a lost cause and Nehru, Jinnah and Mountbatten would prefer to make common cause over his wasted body to go ahead with their perfidious programme of political opportunism? Whatever it may have been, whatever thoughts may have flipped through the Mahatma's mind then, it was morally wrong of him to submit to Partition with just his verbal disapproval and his resignation of the country's fate to Nehru's will. He should have strenuously resisted in his own inimitable way for he knew no other that was either acceptable to him or was his forte. Whither the Mahatma's morality when it mattered the most? How could he relinquish the reins in Nehru's hands who was in a hurry to become Prime Minister of independent India even if it meant entering into damaging contract with the British Government and the Muslim League over the territorial sovereignty of India, even if it meant mutilation of the motherland? The people of India had trusted him and he belied them in their implicit faith in him. Woe unto the masses who had vowed their all for the Mahatma and he let them down in their perilous hour! Shame on such weakness masquerading as non-violence and passive resistance when it fails to fulfil programmes it undertakes whenever the going goes tough! The Mahatma did in fact fast in September 1947 and in January 1948 but these were directed to bringing about Hindu-Muslim amity post-Partition. The fact remains that he did not fast to prevent Partition.

What resulted from the Mahatma's failure that day and all his earlier pretensions to ethical politics was the permanent wound of Partition in the motherland's body, the secession of the Indus plain on one side, the Gangetic delta on the other, the creation of the enemy State of Pakistan and the carnage of countless innocent victims of sectarianism in the wake of the Partition. And more. Since that day tens of thousands of Indian soldiers have paid the price of the Mahatma's experiments in truth-force (satyagraha). This much for Jinnah's children's reverence for our beloved leader. And rightly so. For they are groomed by a different philosophy that seeks to eliminate the enemy, not love him to transformation of his heart. The Pakistanis follow Islam's militant ideology in a decadent way much to their peril but this has caused us tremendous harm on this side of the border. Their cross-border terrorism, their duplicity in diplomacy and dialogue, their mischievous, malicious intent of destabilising India by fomenting trouble in Kashmir, all these have their genesis in the weak political philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi who generated a tradition of passive soldiers of the soul who were no match in countering the cunning of a malicious State machinery intent on the surreptitious destruction of India. Gandhiji, by his avowed anti-military stance, broke the backbone of martial India, and the armed forces in India, despite their stupendous patriotism and redoubtable valour, still suffer from inadequate preparedness in terms of technological development, defence equipment and support from the civilian government at crucial hours to go ahead and strike the decisive blow that will teach the enemy the warranted lesson. So often in combat, Pakistan has been laid low by the Indian military at a terrible cost to it, only to be let off by the civilian government of India under the pretext of diplomacy and bilateral relations which have proved fruitless. Any serious thinker will be able to trace the roots of such overall weakness of approach to the Mahatma's refusal to organise the Congress on a militant basis as was suggested by Subhas Chandra Bose in his Presidential address at the Haripura Congress of 1938, his subsequent sacrilegious ouster of Bose from the national political scene on this count and his overbearing debilitating influence in matters of statecraft on the young brigade of Nehru and the like who would shape independent India's defence programme, for the Mahatma was only interested in winning independence and not, thereafter, in keeping it. He had no action plan for the governance of free India which to him seemed too worldly a pursuit for his saintly system to accommodate. 

The rest is history. Pakistan remains the bugbear for India for all the Mahatma's love for it. Jinnah seems to be victorious for the while in a vicious way but the saint's ways are mysterious and will be vindicated at last. But for that India will have to follow the footsteps of Netaji and arm herself to the teeth to meet the foe on the frontier, be it perfidious Pakistan or the deceitful dragon. Till then India suffers, for sufferance seems to be her lot and sufferance she seems to enjoy submitting to in her present decadent state where she has lost her spiritual moorings of Kshatriya valour and fierce national pride which was her dharma for countless aeons from historic and prehistoric times.       

PERFIDIOUS PAKISTAN ... 1

Why does Pakistan keep talking about India's occupation of Kashmir? How can India occupy her own territory? Rather, Pakistan should remember that historically it is a part of India and at no distant date it will once more be absorbed in the great landmass of the motherland. It is but a brief rambling that Pakistan has been allowed by historical forces in the extreme boundaries of India and in the fullness of time when it has had its share of provincial experience which it in folly thinks to be national experience by perfidious agreement with the British and the capitulating Congress leadership of the day, it will return to the heart of the mainland to seek refuge and rest.

1971 taught Pakistan the first lesson in this direction when Bangladesh was carved out of it and it lost 20% of its territory and 60% of its population. The Indian Army then decimated the Pakistan forces in East Pakistan to help give birth to the new nation of Bengalees. At the next major encounter like that with India, Pakistan will be completely dismembered back to its elements and they will all be assimilated into the mother-body of mainland India.

Perhaps, Mother India has kept these truant elements outside the current geographical terrain of India to give them time to evolve before they become fit to inhabit the holy land of Bharatvarsha. Hurling itself against the hill serves the mad bull's horn no good, so it is for Pakistan to attempt to injure India. The mighty Himalaya will not budge from its position when hurricane hurls itself with blind fury against its body. So is it with mature India when an errant child like Pakistan keeps up its misdemeanour for long hours without a let up.

But the child has to be chastened from time to time lest it grows up to be a social nuisance as our neighbours daily by their dastardly acts testify. And it is here that the present Union Government has made definite progress. Swift surgical strikes against terrorist camps located in Pakistan, destruction of Pakistan posts across the Line of Control and diplomatic coups against the adversary in international fora like the United Nations are beginning to show the Indian intent to the traitors across the border and sending an icy chill up their spine. They only understand the language of military force and they must be taught lessons in their vernacular. India must now as permanent policy be more aggressive towards Pakistan and stop all dialogue with this evil nation that after all is the severed cancerous section of India. Till chemotherapy administered by our military doctors starts working it back to health, India must not have any other form of interaction with this perfidious nation which was till the other day and will be on the morrow an integral part of India. Till then Pakistan will bleed. When the people of Pakistan will so suffer that they will realise the futility of their existence as a separate nation from India, they will plead to come back to their motherland. Then we will once more be the Akhanda Bharat (Undivided India) we always have been and then only permanent peace here in the subcontinent will reign.

To that day,
To the primrose hour,
I send these lines tonight.
They'll waft through the air,
Through the starry skies,
To welcome you with the light.   

A LIFE LIVED TO PERFECTION ... 2

Nivedita remains a singular character in the recent history of India. She is India's forgotten heroine. This leonine Irishwoman who dedicated her life to the cause of this country is well-nigh erased from public memory, thanks to the authorities who have been in charge of preserving her legacy for posterity. As we step into the sesquicentennial year of her advent on earth, we ought to pledge to undo this grave injustice to our national cause in allowing such a state of oblivion of our great ones to precipitate. It does us no good to forget the great and not to remember the very greatest of them --- an epithet that adorns Nivedita admirably well ---, harms us immeasurably, for it cuts us off from our virile base of patriotism, our roots in history, our sense of belonging to a common heritage of service and sacrifice that fetched us freedom at no distant date from the Sister's demise. The Indian Government ought to adequately honour the great patriot in her sesquicentennial year and, so, set a trend of rightful recognition of all our honourable ones, men and women who have laid down life and labour at the altar of the motherland to bring her to freedom and fruition. Of these, Sister Nivedita, that leonine protege of Swami Vivekananda, occupies pride of place, for in those years of volcanic revolutionary activity sweeping across the country, especially, the Presidency of Bengal, she held the ideological reins of the movement with such intrepid fervour that her Irish antecedents would have been proud of. The question that confronts us now is this : Are we equally proud of our motherland even as the Sister was whose adopted home it was, and, are we then prepared to pay our homage to her in a befitting manner that posterity will not dare level charges of ingratitude on us?

Nivedita is no more. But we are there to perpetuate her memory and make her live among us, her spirit inspiring us to higher attainments, nobler aspirations and sublime sacrifices for our motherland whose liberation from the shackles of colonial bondage was her earthly dream, whose transformation into the future India of hope and light was her heavenly vision. And, to achieve it all, she lived in the hell of this world, far away from her own people, in dire poverty and physical misery, for her very subsistence also she would dispense for the national cause, such was her love for her India. Such dedication to the nation's cause has only once more been seen thereafter and that was witnessed in that other epic life, that of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. And yet, it must be remembered that Netaji was no less inspired by Vivekananda, who he considered his spiritual guru at a distance, as was Nivedita and there lies the common link binding the twain. Moreover, every revolutionary in post-Vivekananda era had fallen under the spell of this redoubtable Irishwoman who listened to her conscience alone and to none else, and that conscience dictated to her a different reading of her preceptor and his message which resulted in her alienation in person, though never in spirit, from her parent spiritual body, the Ramakrishna Mission, which chose to distance itself from her then supposedly seditious activities directed at ousting the British from India. Much controversy reigns over this episode of the Sister's isolation from the Mission and only time will clarify the murkiness that defines it in many a mind even now. But her spirit that had felt the oneness of Brahman in Almora in 1901 when she had gazed into the vast void of the Absolute in fulfilment of her Guru's benediction on her, could not be partitioned into components that could be fitted into institutional compartments. She, thus, overrode all circumstantial encumbrances to carry out her own mission, her Master's mission in her mind, to free India from all forms of bondage of which political slavery served to secure supreme significance.

Those were heady days as Bengal erupted against Curzon and his bid to partition the State. Vivekananda was dead but his spirit animated the youth of Bengal as they broke out in open fury against the British Raj. Tagore took to the streets tying the fraternal bond of union (rakhi) between the severed halves of Bengal. Swadeshi and Boycott ruled the roost even as extreme activities of terror perpetrated periodically against British officers forced the Raj to rethink its decision to fracture the land of Bengal. It was the sagacity of Nivedita, her philosophical maturity, ideological clarity and her unflagging energy, optimism and leonine spirit that had guided many a revolutionary through the turbulent times when Bengal was aflame with the call to freedom and the British had not the means to douse the flame. Bengal was reunited in 1911 and the British called it quits here as they shifted capital to New Delhi. Bengal had become too hot a seat for the barbarous British who received their own medicine in copious doses from the young revolutionaries they chose to term 'terrorists'. Kshudiram died on the gallows to set up the standard of youthful valour in the national cause. Aurobindo Ghosh fled British Indian territory to seek refuge in Pondicherry, then a French colony. These antithetical events all found harmony, however, in Nivedita who remained to all of India, 'the mistress, servant, friend in one' as her Guru had envisaged.

There is so much more to Nivedita than this short essay can depict. This is a feeble attempt from a fallible hand. Others more able will surely write treatises on this incomparable Irishwoman who had so identified with her adopted country that she has set for all of India the benchmark of eligibility for being called a true Indian. Born 28 October, 1867, Nivedita was laid to rest on 13 October, 1911. Barely two months later, Bengal was re-unified.        

MAN AND HIS EARTHLY FOLLY ... 1

Natural resource conservation on one side, human resource development on the other --- this should be the agenda for future humanity. Mother Earth has been despoiled like anything by her errant children and is in fever. Unless adequate steps are taken to restore her lost balance, we will be wiped out as a species from the planet just like our predecessor dinosaurs. The signals are loud and clear and we must heed them while yet there is time to rectify things. Perhaps it is already too late for us to avoid inevitable consequences of our misdemeanour but not quite so late as to avoid annihilation if we adopt the proper measures to avert catastrophe.

To begin with, we have to take stock of our lifestyle which is predominantly desire-driven and hence, consumerist. The more we consume, the more we burn fuel to run our factories and the more we heat up the earth. This has to change. There must be a radical rethinking on this and we must reorient our lives along the celebrated principle of 'simple living, high thinking'. This is the essence of all spiritual teaching as well where stress is laid on sublimation of desires from the material front unto the spiritual end.

The next major step to be taken is to be civilised in our national prerogatives. No nation can take precedence over the world, however powerful economically or militarily it may be. The overall interest of humankind must be prioritised over national interest. Nation states come and go but the march of humanity goes on while empires rise and fall. If collective global interest gives way to narrow nationalistic agenda, then doomsday is at hand and no prophet or messiah can save humanity, for Mother Earth will set her balance right this time through cataclysmic changes in her being. Therefore, it is prudent for the powerful nations of the world to shed their arrogance and realise for once that before the might of the planet in fury, their might in arms is no match. Let them assume humility for a change therefore and unite with all to bring about a peaceful green revolution which neither communism nor capitalism has as its agenda. Let all the nations of the world seek to set right the ecological imbalance with a single mind and a resoluteness of purpose that befits a mature human civilisation. The gravity of the situation demands it. We are at the edge of an abyss and it is now or never. Humanity, awake. If not, it will be a sleep for good.  

WHEN ALONE I ABIDE

In this dreary desert of cosmic dreams,

Lord, be Thou my only love.

Who to trust, who else to love

When Thou art all in subliminal streams?

My life I hold a gift from Thee,

Thyself, clothed in earthly form,

From end to end Thou fill me up,

Where am I? I wonder be.

A speck of dust liveth not

Till Thou fill, fulfil it so,

A dot on earth, a micro-will,

Moves in Thee, in Thy thought.

Life is long and hard and rough,

But they alone, who trust in Thee,

Live it smooth with silken glow

And sift the Real from all the bluff.

Thou art the ocean of love supreme,

All beings move in to Thee,

Thou art the source, course, final end,

Now here, so close, though far Thou seem.

When earthly love dries up so

And life itself a desert seems,

Thou, the source of all sunbeams,

Give Thyself us all the more.

The upward surge, the deepening flow,

The inward pull, the dive unseen,

The flight to freedom, bliss serene,

Surpassing joy sets life aglow.

And, thus, the saga goes on and on,

Crest and trough and golden mean,

Rise to fall and fall to rise,

Till wave-free stands the sea at dawn. 

Life is done and so is death,

Pleasure, pain and all the dross,

Nature nurses back the soul,

And the Self reveals beyond the breath.

A CASE IN POINT ... 1

Looking smart and bright, my young friend. Bravo! That's the way. But remember, appearances will have to be matched with performance also, both in the sphere of academic excellence and in the domain of character development. Read regularly 'The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda' to stay secure in both. God bless you in all your endeavours and may continued success be your constant companion in the service of the motherland, the mother who looks on with longing eyes to witness the triumphant return of her son in glory, ready to take on the challenges facing her with the mighty arm of efflorescent manhood!

To be born in India is a privilege which few realise who have been blessed with such good fortune. It is sad to see so many of our young men and women settling in the West, especially, America, after completion of higher studies there simply because of the opportunities they afford, the affluence they offer. Not a thought for the motherland that nurtured and nourished the babe to youth, not a glance back to the deprivation of one's countrymen that suffer by the hundreds of millions humiliating existence here on earth while a few reap the harvest of their labour to solely savour the spice of life. What about one's basic duty for one's motherland? What about lending one's ploughshare of labour for the land of one's birth when one has from birth enjoyed all the gifts it has showered on one? Whither Indian culture when Indian children grow up to go abroad to study and make a life there never to return? Is this the hallmark of culture that makes betrayal its benchmark? How can tens of thousands of our brightest young people seek residence in the developed West when our own country needs their informed labour of love to rise up in the comity of nations to occupy her rightful place? How may the billion-strong poor people who feed us by starving themselves ever see the light of day if in independent India the creme de la creme of our youth choose to leave the land of their birth to seek translocation elsewhere? My young and ambitious friends, think. Think deep, ponder hard before you take the perfidious plunge, I say. The masses may wait but will not forgive when their hour comes. Jai Hind!   

WHEN DEATH COMES KNOCKING BY, LIFE HOLDS THE KEY ... 1

Every death knocks on our door seeking to wake us from our earthly sleep. But such is our sensory infatuation that we refuse to see death in the true light and cling to life with redoubled vigour. Yet, death gives its periodic knock on our door, consistently trying to shock us out of our stupor and quicken us to life's ultimate purpose, Self-realisation, by the transcendence of life and death.

Life and death are the dual syndrome that hide from us our true identity, our infinite, unborn, undying, divine Self. They act as a consciousness cover over our essential existence, playing with name and form, thoughts and moods, action and reaction in an endless saga where freedom is another name for bondage and liberation a liability of flesh and form.

Man clings desperately to life even as it slips away every moment. The ephemeral pleasures of life and their concomitant pain somehow darken his horizons and he fails to detect life's ultimate objective. A prisoner caught in the web of his dreams, he ceaselessly creates his own cocoon from where he refuses to budge even as the elements advance avalanche-like to bury him in the icy chill of death. Such is his myopia that he thrives in his microcosm in his own minuscule manner and holds sway over his domain as if the microcosm were the universe of being. 'Man, the infinite dreamer dreaming finite dreams' --- this is how Swami Vivekananda had defined man. The finite man is the Infinite Man's own creation and denies himself his own infinite status, such is the phenomenon of Maya where the infinite has to perforce fit in, so to say, for the universal sport to carry on. But this is a temporary arrangement and radically opposed to the call of 'essential dimensions' for which it must render account, and herein comes the call of the Atman and the return to primeval beginnings whence sprang the universe with its multiplicity of name and form. The cosmic starting point is some way off the shore of infinite consciousness and there is no concurrence of the two. In fact the two do not simultaneously exist, only one does. When this is evident, that is not and when that is realised, this has vanished into thin air and the air has vanished too. Everything has been resolved to their essence which now is. Hence, there is no question of duality of reality. Reality ever is a singularity, that is, if such a term may be applied to it for its connotation in physics would lend it a different meaning and for the fact that even singularity implies plurality in its horizon. In Brahman there is no trace of any duality or multiplicity. Simply non-duality exists, existence is.

But the folly of it all is that man has forgotten his divine status and needlessly suffers his terrestrial predicament. Sages and saints arise periodically to remind him about his lost inheritance, the empire of the Self, but he will not budge from his futile phenomenal dream such is his hypnotism, such the force of inertia. A rude jolt, a terrible destruction, a death, every now and then shocks him into a sense of semi-awakening but all is lost soon like a ripple on the surface of water that drifts afar and then dissolves into nothingness in the water mass whence it had sprung. It is the Self in man that witnesses it all and it is the man in oblivion that somehow has to suffer the threefold misery here on earth. There seems to be a contradiction here but actually not, for the witnessing act of the Self is a reflexive act on Itself and the sufferance of the embodied soul, so to say, is the appearance of sufferance in ignorance, painful no doubt but valid only as in a dream. However, taking things as they are from the phenomenal standpoint, it is very helpful for the bound soul to suffer hurt, hindrance and hits from all quarters for it to realise that this earthly avenue is but a blind lane and sooner or later the dead end of life will come, colliding the chariot of the body to its impending doom. Lest such an hour visits one taking one unawares, and inevitably it will, it is prudent to prepare for this eventuality called death, the earthly terminus, when all that one has acquired is laid to dust and one's mortal coil is cast into its elements to be dispersed by the four winds.

But how must one prepare for death and why so? This is a question that has absorbed the best minds down the ages in all climes but nowhere more so than here, the land of the highest philosophy where the Vedas were sung by the sages of yore and whence sprang the Upanishads to delve deep into the fundamental problems of life and existence and to seek the solutions thereof. Let us tarry awhile to clarify some of the background concepts before we proceed. Our patience will be rewarded with the highest wisdom of the Vedas. Jai Ramakrishna!

TATAS IN TURBULENCE

Given the goodwill of the Tatas, the crisis surrounding the unceremonious ouster of Cyrus Mistry from the office of Tata Sons Chairman will soon be tided over with minor repercussions for sure. The reinstatement of Ratan Tata as Group Chairman, this time in interim capacity, will hopefully smooth things over, given the stature, experience and lineage of Mr. Tata. The world watches anxiously as to the outcome of this corporate drama and its effect on the share market, and also on brand TATA. Just over a decade ago the world had witnessed a fratricidal feud over a father's fortune when the Ambani brothers, Mukesh and Anil, had partitioned their patrimony before peace would prevail at their mother's intervention, or, so the books say. Now Ratan Tata has to bring the house of the Tatas to order and here, of course, there is not the remotest possibility of a dismemberment of the conglomerate, although there lurks the slight probability of a courtroom battle issuing from this boardroom coup which could severely mar the value of brand TATA in the near future and also ruin the Shapoorji Pallonji group for in such a litigation their share price will irreparably plummet. Thus, wisdom dictates that the adversaries hold artillery, keep things civil and avoid law suits which will suit neither. Meanwhile, the 79 year old Ratan Tata is set to write another chapter to his business biography and steer the house home.

Mr. Tata has been made Interim Chairman of Tata Sons for the next four months, that is, till February 2017, within which period of time the new chairman will have to be selected by a committee comprising five members, namely, Mr. Ratan Tata, Mr. Venu Srinivasan, Mr. Amit Chandra, Mr. Ronen Sen and Lord Kumar Bhattacharyya.

This is murky business, all this ouster and nomination, but then these are the imperatives of the hour thrust upon the house by the dynamics of business dealings done by the exiting chairman somewhat against the ethos of the Tatas operational for over a century. Acquisition of assets, their development and integration into the body of Tata Sons has been the hallmark of this prestigious business house that has set standards of fair-play, protection of the interests of stake-holders, especially the employees, and business integrity across the world for which it has acquired enormous goodwill globally. Brand TATA is valued so much in India at least that consumers blindly trust Tata products knowing their impeccable quality. But it seems since some years there has been an erosion in the values so very intrinsic to the Tatas and there has been a cash-craving for the company by its highest hierarchy whose apex personality is the Chairman. The acquisitions made by Ratan Tata with the long-view of making Tatas go global even at the cost of incurring sizeable debts such as Corus did not go well with the young Mistry who sold a fraction of the UK wing of the business for a nominal share price when profits dried up and the debt burden multiplied. The decision to sell off at least a significant portion of the remaining steel holdings of Tata in the UK was also taken earlier this year. Several other businesses in Europe were also on the pipeline for being sold off. This alarmed the Tata Sons' old guard for in their eyes it threatened the very health of the corporation in the long run. Communication links broke down between the errant Chairman and the group's veterans who deemed this radical shift in the business philosophy of the conglomerate as thoroughly not in keeping with the Tata ethos and dangerous for the group's future survival at the highest level. When parleys did not work with the Chairman, ouster became an imperative and the result was what happened in the boardroom yesterday.

Today, we have the old septuagenarian once again at the helm of affairs resettling things. The dust of the hour will settle down and once more the house will flourish to the cheer of all. Tata Sons will prosper and so will the world from its continued support for philanthropic causes through its trusts, collectively organised as Tata Trust. May the spirit of Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata, founder of Tata Sons, animate Ratan Tata and his associates to re-dedicate themselves to building up this premier business house that has rendered yeoman's service to the national cause in the past and continues to raise Indian aspirations in the present. Glory unto the Tatas whose business ethics and integrity have been iconic in a country given to much corruption! May God bless the house for all they have done for humanity thus far and all they will likely do in the future! Jai Hind!  

NETAJI REVISITED ... 7 (REFUGE IN RUSSIA?)

Dummies of Netaji perhaps abounded post his disappearance on 18 August, 1945 and must not be confused with the iconic leader. There seems to have been a huge conspiracy hatched to hush up his final fate wherever it may have been (Russia?) but truth-seekers must not be misled by such obvious falsities. Netaji was too virile a personality to hide behind the mendicant monk's cloak and while away time in a bleeding motherland doing nothing to redress the situation. It is highly improbable that he did so for it was uncharacteristic of him. Such a valorous one, who had once circuited half the globe in his bid to secure his motherland freedom from the monstrous British imperial power, could not be expected to idle away time, given his rebellious dynamic nature, meditating on transcendental principles, abstractions far removed from the concrete world of phenomenal reality. He had throughout his life been an ardent devotee of Ramakrishna-Vivekananda and had even contemplated in youth renouncing the worldly life. But the Abbot of the Belur monastery founded by Swami Vivekananda, Swami Brahmananda by name, had dissuaded him from choosing the path of monasticism as his tendencies lay in the direction of national service. This put paid to his extreme spiritual proclivities and Subhas Chandra directed his youthful energy and aspiration towards the struggle for securing political freedom for his much-molested motherland.

His became a burning zeal, a fire that blazed away day in and day out, a searing passion that would leave him neither rest nor respite till his goal was reached, the complete independence of India. He, along with Jawaharlal Nehru, blossomed into the radical left-wingers within the Congress, much to the discomfiture of the mild Mahatma who had determined in his own flawed manner that freedom was to be honourably obtained from the oppressive British by moral persuasion of the perpetrator of perfidy leading to conquest of his heart and his automatic withdrawal form the shores of India. Gandhi, mild and passive as he temperamentally was, could not contemplate violence as a legitimate means of fighting for freedom and was naive enough to assume that all of humanity was fundamentally susceptible to the force of feeble spirituality thrust upon them by someone as unformed spiritually as he. That Subhas was of a sterner mettle made was small comfort for Gandhi and he spared no means to bring him into the mainstream of his debilitating politics but failed miserably to achieve his desired end. Subhas remained a radical, true to his leonine moral fibre and collided in his aspirations for national freedom eventually with the titular Mahatma, not in intent or in intended end but in the modus operandi thereof. Tripuri witnessed the epic clash in 1939 as the Mahatma sidelined the blossoming leader of the land to perfidiously hold on to power, forcing him finally into exile from where he staged his comeback into national and international reckoning and waged his war against British imperialism, striking its death-knell and altering the course of world history for good. India became free under the impact as the national leader ('Deshanayak' in Tagore's epithet) was transformed into Netaji (the leader) who dealt terrible death-blows to the British Raj by mounting a fierce armed offensive against it in the latter phase of the Second World War.

And then he simply disappeared. A reported air-crash at Taihoku on 18 August, 1945, was all that surfaced from the vanishing act of Netaji as he went underground never to appear before his countrymen again. Subsequent enquiry conducted by the Justice Manoj Mukherjee Commission has categorically debunked the theory of the air-crash and has left a big note of interrogation regarding the whole disappearance issue but, owing to 'lack of clinching evidence', has not been able to establish with any degree of certitude the final fate of the hero.

Justice Mukherjee's personal predilection for Netaji being the Faizabad monk living incognito notwithstanding, serious students of the subject cannot subscribe to such facile presumptions in the absence of, as has already been stated, definitive proof, 'clinching evidence'. The Russian archives may provide the clinching clue towards resolution of the whole episode but it remains to be seen if the Modi Government has the political will to press forth the issue and come to conclusions about independent India's most enduring mystery. Till then wild assertions will abound in the public domain and each 'researcher' will translate his particular fancy into dubious deliberation bordering on babble. Lest we fall into such incongruity, let us hold our guard against such pernicious proclivities and listen to those that have done original research on the subject, seeking facts from primary archival sources and subjecting them to the rigour of proper scientific scrutiny which is the historian's mode of sifting fact from fiction.

Dr. Purabi Roy is the outstanding champion of this cause of unearthing the leads of the Netaji Disappearance Case from Russian archives and has been tirelessly trudging on since 1990 with her labour of love amidst a sea of difficulty posed by red tape at the behest of a Central Government ever intent on suppression of classified information on Netaji. The reasons for such secrecy are not clear although conjectures do their regular rounds and the Congress Party is squarely held guilty for now proven misdemeanours regarding the Netaji Files including destruction of some key files by Indira Gandhi's government, snooping on the Bose family members, mischievously holding on to the air-crash theory of Netaji's unconfirmed demise despite supposed governmental knowledge of its invalidity and, above all, refusing to lay open all information regarding Netaji before the people of this country. Dr. Roy did seminal research work of fact-finding about Netaji in the Russian archives in the 1990s and with the assistance of her friend, Alexander Kolesnikov, a retired Warsaw Pact Major General, was instrumental in unearthing a document that doubtlessly proved the existence of Netaji within the borders of the then Soviet Union as late as October 1946, fourteen months after his reported demise in the air-crash at Taihoku. In this document Stalin, Molotov, Vischenskii and Malik are seen deliberating what they ought to do with Chandra Bose (Netaji) who is within the Soviet Union.

Back in the 1990 s, barely years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, in the open spaces provided by Gorbachev's glasnost, the Russian archives were free zones for research scholars and Dr. Purabi Roy took fullest advantage of her access to Russian files in dozens of archives. It was during this painstaking search for light on Netajis' whereabouts in Russia as she suspected from Netaji's wartime correspondence with Stalin's office that she and Kolesnikov stumbled upon the formidable file attesting to his survival of the reported air-crash which was a subterfuge after all to facilitate his escape into the then Soviet Union. Dr. Roy's subsequent statement in the press created a sensation and till date remains for many the only credible evidence of Netaji's presence in the Soviet Union despite Kolesnikov's subsequent failure to depose before the Mukherjee Commission in Moscow to corroborate officially the point. On the eve of the deposition Kolesnikov disappeared to give an ironic twist to the whole episode. Much later it was learnt that for some mysterious reason the Russian Government had deputed him that very evening to be the envoy in Ankara. The Mukherjee Commission's Russian quest for truth was thus foiled by the forces that be which further raises suspicion about Netaji's possible execution in the Soviet Union for whatever reason there may have been.

But all this is pure conjecture in the absence of more definitive proof. Scholars are being exhorted to take up this most fascinating of studies and help resolve this longstanding mystery with which is entwined India's past struggle, present predicament and future aspiration. Let Netaji who had been the architect of our nation's independence seek deliverance from the worm-eaten pages of ancient files unto the sunshine of his countrymen's consciousness at last. Jai Hind!             

REAL MAN = REAL GOD

One of the fascinating features of modern living is that everyone is intent on solving the material problems of life and hardly anyone cares to go to their spiritual roots whence spring the problems. This superficiality of approach to life's problems is the signature of the surface man and the bane of his terrestrial living. Few dare to face truth headlong, fewer still go after it in their bid to seeking freedom from the shackles of space-time-causality. Most avoid asking fundamental questions about life for paucity of the discriminative faculty or to avoid the discomfort of the breakdown of illusions which are the substance of their fantasies about life. Sufferance is the result of such escape into the unreal, unending misery the constant companion of man.

And yet the dream does not break, the nightmare continues. Causes unresolved, effects follow. Thus had the Buddha raised fundamental questions on life and its maladies. He had in his meditations diagnosed the disease of the world (bhava vyadhi), identified desire (vaasanaa) / thirst (trishnaa) as its causal virus and had pronounced his prescription of elimination of desires as the medicine to cure this malady.

But desires are multiplying by the day as in a growing materialistic civilisation they are expected to do, covering up consciousness and sending man careering into surface-living and depth-dying. This depth is not profundity but an abyss for it is in the convoluted scheme of things and not along the royal avenue to Truth. Such is the hypnotism of sense-pleasure and its concomitant pain that suffering man seeks not to cast it aside but clings to it as his life-belt when all it does is to drag him into death, that yawning chasm across the icy chill of the Arctic waters that awaits him at his earthly end.

Notions of heaven and hell hardly help matters here on earth for all their ardent and acid assumptions. They more hide facts than reveal and are in effect largely counter-productive in dispelling the sensory illusions of life for they weave the myth of their continuance beyond death and awaken dormant hopes of death-defying heightened sense-pleasure in heaven or strike terror into the hearts of unsuspecting simple folks with damnation in a horrid hell. Archaic absolutism of prophet or messiah helps not the earthly cause nor does the promise of paradise provide adequate recompense for the damage done by irrational ideologues. The solution lies in depth-viewing life and reducing sensory impressions to their roots whence comes liberation from the earthly predicament.

Vedanta affords man with age-old wisdom hidden amidst heaps of historic gibberish masquerading as messianic marvel or prophetic profundity where reason is obscured by arbitrary assertion, unique suppositions and more unique revelations which the generality of humankind are not privy to, yet must follow as gospel truth for fear of violent retribution here on earth and in the hereafter. A malevolent God and his more malevolent messenger can hardly do justice to the essential divinity which shines in all irrespective of them and which must triumph over all evil in the tide of times.

When doomsday comes, the Vedantist will rejoice at the folly of it all for what may you destroy that has never ever been? And with what will you destroy the being which is all that has ever been? The universe will vanish and so will its God with all His attributes that did plague the believing world with amnesia. The rational man, the man of character and courage to face the brute of this world, the truly spiritual man with not an iota of material contamination in his personality save the trace organic element to sustain his earthly attire, these will delight that day when God will be dethroned and man emerge triumphant in his march to freedom.

Who cares for your heaven, who fears your hell? You who breed such vice on earth through self-deception and delight in your ignorance to deceive others of your ilk, or worse still, force it down the bloodstream of your captive in war, your booty, your day is done, your doomsday is at hand. The sun of knowledge has begun to shine. Soon it will be mid-way, high up in the heavens shedding its lustre on all without a trace of medieval shadow. It will be noonshine for all and the shadows looming large since centuries will be gone in a trice as man, the only God that matters, will be resurrected from primeval ignorance into the ascending spirit of freedom. Thus far has he been crucified, now no more. The three days of ordeal, the past, the present and the future, will resolve into the moment that is the eternal Presence with neither shrinking nor dilation as relativity dictates. It is Existence that is eternity, Consciousness transcending thought, Bliss beyond bounds. This is the Real Man, what need He of God who is but His pale shadow? Let things take a turnaround for once and let God vanish into the Real Man and may the Real Man emerge as the Real God! 

PRITHWIRAJ SARKAR, A DREAM IN FLESH AND FORM

Brilliant beyond words. What are doing, Prithwiraj, neglecting your genius in pursuit of earthly dreams? If dream you must, then dream the writer's dream that becomes you. We also stand to lose a bright gem of our times should you fail to give fruition to your copious capability as an author of original thinking who can enwrap his ideas in such fluid prose that one is set wondering, whence came this comet amidst commoners like us to set ablaze our path of future findings? God bless you, Prithwiraj, for you are a rare jewel that our motherland has chosen to adorn herself with and we may only pray that in the melee of the moment our days are subjected to, you do not lose the flavour of your fantasies in the realm of ideas and dreams that so enliven your emotions as they pour forth in cascades of words and images replete with the highest wisdom even as the Ganga, carrying life in its bosom, rushes down the mountainous precipice en route to its oceanic destination. Your profundity of thinking baffles me each time I chance to meet you midway in the thoroughfare of life, your seminal ideas seem surpassing the limits of ordinary experience and transcending into the beauteous zone of colours and contours where incongruity is none and harmony prevails in abounding tranquillity. What more may I say than to wish you the brightest of following to inspire you to ethereal heights of expression of your felt moods, of your unrealised aspirations, of the bright sunbeams that shine through the corridors of your self-consciousness leading you ever unto that final repose which is the end of all ends, the infinitude of final freedom?

VIVEKANANDA AND NETAJI ... 1

Both were brilliant in their respective fields. While Subhas Chandra Bose was academically a topper throughout his life, Narendranath Dutta was more of an academic outlaw, excelling in self-study, and, ironically enough, doing the study of the Self as well to which Subhas Chandra was also no stranger for he frequented the Himalayas in his very early youth in search of God. Not out of context will be to state the fact that Subhas had in his nascent quest for God not found a Paramahamsa like Narendranath was fortunate in finding but did land up in the precincts of Belur Math, the seat of worship of the peerless prophet founded by his leonine protege. Swami Brahmananda, the spiritual son of Sri Ramakrishna, was then the abbot of the monastery and advised the yearning youth to concentrate his energy on service to the nation instead and, so, channelised his aspirations towards the direction which it took which is all common knowledge.

Brahmananda was Vivekananda's brother-disciple and Vivekananda was the spiritual mentor at a distance for Subhas Chandra. Well, there were so many national leaders who were inspired by Swamiji but none more than Gandhiji's political adversaries (in his mind), the 'terrorists' and the 'extremists', the ones that vouched to free the motherland through the use of violence so very repugnant to the Mahatma but so much in line with some of Vivekananda's thinking, were such ardent followers of the precepts of virility preached by Swamiji. Netaji was the last one in this long line of illustrious leaders of the freedom movement who made Swamiji the pole star of his life and his spiritual preceptor in absentia.

After having read Vivekananda, Gandhiji too was inspired to love his motherland a thousandfold more, so he said from the balcony of Vivekananda's house in Belur Math on the occasion of the latter's birth anniversary in 1921, but he could never quite align himself wholeheartedly to the prophet's radical views on the overthrow of the vicious British Indian Government. This was later amply borne out by the altercation between the Mahatma and that veritable lioness of a woman, Sister Nivedita, the foremost and formidable disciple of Vivekananda. In a half-hour deliberation with her, Gandhiji was literally whitewashed by the Irishwoman who demolished his every philosophical argument in defence of non-violence as the sole political tool worthy of employment to achieve independence from the British. An exasperated Gandhi had met his adversary in verbal combat and was thoroughly pulverised by the experience. One wonders what his state would have been had he succeeded in meeting the mighty monarch --- whose sovereign power had barely been reflected in the audacious disciple --- and had inadvertently broached the selfsame subject before the prophet of patriotism. Gandhiji had in fact twice tried to meet Swamiji but had failed on both occasions. What a study in contrast might have been the encounter between the lion and the lamb one may now only conjecture but may not quite construe for history throws up strange surprises and this might have been one such occasion. But what if it had turned out to be a verbal duel? One feels sorry for the outcome in every sense of the term. Perhaps, India was not yet deserving of a better fate than the one she eventually received at the hands of the Mahatma and his perfidious protege, Nehru, and, thus, this epic encounter between the prophet and the pacifist was avoided by the machinations of Mahamaya.

So, the thesis is this : the Mahatma could in no way fully accept the Swami for the latter had amidst his catholic formulations even formulated the bomb-theory which he had articulated to Tilak in Belur Math as the one thing then necessary to evict the British from India. Herein lay the fundamental difference between the catholic approach of the political pragmatists like Netaji, Bagha Jatin, Hem Chandra Ghosh, Surya Sen and the like --- all of whom were deeply influenced in their political convictions after having either personally met or having read Swamiji and adopted an attitude that embraced all possible political tools to be employed in the eviction of the British including terrorist activity and wholesale war which of course was reprehensible to the muddled mediocrity of the Mahatma --- and the Mahatma's own torn technique of easing away from the British in as gentlemanly a manner as possible which decreed disaster on the populace. While the former followed the virile philosophy of the Swami, the latter, for all his supposed saintliness, shied away from the masculinity of confronting the enemy in its own terrain in the battlefield and hid his inadequacy under the cover of false philosophy, outlandish ideology uncorroborated by any Indian scripture, especially, the Bhagavad Geeta which was text-tortured by the Mahatma to suit his fanciful dispositions about freedom. Thus, on all counts the Mahatma was far removed from Vivekananda's virility and Netaji and his kindred spirits were the true proteges of the Swami. What the former lacked on account of personality deficiency, the latter exuded in abundance and fetched the freedom the Mahatma enjoyed for the brief flicker of life left to him before his catastrophic demise.

But we live on to enjoy the fruits of freedom kept in safekeeping with us by our Netaji who was truly the spiritual son of Swamiji. What more can be said than that Netaji was, like Nivedita, the true heir to Swamiji's principles and philosophy, the heir-apparent of the mighty monarch who came to reshape the landscape of the human mind, reinvent man after his manner, reorient human evolution towards its destiny divine? Vivekananda initiated the human renaissance, Netaji fulfilled it. The preceptor propounded the philosophy of freedom from the pulpit of the world ; the pupil executed it to perfection and liberated the peoples of the world by striking the death-knell of British imperialism. They encompassed the wide world between them and left their impress on humanity for good. Jai Hind! 

NETAJI REVISTED ... 6

I hope not Arnab. For the Soviet Union is no more and adequate governmental pressure from India ought to uncover the relevant files regarding disappearance from the KGB archives and then the matter may be put to rest. Dr. Purabi Roy had set the ball rolling in the 1990 s and now it is for us to take it up from there. Read 'The Search for Netaji : New Findings' by Dr. Purabi Roy for startling leads into this enduring mystery which has befuddled the world for over seven decades now. The Justice Mukherjee Commission had failed to get Major General Alexander Kolesnikov to depose before it. He was mysteriously transferred to Ankara the day before the scheduled deposition in Moscow and this put paid to the investigation in Russia whereby the entire findings of the Commission were jeopardised. Dr. Roy asserts that significant leads from Russian files could have helped advance the investigation much but alas! collusion by the Congress Government kept the findings at bay and the entire issue remains foggy to this day. Earnest researchers like you with a command of the English language at your disposal may do yeoman's service to the cause of dispelling the dark enveloping the case by devoting your labour of love. It is a fervent hope that ardent ones like you will take up the challenge and gradually come to grips with the text of the terrain traversed by Netaji, his tumultuous circuiting of the globe during the cataclysmic years of the Second World War culminating in his sudden disappearance at its end, a veritable vanishing into thin air, so to say. How he may have thereafter fared, betrayed at home and bereft abroad, remains the subject-matter of our research and it will take more than a cursory view into things to arrive at a definitive answer. Till then, my friend, we may only read and learn more, but from authentic sources as Dr. Purabi Roy's well-researched book, for here is original research written in book form and not compilations from second-hand sources. Her findings had set readers on high-alert in the 1990 s and I guess will provide adequate advantages even today with brighter chances of resolving the case. As far as declassification of the relevant KGB files are concerned, the Narendra Modi Government ought to expedite the formalities with its Russian counterpart and the truth will be out. For our part, we may do detailed study of the case and build up pressure on the parties by systematic campaigning based on knowledge and not frothy emotion tantamount to nothing.

With all my best wishes to you and kindred souls who are intent on lighting the torch of knowledge,
I remain gratefully yours,
Sugata Bose.

ANUPRERONA VIJNAN MAHARAJ

ARTHER APOBYABOHAARER DWARA JEEBONEY DAARIDRA ASHEY. Nijo upaarjoner kiyodangsha janaheetakar prokolpey daan kora aboshyo kartabya, nawchet daaridra aboshyombhaabi. Aaj sukhanidray jeebon cholchey ateeter satkarmer phaley kintu bartamaan dushkarma bhobishyatkey andhaarey dhekey phebe eki bhaabey. Jagater sampad shudhu sromer dwara upaarjon korechhi bole nijer bole daabi korbo ar nijoshaarthey shudhu byabohaar korbo janashaartha bhuley, emon karmer prayashchitta kortey hobe bhobishyoter daaridrer madhyo diye. Sromti amar ekatha mithya karon sromer shakti ti Ishwarprodotta; karmati amar ekathao asatya karon jagatprobaaho karmer niyaamok; kintu ajnan boshoto jehetu nijeke kartaa bole bhebe boshechhi, shey hetu phal ti bhog korte hobe amakei. Kono bhaabei er haat theke nishktriti nei. Jatoi Lakshmi pujo kori na keno, Ma Lakshmir ei bidhaan ti, ja kina shastra bidhaan, palon na korle adurei bipotti. Tai sokoler uchit chaturbarga anushaashoner antargato artha bastutir marmaartha bujhe newa o shei moto tar byabohaar kora.

Jnara jagatrokshar kaajey, bahujanahitaay karma kore cholechhen, tnader sahajyo kora ekanta kartabya. DILEY PHIREY ASHEY, NA DILEY PHURIYE JAY --- ei tattwati mone rakha aboshyok. Taholei sob mangal, nijer o dosher. Desher durabostha dekhe jnara shudhu bakyabyay kore kshanto thaken tnader ebar bhaabbar paala. Ki korben? Haatey toh kichhui nei, kichhu thakbeo na, sob e ube jabe kaaley karpurer moto. Dehatikeo dhorey rakhtey parben na anirdishto kaaler jonyo. ATOYEB, ASHAKTI TYAG E AASHU KARTABYA. Er e madhye kalyan nihito. Ei matro dharma, jagater seba, jagater kalyansadhan, jagat sangrakshaney artha daan. Ar daan e ba kaakey bolben? Sob e toh Tnar. Taholey ke kake daan kore. Seba, puja ei matro bola chole, ei matro kora jay. Baki ekhon Prabhu bujhun, amar kaaj shesh.  

NETAJI REVISITED ... 5

The country will rise not by the power of the rich but by the sacrifices of the lowly and the downtrodden, not by the learned but by the ignorant masses who have the heart to feel for their motherland despite the tyranny of the ages. Our motherland will rise not by the wealth of the billionaire but by the suffering of her billion children whose only Goddess may She be, so may the Mother grace. Suffering gives fortitude and fortitude breeds the strength necessary to overcome a million hurdles that be in the way of nation-building. The masses are the real strength of a nation for they form its body politic. The rise of a nation is synonymous with the uplift of its people, not a particular privileged section or class but the population at large. Thus, our primary concern must be the education of the masses so that we may harness the enormous human potential of our people. Civilisation is the progressive manifestation of the divinity of man and this divinity unfolds best with awareness about it which is brought about by a combination of secular education and spiritual training. Religion has diffused deep into the psyche of the land but what is lacking is sufficient knowledge of the secular studies which can equip men to effectively deal with the problem of material existence.

Indian civilisation dates back to antiquity and she was the founder of many of the disciplines of the material sciences as well. The Indus Valley Civilisation bears testimony to that fact. But owing to the erosion of times, repeated foreign invasions and that last one of all, the barbaric Islamic invasion of India, she fell on evil days as the landmass of Aryavarta got enveloped in darkness for a thousand years. The British no doubt by their colonial and imperial exploitation of India inadvertently brought about a resurgence of the spirit of nationalism as the reaction to its tyranny but they also denuded the country to its skeletal form by plundering its wealth till the soul of India reverberated form Kashmir to Kanyakumari with the cry of freedom. Vivekananda gave the clarion call on his triumphal return from the West to India, "My India, arise!" and the sleeping leviathan moved in its slumber. The dream was breaking and India was awaking to life. The freedom struggle began, gained momentum under Gandhi, then culminated in liberation of the land under the massive thrust of the INA led by Netaji. But what followed was perfidy of the most heinous kind. Nehru betrayed Bose and Gandhi remained intransigent in his idealistic stance of truth and non-violence in a world ruled by realpolitik. Bose, once sidelined and expelled by the Congress, was now a forgotten chapter in Indian history as the Government of India chose to bury his memory with his ashes as it found it convenient to toe the line of the Air-crash Theory of Netaji's supposed death. The hero was erased almost from history books taught to the children of India and a concocted version of India's liberation entirely by Gandhian non-violence was injected into the bloodstream of the nation. Such falsehood, such fabrication of the narrative of the freedom struggle necessarily emasculated a virile nation and debilitated it for good but for the resurgence of truth so dear to the Mahatma.

Times have changed and, in a globalised world connected by information technology, the ghosts of the past are coming alive. Once more Netaji's shadow is looming large on the ramparts of the Red Fort as fresh evidence is surfacing by the day disproving the Air-crash Theory and pointing to a great Congress conspiracy to keep Netaji out of political reckoning in post-independence India. The Communists are equally culpable for reasons obvious. How far these surmises will prove to be facts only time will tell but that there has been over the last seven decades, that is, the entire life-span of independent India, a conspicuous conspiracy to sideline the historical contribution of Netaji and the INA any child can tell who has grown up in this country in these dark decades. But truth is ever eventually victorious and Netaji's image is being resurrected with every passing day as new findings on the hero see the light of day.

Now it may be asked of this writer what connection has all this talk on Netaji with the rise of the masses which was the original subject of discussion here. And I will say, my dear friends, it has got a very real connection, indeed, a very deep one, for it was Netaji alone who had successfully united India in the last phase of India's liberation struggle cutting through cultural cross-sections, uniting Hindus and Muslims in a common national fight for freedom. No less a personality than Mahatma Gandhi has testified to this assertion although he was ideologically a world apart from the great liberator of our land, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. These two were titans in their own divergent ways but Nehru and Jinnah betrayed the nation and sold India's interests to the British for the sake of portfolios. How the motherland was murdered at midnight all discerning disciples of Netaji full well know. At the stroke of the midnight hour when the world slept, India did not awake to life and freedom. At that hour millions were being muted for good by the forces of violence unleashed by the arbitrary partition of the land. Akhanda Bharatvarsha was being dissected and from her entrails blood was being spilled across the borders to deluge the land with unmitigated sorrow and suffering and this while Nehru was seeking immortality from the flourishes of his prepared speech on the floor of India's newly-born Parliament.

Where do the masses fit into this picture? Pray, spare a thought for them that had all along suffered in the hope of securing freedom, the countless tillers of the soil, the teeming millions who were now being uprooted lock, stock, and barrel and who now paid the final price of the Mahatma's experiments with truth with their lives as fratricidal violence put paid to satyagraha and set India on the path to future degeneration. Soldierly virility had been disregarded and now we pay for it with a debilitated country seeking resolution of a million maladies that could have been prevented at source had the nation listened to its Netaji.

TO YOU MY NAMELESS READER

Your responses are always so welcome that they inspire one to post more, write more, communicate the message of the soul more. An audience illumined as you are sends the performer into inner raptures whence issues forth music in cadences carefree, breaking forth the bounds of structures and strictures to rush on to its destiny divine. Such communion is the soul of poesy and a poet lives in such sublimity of expression. The words brewing in the depths of his being are chiselled out by his inventive genius, casting forms and images of rare splendour. And when an appreciative audience is flooded by such outflow and sent careering into ecstasy, the writer's heaven is reached. Art, artist and audience become one in a triumph of the uplifted soul, the triune is united in a cascade of heavenly grace. You, my reader, are of that rare stock whose magnanimity of spirit, so very evident in the lavishness of your praise heaped on one as undeserving as this mediocre mover of words, moves me to marvellous moods to write more of my experience of the soul. The earnestness of your reading my feeble essays encourages me to hazard further my forays into the unknown world of words and images whence spring final resolutions of my thoughts, unpremeditated, uncharted exercises in joy or, perhaps, to the connoisseur, crude excesses of emotion and verbal jingling. Be that as it may, your appreciation resonates in my being, quickening currents of kindred sympathy, awaking finer sensibilities that lay dormant in the depths of my moods and resettling half-spelt out issues of a writer's predicament with his pen. For all this a gratefulness will not suffice. Rather my continued collaboration with my ageless friends, my thoughts and ideas, my words and images, I will lay down at your service as my humble offering to you for all your support and your graces. May our spirits commune to feel their essential oneness! May beauty abound to fill the void that incongruity has left in its wake! May peace prevail! Jai Hind!

NETAJI REVISITED ... 4

The seminal career of the hero across the Continent amidst the tumult of the Second World War with its fair share of mystery and adventure makes his essay through Europe a gripping tale, and the sad end of it all! What happened to Netaji at the end of the World War remains a mystery but sure enough he did not die in the reported plane crash in Taihoku on August 18, 1945. Perhaps he was interned by Stalin and his successors in a Siberian prison cell where he died a lonesome death betrayed by colleagues in the Congress like Nehru.

But why would the Russians eliminate him? What would they gain from his execution? What were the political imperatives that played their vicious hands in the disposal of Chandra Bose (Netaji)? These are pertinent questions that seek resolution in the light of new findings on Netaji. The Russian connection seems compelling for the Soviet Union was the one place where the defeated leader could have sought asylum in the then prevailing global situation. Netaji had during the War years corresponded with the Russians about future plans of the liberation of India with Soviet military assistance.

But after August 1945 there came a lull over the whole issue and Netaji was buried beneath the debris of a fictitious crash, first let out by the Japanese on August 23, 1945, perhaps as a ruse for Netaji to go underground, and then upheld by successive Congress Governments at the Centre for their own perfidious reasons. The mystery has never been resolved and ardent followers of Netaji are being exhorted to do historical research into his life and 'death' or disappearance which is factually more accurate as of now. However, it cannot be gainsaid that the life of Netaji is to be celebrated as much as his disappearance is to be researched, for both are equally important from  our national perspective. While serious research ought to be carried out by individuals and organisations regarding the fate of our greatest hero, we must also make earnest effort to delve deep into Netaji's life and career, his writings and speeches and his plans and proposals for the governance of free India so that we get a directive as to how to steer forward the national ferry in the ocean of international life.

The youth are being misled by bogus divisive political mumbo-jumbo by parties intent on merely capturing political power. The youth must resist such temptation to be led astray and must study the writings of Netaji to form a wholesome nationalistic philosophy which will be in line with India's age-old ethos and her future aspirations in the comity of nations. There are quite a few books which are authoritative sources of adequate information for the beginner but then one has to groom oneself to be gradually historically grounded to sift fact from fiction and arrive at rational conclusions with a higher probability of embedded truth in one's own findings. And that would be good individual research on Netaji to begin with as a national culture which would culminate in resolution of the Netaji mystery at no distant date.

To that end I send these lines tonight nursing fond hopes and cherishing bright dreams of the eventual resurrection of our beloved leader but for whom we would have remained slaves of the British for heaven knows how long. Come, let us all join hands to do justice to the great cause of Netaji and his INA through in-depth study, intensive research and not mere frothy spraying of negative emotions at adversaries, ghosts of the past and at comrades who ever so slightly differ in their perspective on our great liberator. May our effort find fruition in the fullness of time but may we be energetic in the disposal of this, our foremost national duty! Jai Hind!       

TO THE MEMORY OF THOSE INNOCENT ONES THAT DIED IN THE GREAT BENGAL FAMINE ... 1

Five million Bengalees died in the famine of 1943 which was man-made, that is, engineered by British apathy to the well-being of Indians. The stock-pile of food-grains was diverted from Bengal to overseas to feed the British soldiers fighting in the World War and the Bengalees had to pay with their lives to support the British cause. Winston Churchill's racial hatred of the Indians fuelled his utter lack of concern for the starving Bengalees as they were left to the elements to perish while the war-effort continued at the cost of Bengalee lives. When Britain raises a hue and cry over Nazi genocide of the Jews to portray Hitler as the devil-incarnate, they should look into the mirror to see if they resemble him in any way for lives are lives, Bengalee or Jewish. The Holocaust remains in human history as the most gruesome perpetration of barbarism and the priceless lives of innocent Jews was lost by the millions, but while the Jews have made it a point to keep the issue alive in the international arena and they gain primacy on account of the historical significance attached to their cause, the Bengalees have sadly failed to take the British to account for their own version of colonial barbarism for which a fraction of the Bengalee population was wiped out from the face of the planet. Such self-apathy is reprehensible and it is time the Bengalees make it an international issue as well as all the civilised countries of the world have done wherever the Axis Powers have wronged their people during the course of the War. And the Allies were no less culpable in this regard but then history is ever recorded by the victor and it paints a picture perfect for even perpetrators of the worst perfidy should they be on the victorious side. This is the tale of the world alas and history remains 'a host of lies agreed upon'. The British and the Americans must twice consider when they talk of human rights and its violation in the world at large. They must delve into history to find their own track-record before offering lessons of democracy and civility to others. Hiroshima and Nagasaki have not been forgotten by the Japanese either. Wiping out civilisations is an old European pastime and oppressed peoples must oppose it for the oppressed is as much human as his oppressor. The way the American Indians were butchered en masse needs to be taken cognisance of in understanding American charity and the way the British blew up the rebel soldiers from the mouth of cannons after the 1857 War of Indian Independence needs to be remembered in comprehending British fair-play and justice. That such a nation will cause five million Bengalees to perish of hunger is no surprise considering the fact that British imperialism was wholesale an exercise in barbarism, cloaked however it may have been in the garb of civility through English ingenuity. However, the crime that the British Government committed in Bengal with Churchill's indifference to the plight of the starving masses cannot be allowed by the Bengalees to be a forgotten chapter in history and they must rise en masse to seek redress. The international community must be made aware of this singular episode of catastrophic proportions (death toll = 5 million Bengalees) just as they are ever reminded of Nazi atrocity on the Jews (death toll = 6 million Jews). The British Government owes an explanation to the people of Bengal about this horrific event which was entirely the handiwork of the then British Indian Government with fullest support and directive from the Conservative Government led by Winston Churchill back home. When Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, President of the Provisional Government of Free India, sent a shipload of grains by way of aid to the people of Bengal, the British refused to accept it on justifiable political grounds perhaps but then the famine-stricken people suffered. Swami Ranganathananda of the Ramakrishna Mission had also likewise sent a consignment of food-grains from erstwhile Burma which was accepted by the  authorities that be, though. Anyhow, without going into the details of the famine which has been so famously depicted by Satyajit Ray in his film 'Ashani Sanket', I humbly rest my case here that Bengalees wherever they be must take up this case with the British authorities and highlight before the world this British atrocity on innocent civilian subjects to set the record straight of British civility, fair-play and justice. Jai Hind!   

HINDU RENAISSANCE ... 6

The space for the Hindu in India is shrinking by the day. We must be strong as a community and strength can come from the study of Sanskrit and the Vedanta. For those who cannot undertake such an arduous academic course, a thorough grounding in Vivekananda will be most beneficial. Not only does the study of Vivekananda inform us about the Sanatan Dharma (Hinduism), it also inspires patriotic feelings in us whereby we feel impelled to take up the cause of rebuilding our motherland along the lines laid down by the Rishis (illumined sages/seers of Truth) of yore and by the modern sages like Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda. Hindus are being decimated in Pakistan, Bangladesh and, horrendously, in India as well. Our ancient Bharatbhumi (the landmass of India) has been partitioned with both her arms amputated by the Machiavellian British in conjunction with the perfidious Jinnah and his cronies in the then Muslim League. Pakistan and Bangladesh are essentially India and must in due course of time reunite with partitioned India to become the ancient united motherland (Akhanda Bharat) once more. Hinduism must come to the fore to reconvert her ancient adherents through the strength of its philosophy and the truth of its principles. Till the Hindus become spiritually vibrant again, such a day will not dawn and the plight of the world will continue with tribal barbarism masquerading as religion holding centre-stage. The Hindu owes it to the world to unfold her spiritual treasures and so save the world from annihilation at the hands of savages who have neither understanding nor higher information about God, soul, spirit or the Self but are conceited enough in their ignorance to think that they possess Truth in its entirety and need to proselytise by force or fraud to bring the world to enlightenment. Such a flawed perception of life and truth necessarily fuels fratricidal feud and humanity has been laid waste over centuries by the horrors of scriptural violence. But not all religions are dark and destructive. Some are benign as well, nay, illumining and universal in scope. The Indian dharma traditions of Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, Sikhism and the like are highly scientific in their approach to the questions of life and truth and are palpably humanistic in their approach with their focus being the spiritual evolution of man and not the worship of some extra-cosmic deity whose arbitration governs the life of man. Today, when there is a definite clash of civilisations between the West and the Islamic world, when global terrorism threatens a cataclysm given the fact that the world now has a wide enough access to nuclear weapons, it is the Hindu’s holy duty to present to the world his humanistic philosophy of life and living to save the world from imminent annihilation. If he fails to carry out this, his ultimate obligation to humanity, humanity may be no more in the near future or, if at all it survives, it may be severely maimed en masse and civilisation may suffer a regression to the dark ages. Every Hindu child is thus enjoined to make a thorough study of the sacred texts of his forefathers, realise the essence of the same before embarking on preaching the gospel of divinity expounded therein and pulsating in his soul. Then alone will the world awake to the universal message of the Vedanta and with rapid strides hasten on to the eventual destination of life, freedom. Thus will the terrestrial mission of the Hindu race be fulfilled, that of discovering, preserving and disseminating the truths of the Spirit for the wide world to benefit from, but for that it is imperative that the Hindu survives as a race and that the truths that he has guarded and saved from annihilation at the hands of foreign aggressors, Islamic and Christian, do not die with him. It is for the welfare of the whole of humanity that the Hindu has lived these millennia in patient pursuit of spiritual truth and it is in humanity’s interest to support the Hindu in his fight for survival against brutal Islamism pitted against it whose sole purpose is the destruction of whatever the Hindu stands for --- reason, enlightenment, catholicity, democracy, freedom. May the Hindu survive for the world to see a brighter day in much the same way as the seer of the Shvetashvara Upanishad beheld the world in the effulgence of the Atman! May good sense prevail! May peace belong to all! May diversity thrive amidst unity and not uniformity! Jai Hind!