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.