NETAJI, A TALE IN RETROSPECT ... 1

Woe unto the nation that could not do justice to the blood of the martyrs spilled for the freedom of the nation! Woe unto those pretenders to piety that plotted against the hero to bring about his dismissal from the national scene and with it the division and downfall of the nation! India arise and shake off the shackles of the past, restore the martyrs to their rightful place, relegate the perfidious plotters to their true status and rewrite the story of the freedom movement in letters of gold for every drop spilled from the veins of the martyrs is golden in the eyes of the Mother they sought to free. Netaji stands preeminent in the annals of the freedom movement. He circuited the world at its most perilous moment, shaking hands with the 'devil', so to say, to secure freedom for his motherland. While the rest of India's leadership spearheaded by Gandhi rested on their vain idealism and debilitating politics to perpetuate the misery of the masses groaning under the heels of the British Raj, Netaji, pragmatic as he was, understood the Second World War to be the perfect opportunity to deal the death-blow to British imperialism. This was in sharp contrast to Gandhi's ideology of passive resistance and it quickened the ire of the Mahatma who rather dubiously plotted the political demise of Bose on the eve of the World War, sidelined him and then got him expelled from the Congress to lead India on to her future disaster. But such a one as Bose can neither be sidelined nor segregated for his heart bleeds for the nation and sooner than later he finds sympathetic souls to take up his cause as comrades-in-arms. Bose went out of India in one of the most daring escapades history has borne testimony to and reached Moscow, then Berlin and finally Tokyo to wage an epic armed struggle with the aim of liberating India at the height of the World War, a valorous saga whose parallel is hard to find in the annals of world history. India did subsequently become free but what perfidy followed! But more of that later. Till now chew on this as history unfolds before your very eyes. Let us then go back to the heady days of Haripura, 1938. Bose has been nominated Congress President for the first time.