QUESTION TIME

Why must there be two sets of laws in India, one for the Muslims and one for the rest of the Indians? Are not all Indians essentially equal in the eyes of the Constitution of India? Or, are we to suppose that Muslims have a special privilege to observance of their own culture which mandates the lawmakers to give them special legal rights? Why this appeasement of a religion that on a doctrinal basis regards Hinduism as an idolatrous, false religion and Hindus as kaffirs (unbelievers) fit to be converted, taxed or executed and was responsible for untold suffering of the Hindus for a thousand years culminating in the Partition of India from which we suffer even today? How are Indian Muslims going to ever integrate with the rest of India if the Indian Parliament is going to keep granting them privileges pertaining to the medieval Middle East which have no relevance in a modern democratic society of the 20th and the 21st centuries?

How long will the Indian Muslims live in ghettos and segregate themselves in an India seeking national integration? How long must the 350,000 Kashmiri Hindu Pundits suffer banishment from their homeland at the hands of the murderous Muslim Kashmiris? Why is this religion the source of so much intolerance, so much violence, so much hatred from its very inception till date? Is it something doctrinal in it that prompts it to be so and instigates its sincere adherents to take up arms against the infidel? Why is it so exclusive in its relation to God that it must perforce convert the rest of the world to its fold? Why does it hold a monopoly over God and prophet that it stifles the possibility of evolution of its adherents and its tenets and thereby effectively prevents its own reformation in a changing world with altered needs? Why does it require suspension of the rational faculty of its followers and submission to its tenets simply as an article of faith which essentially means the holding back of a vast section of humanity to the ardent assumptions of a single man fourteen centuries ago with no hope of ever regaining one's liberty to critically think and reject its tenets for fear of terrible retribution? Why must apostates be killed, infidels killed, dissenters destroyed? Whither humanity? Whither freedom?

Is it then slavery to the 'divine dictate' that must thwart human aspirations and condemn life on earth as a temporary travail, a test to be gone through to allow an omniscient God wisdom enough to judge one onto eternal bliss or eternal damnation as His Highness deems it fit? Will anyone reflect? Will someone look into the mirror and see his own image brighter than all the impositions that have sullied it? Will I await such a change in stance? O, I must, must I not?

IN RESPONSE TO A FRIEND'S COMMENT ABOUT THE SAD INDIFFERENCE OF THE PRESENT-DAY YOUTH TO THE MEMORY OF THE HEROES OF THE FREEDOM STRUGGLE ... 1

Right you are and it is here that we must work to change the order of things. The British and before that the Muslims destroyed our civilisation and culture. We must never forget the injury they caused us. But now we are free to act, to serve and to propagate the idea that eternal India stands for and we must contribute our mite towards that end of resurrecting the mission of our motherland. Upon the survival of India depends the survival of the human race for it is here, and here alone, that the highest ideas about life and existence, about man and and his mission were discovered ages ago when civilisation elsewhere was in slumber. No wonder India has been called, and fittingly so, the 'cradle of human civilisation'. From here have rushed out life-giving ideas of spirituality and light, peace and harmony, cooperation and coexistence, reflection and renunciation, the likes of which the world has never seen before or after. It is this eternal India with her message of the freedom from phenomenal tyranny that lay at the base of our political freedom movement and not mere arrival at earthly sovereignty for enjoyment of this transitory life.

However, it behoves us to remember that freedom won is not freedom kept. For that we have to arm ourselves in sacrifice and service for the nation. And what better way to do it than to begin at home by serving our aged and ailing parents, our invalid and infirm kith and kin by being with them physically, psychologically and, why, even spiritually for such proximity is what they seek in their heart of hearts and not mere medicines and food served routinely at the prescribed hours like automatons without emotion or involvement. These elderly ones are in the evening of their lives and seek our company more than anything else but are denied it as we remain busy with our own selfish ends of life and its pleasures, our so-called necessities of survival in a world where existence is supposedly becoming increasingly difficult as not to allow us occasion to visit the room of the patients even once a day to put a comforting hand on their head. We are busy indeed!

The defence of India is of paramount importance and we must get over the Gandhian legacy of debilitating passivity in the world of realpolitik if we are not to suffer at the hands of China again whose 'String of Pearls' policy is but barely indicative of its geopolitical intentions in the Indian Ocean. Emperor Ashok had once done untold damage to the cause of Indian defence through his unrealistic approach to international relations when he gave in to the high idealism of non-violence as a matter of State policy and, so, ushered in two millenia of security catastrophe for India from which we are still recovering. Swami Vivekananda came to set the balance straight but in came Gandhi with his Jain background of extreme non-violence inherited from his maternal side to upset the balance. The result was that our movement of manhood manifest in the violent revolution of the day was squashed as millions of mild Indians supported the Mahatma in his fanatical adherence to his unrealistic doctrine of non-violence as the only legitimate means available to Indians to combat and uproot British imperialism from India. That India got partitioned on independence meant that Gandhi's shortsightedness throughout his ministration of the freedom movement had made its mark finally and the blame, merely shifted to the British or Jinnah, as pious petitioners of Gandhi's cause are wont to doing, will not hold ground. Gandhi has to take the share of his responsibility, for political Mahatmas ought not to make such disastrous mistakes in reading the opposition that leads to the destruction of millions and the dissection of the nation, deliberately ignoring the call to militancy by so-called adversaries that could have avoided the eventual scenario and saved the motherland. What the British did was the fulfilment of their policy of 'Divide and Rule' right from the inception of their colonial occupation of India. And what Jinnah did to effect Partition is in the very fabric of the faith he was born into, the fanaticism that has ravaged the world for 1400 years, that which has caused the loss of 80 million Hindu lives over a period of 1000 years of brutal Islamic occupation of India.

A point to note ought to be this, that we gained our independence not merely from the British but also from the Muslims who controlled political life in Hindu India. The British, in a way, helped the Hindu cause by subjugating the Muslim rulers so that when the British were gone from India, the Hindus gained their liberation from the Islamic yoke that had awaited them for a thousand years, years of terrible oppression, despite the mischievous misrepresentation of Indian history by left liberals and Muslim scholars who keep propagating the myth of India having been a syncretic culture when all of that syncretism meant the destruction of universities (Nalanda, the most significant one), the burning of their libraries, the desecration and destruction of temples, forced conversions, exaction of Jizya, murder, loot and imposition of the barbaric Sharia, with only Kathak, Khayal, Urdu, Indo-Islamic architecture, the failed Din-i-Ilahi and Indian Sufism to tell the grand tale of syncretism. Not insignificant, perhaps, this amalgamation of cultures but small consolation for the tens of millions of Hindus including the Sikh Gurus Arjan Dev and Tegh Bahadur who lost their lives in this barbarous assault of an inferior religious culture on a civilisation infinitely superior.

... To be continued

HE LOVED HIS COUNTRY LIKE NONE OTHER

Netaji remains one of those rare souls who had not an iota of selfishness in his being unlike most of the celebrated leaders of his day who despite their seminal contributions to the freedom movement were not entirely motivated by pure love of the motherland without a tinge of personal gain in material terms or ideological imperatives coloured by their partial personalities. Netaji does not need recognition from his foolish, forgetful countrymen in whose ill-informed estimation, consequent upon a faulty education full of historical falsities and fabrications, his perfidious adversaries in Congress are reckoned as great and the hero, one of the others who also ran for the coveted leadership of the Congress but was eventually expelled from it at the behest of the manipulating Mahatma, but he is richly ingrained in the hearts of millions of his devotees across the world for whom freedom and patriotism are synonymous with the lion-soul that Netaji was. These are the ones that carry the flame of his unspelt aspirations for the motherland in their heart, these are the ones that will give utterance to his dream of a renascent India when the nation, long slumbering, will awake to self-consciousness with Swamiji and Netaji as their twin heroes, the guiding principles of their rejuvenated lives.

A PLETHORA OF COMMENTS BY WAY OF RESPONSE TO CONTENTIOUS NATIONAL ISSUES AND NETAJI

That is what Netaji had advocated --- ruthless dictatorship of the Congress for 20 years post-independence --- initially as the form of government independent India ought to adopt. However, at so distant a date from those heady days of the freedom struggle today, it seems rather improbable that such a measure will be feasible now, yet, some sort of enforcement of national discipline ought to be practised anyhow if this nation is not to precipitate into eventual anarchy.

The reason why dictatorship is inferior to democracy as a form of modern government when the masses are beginning to assert their rights of self-governance and education is awakening them to their responsibilities of conjoint civic living is that one benevolent dictator is likely to be followed by nine malevolent ones by the law of probability as aptly stated by Einstein in his denunciation of dictatorship as a form of government. Hence, with changing times we have to change our socio-political stance as well and what may have been deemed right by Netaji in the 1940s may not be the right prescription anymore after seven decades of democratic governance, albeit with all its failings.

Indeed, that is true also Sir.

Brilliant rejoinder Sir.

Marvellous illustration, most apt, dear friend.

Fantastic! What originality of approach, dear Sir! You have real fire in your belly. Bravo! Answer if you can this one Mr. Adversary.

But we are drifting from the post, the video by Anita Bose Pfaff. Let us talk about the issue of national service as exhorted of our youth by her.

Mr. Adversary, how about it?

Superb, my friend. But who will light that lamp? Who will ignite that spark? What is your take on this revered Sir?

So, why don't you take up the cudgels, friend, and propagate Vivekananda in a manner that some such valorous soul will take up the cause in a bigger way if you feel diffident to yourself carry it to fruition?

Mere words will not suffice but action by way of real service to the nation, propagation of the Word and upholding of the message of the Master and his leonine protege.

Swamiji, however, has exhorted us to do the work of propagation of the Word by way of service without any selfish attachment of acquisition of name and fame with it. If only we followed Thakur's words of seeking his commission, in our day-to-day self-centred and selfish activities as well, how well it would have been observance of Thakur's words! It, indeed, is a pity that we avoid our social responsibilities so wonderfully well, hiding under the cover of the Master's words while blissfully ignoring his mandate in everything else where our self-interest is involved.

Not so, if one does so with honest intent without getting involved in dirty politics.

Fair enough, yet, Narayan is the same in all, although interpretation of His calling differs from person to person as per their location in life and their understanding and appreciation of things.

Madam, who prevents being practical? Let service to the nation be a part of it.

Service does not need money always. It is an attitude which has to be inculcated in oneself following the principles of the great spiritual masters of the world and has no bearing on whether one is a monastic or a lay person. Even a lay person may be a worker for the nation's good, else, how was this nation liberated from the shackles of British imperialism, certainly not by the monks but by their inspiration often and, in real terms, by the lay public fired by the ideal of love for the motherland and love of freedom in the heart.

Not quite, for that is a retrograde way of looking at things, Madam, inspired by a raw sampling of one's everyday experience. But the vision enlarged, one finds meaning in the higher idealism and the efficacy of following the dictates of the higher heart beyond the considerations of one's immediate environment which detracts one from engaging in altruistic activity.

Netaji remains one of those rare souls who had not an iota of selfishness in his being unlike most of the celebrated leaders of his day who, despite their seminal contributions to the freedom movement, were not entirely motivated by pure love of the motherland without a tinge of personal gain in material terms or ideological imperatives coloured by their partial personalities. Netaji does not need recognition from his foolish, forgetful countrymen in whose ill-informed estimation, consequent upon a faulty education full of historical falsities and fabrications, his perfidious adversaries in Congress are reckoned as great and the hero, one of the others who also ran for the coveted leadership of the Congress but was eventually expelled from it at the behest of the manipulating Mahatma, but he is richly ingrained in the hearts of millions of his devotees across the world for whom freedom and patriotism are synonymous with the lion-soul that Netaji was. These are the ones that carry the flame of his unspelt aspirations for the motherland in their heart, these are the ones that will give utterance to his dream of a renascent India when the nation, long slumbering, will awake to self-consciousness with Swamiji and Netaji as their twin heroes, the guiding principles of their rejuvenated lives.

Thanks, everybody, for engaging in this long intellectual deliberation on national issues and Netaji.

A PLETHORA OF COMMENTS BY WAY OF RESPONSE TO COMMENTS MADE ON NETAJI BY OBSERVERS

Why limit him to all-Bengal? Say, all-India and even expatriate Indians across the world, especially, East Asia, the last theatre of the World War in Netaji's own words.

Rani Jhansi Regiment, the women's wing of the INA, equipped for full armed combat, the first of its kind in the world.

Not a shred of selfishness in him who was the embodiment of all that was spiritual and sublime in the Indian heritage, all that was practical and progressive in the modern world, a perfect synthesis of the past and the present, of reason and realisation, of action and renunciation, much like his Master, Swami Vivekananda.

He was himself a million souls together. Such gigantic leaders encompass within their hearts the aspirations of a entire nation, often the whole of humanity, and they necessarily have the vision of the multitude to guide them in their travails with unerring accuracy for they are armed in precision of purpose and an unearthly love that renders their every action sublime, their every deed destined to the mark.

Historically speaking, The Great Escape was not the result of a night's preparation but a preparation stretched over decades and in the final analysis for months.

Jai Hind! And this was the clarion call he gave to rouse his countrymen across Europe and east Asia into revolutionary action against British imperialism. With his lieutenant, Abid Hassan, Netaji coined this greeting for all Indians cutting across regional, religious, linguistic and cultural divergences, a truly nationalistic call, a secular patriotic address. Jai Hind!

JAI HIND! ... 1

Netaji, Bagha Jatin, Rashbehari Bose, Masterda pramukha pratasmaraniya mahapurushder smaran kore aajker dintir shubha shuchana hok. Jnara amamder muktir janya jeebanotsarga korechhilen, tnader bhule thakle amader prabhuta akalyan. Tai tnader katha bhebe karma tarangey abogaahan korar ayojon kori. Netajir bismaykar jeebongaathaa amader udbuddha koruk tyager pathey, muktir lokshe agrasar hote. Bagha Jatiner durdamaniya tej, birja amader paurush pradan koruk, Rashbehari Boser deerghakaalin desher sebay sudur bideshey atmaniyog o Masterdar Chattagram astragar lunthaner o tatparabarti Jalalabad paharey Britisher bipokshe judhher kaahini amamder deshsebay anupranita koruk. Jai Hind!

A CALL TO MY COUNTRYMEN

Let us all work together to propagate the life and message of Netaji which remains the only hope for our benighted nation. In a troubled India torn apart by problems galore, this seems a suitable solution. If a generation of young Indians take to the study of Netaji, much of our problems will be solved and we will thus be paying our richest tribute to the hero but for whom we would have lost our manhood and remained enslaved to the British for an inordinately long time to come. Jai Hind!

NETAJI IN RETROSPECT ... 2

It is not what we, the followers of Netaji, believe that matters but what stands out from the pages of history as a fact and it is this that Gandhiji plotted the downfall of Subhas Chandra Bose in Tripuri and was the mastermind behind his resignation from the Congress Presidency followed by his expulsion from the Congress itself. Such an uncivil act on the part of the Mahatma, to put it euphemistically, was highly undemocratic and in real terms, considering the impact it was to have on subsequent developments of the nation's history beginning with the partitioning of its landmass and the creation of the enemy State of Pakistan ever plotting the destruction of India, was an act of betrayal of national interest to serve his own self-interest, however cloaked in ideological sublimity it may have been. That Gandhi did not still manage to sideline Bose from national politics for good, as is borne out by Bose's subsequent seminal career overseas and its liberating influence on the nation, is proof of the fact that there was in Bose a fire which the patriarch of Indian politics had not the means to extinguish. Steeled in love for the motherland, armed in innate intellectual brilliance and shielded by his devotion to Ramakrishna-Vivekananda, Bose emerged a mighty lion or the springing tiger of Bengal who circuited the wide world to garner support for the cause of his motherland's liberation from British imperialism. He shook hands with the devil, so to say, to free his countrymen from the clutches of a more diabolic dispensation, more malicious and cunning, that operated in a more surreptitious way to drain the lifeblood of its colonised peoples, and he had no ideological cobwebs in his brain that could prevent him from seeking any sort of alliance to uproot the evil that was the British Raj once he was convinced that British imperialism was the most nefarious system of political domination, nay, damnation of subjugated peoples. And when the hero in his epic march to India with his army of liberation had started the downfall of the British Raj in India, he had set in the domino effect that spread to the rest of Asia and Africa where subjugated peoples, taking the cue from India, extricated themselves from the tentacles of colonists. In this lies the global significance of Netaji's war on the British Empire during World War II. While such a deduction may sound facile to many, in essence it is true. But for the INA thrust, India would not have been free, and the British, entrenched, enriched and empowered by subjugated India would be too potent a force for smaller countries to combat with and attain liberation. And this element of the armed revolution led by Netaji must be emphasised as we comprehend the capitulation of the colonial powers the world over.   

HINDUISM, THE WAY OUT OF THE CURRENT COMPLEXITIES ... 1

The less one is conscious of one's lower self, the more one is Self-conscious. Herein lies the importance of humility as an attribute which essentially is the attempt at obliteration of the ego and establishment of oneself in samesightedness.

Differentiation is in the fabric of the universe, an embedded principle, for the world of relativity is but variegated necessarily by its very structure. As such, it is but natural that men will be located in different points in space-time not only in the physical universe but in the corresponding psychological universe as well. This leads to variation of temperament, attributes and evolutionary levels which makes the world of man rather complex, almost impossible to manage, despite grandiloquent claims of religions, ideologies and philosophical systems to the contrary.

Essentially all this boils down to self-preservation in a hostile world and this leads to the formation of co-interest groups which is the basis of society. Thinkers down the ages have struggled to grapple with this problem of human conflict arising from mutually exclusive interests which have led to countless wars that have destroyed the flower of humanity and have stunted civilisation and culture. Each time a new wave, a new inspiration has arisen somewhere, it has destroyed existing culture to gain a foothold in the human scene. Fanaticism has been the watchword for all revolutionary movements, be they in the realm of religion or in that of politics and the worst have been those movements which have made a dangerous mix of the two. War has been the constant theme of human civilisation and has been the settling force of ideological conflicts. But settlement has never been despite the march of armies across the vast terrain of the earth and man remains as unsettled as he ever was, only now in a more precarious position owing to the vastly increased means of self-destruction available to him thanks to the growth of technology.

The Hindus had discovered ages ago the solution to life's maladies. The Arya rishis (seers of transcendental truth) discovered on the banks of the Saraswati, the Sindhu (Indus) and the Ganga, in the impenetrable forests of the vast landmass of Bharatvarsha and in the high hills of the Himalayas, the fundamental truths of life and existence which through a succession of oral transmission eventually got recorded in the Vedas. Upon such divine realisations is built the Hindu society which has withstood the shock of unnumbered aggression from barbaric foreign forces threatening to obliterate its very existence but rock-like it has stood in the teeth of terrible tyranny, unvanquished, supreme, absorbing these rushing elements in its vast mother-body and evolving into an organism which is the human model for the world at large ever engaged in fratricidal feud.             

GANDHI --- SOFT TYRANT, FAILED MAHATMA, A LEADING LIGHT YET

"You may take the name of independence on your lips but all your muttering will be an empty formula if there is no honour behind it. If you are not prepared to stand by your words, where will independence be?" These were the words of Mahatma Gandhi in response to the amendment sought by Subhas Chandra Bose in the Open Session of the Calcutta Congress of 1928, an amendment which sought complete cessation of British rule in India and the demand for total independence.

Gandhi was not even a member of the Congress but such was his mass base that he wielded absolute authority over the proceedings of the latter and often resorted to the dubious effeminate means of emotional blackmailing by threatening to quit contact with Congress should they refuse to abide by his line. He had a patriarchal mentality where there was hardly any room for dissent with what he deemed right in his assumed superior wisdom and a dissent in real terms by any meant sidelining of that individual from the national political scene, such was his grip on the Congress and so malicious was he towards his adversary unless, of course, political expediency compelled this shrewd contriver to compromise and adopt a more conciliatory approach as in his dealings with the British, the Muslim League and Dr. Ambedkar whose support he vitally needed for maintenance of his political preeminence.

The way Gandhi admonished Bose for introduction of the aforesaid amendment to the Calcutta Congress resolution for dominion status shows him in a colour no better than a soft tyrant, intransigent in his resolutions in the short run, for short-sighted he indeed was, although, he cloaked his intent in the garb of adherence to truth, a truth which was ever-changing for Bose in a world of political relativity but fixed in the firmament of this futile philosopher who dragged India into the unreal world of his perverse preferences. However, to clear the air of unnecessary misgivings about the Mahatma on this issue, it must be said that, although, Bose had in the deliberations on the issue opposed it, he had not opposed the resolution for dominion status when it was put up for voting but had instead abstained from voting which could have been interpreted by the Mahatma as his passive acceptance of the resolution. This necessarily gave Gandhi the moral authority to question Bose's sudden shift in stance and, given his superiority in age, an almost paternal privilege of bringing to book an errant child.

It was at the Lahore Congress of 1930 that the resolution for complete independence (Purna Swaraj) was finally adopted and the freedom movement in principle came of age at last, fulfilling the aspirations of bygone leaders like Hasrat Mohani, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Aurobindo Ghose and Bipin Chandra Pal who had espoused the same cause. It was Mohani who had first advocated the cause of complete independence in 1921 in an all-India Congress forum. One wonders what might have happened to our political sovereignty and our present democratic status if the British had acceded to Gandhi's demand for dominion status within a year of the Calcutta Congress of 1928. Would he then have backtracked and started another agitation for total independence giving a lie to his filial adherence to truth or would he, to maintain personal fidelity to truth, have sacrificed national interest which would in essence have amounted to the highest perfidy? These are hypothetical questions but worth pondering.

Gandhi was never the Mahatma in the strictest sense of the term but a shrewd politician, never totally selfless in motivations despite obvious renunciation of the material pleasures of life except some dubious experimental ones which he carried into old age and which have badly scarred his reputation as a man of continence. He frequently altered stance in his political life, suspending movements at their height on the basis of some stray incident as in the case of the Non-Cooperation Movement which he suspended after the Chauri Chaura massacre of 1922. He fasted unto death on all occasions except when it really mattered, to prevent Partition. He was intolerant of violent revolutionary activity, denigrating them often in no uncertain terms, yet, in a strange balancing act befitting his political acumen or, in a more sublime sense, his ability to separate the sin from the sinner, so to say, he would profusely praise the patriotism of extreme revolutionaries despite his variance with their methods.

Gandhi was a curious mixture of contradictions, hard to fathom, and that is what makes him an object of an enduring study in a world in which he is still highly relevant, though, not in the way he, perhaps, would have wished for, for his methods were flawed, his means impractical in the world of realpolitik as his own country's partitioned destiny was to prove in his own lifetime, and his view of the human psyche quite not in keeping with a rational balance and lacking utterly in a sense of mathematical proportion. However, in a world increasingly violent, the 'Sage of Sabarmati', as Bose had dubbed Gandhi, continues to be a light gleaming in the darkness and ushering man on to more enlightened times.          

A GLIMPSE INTO THE SOUL OF A SAGE

A GLIMPSE INTO THE SOUL OF A SAGE

No one ever saw him lose his balance of mind, his equanimity, his supreme poise, his calm and unruffled mood even in the direst of circumstances, in the most provocative of situations. Such was his self-control that when bleeding in the Seva Pratishthan from aggression by a rogue employee in those tumultuous days of the seventies, he refused to call in the police to seek redress, stating that, after all, what had happened was a thing of the past, that peace had been restored and that one did not file a case against one's very own which each and every employee of the Seva Pratishthan was. However, firm as he was in his dealings, he did take action against the truant elements within the work-force of the hospital and expelled them from service for several months before reinstating them on humanitarian grounds. When asked by the lawyers of the Mission as to why he was intent on taking them back, those who were the perpetrators of all the mischief in the past months that had vitiated the atmosphere of the hospital and hindered the smooth functioning of the institution, Swami Gahanananda (Naresh Maharaj) replied that the emaciated faces of the children of the ousted employees was looming large in his mind's eye and he could not bear to see them hungry and suffering for no fault of theirs. Such was the largeness of heart of this lion of a monk who had earlier prayed to Sri Ramakrishna at Belur Math begging for forgiveness that he had to adopt the harsh punitive measure of sacking the mischief-mongers from Seva Pratishthan. After all, in his eyes everyone was the living embodiment of the Master, the Divine wearing the garb of mortal man.

When such a one lives among us, the earth is rendered holy, life becomes a pilgrimage and those that were blessed with spiritual initiation by him, upon that fortunate fraternity lies the mandate to carry forth the message of the Master and the Mother to the remotest corners of the globe by way of befitting tribute to their spiritual preceptor. Swami Gahanananda is no more with us in flesh and form but his spirit animates us to living action of service and renunciation in the cause of the common good of all.

Jai Gurudev! Jai Thakur! Jai Ma!

Written by Sugata Bose   

THE DUAL STREAM OF HUMANITY ... 1

Sincerity and insincerity run like counter-traits through the stream of humanity. While the former adorns the few that are the flavour of human society, the latter limits the personality of millions that disfigure the harmonic contours of a culture. The resulting tussle between these opposed tendencies constitutes the flow of life.

The first evidence of this counter-quality is in childhood when academic proficiency or lack of it is more often than not the direct result of the degree to which a child is endowed with this vital element of sincerity. When nature is raw and the elements unschooled in the refinements of social appreciation or denunciation, and yet a child is seen doing his work with meticulous perfection, exerting his all to produce a perfected piece of his labour of love, one wonders what distinguishes him essentially from the one that does not what he does so well. And the answer in simplest terms stands articulate --- sincerity.

One person from birth is sincere and another is not. You could call this the consequence of genetic coding or karmic inheritance or whatever fancy theory that you may devise to explain the difference but you cannot deny the divergence of approach to life's problems from its very inception by these two individuals of contrary natures. The careers of these two also assume divergent trajectories and this in turn resolves into the mighty complexity that characterises the world in its general outcome.

The stuff of all this difference in aptitude and attitude, exertion and execution, aspiration and appreciation, perception and performance is the domain of investigation and analysis of the psychologist and the geneticist and eludes ordinary understanding but no amount of hiding behind theory can rationalise the weakness that is self-induced through sheer lack of application arising out of indolence and a love of decadent pleasure. Theory may explain the causes of relative insincerity but the problem still remains as to how one may overcome it.

And the answer is simple --- diligence. Hard work overcomes apparently insurmountable obstacles; horrendous hurdles are scaled when the soul of man determines to do, to act, to dissolve the difficulties en route to the summit of success. Performance is the outcome of labour --- disciplined diligence, patient perseverance, daily dutifulness. Action is the key, not indolence.      

FAITH IN ONESELF OR FAITH IN GOD? ... 1

The present is held hostage to the past. Traditions grind us down with age-old superstitions running deep into the psyche which will neither let rationality prevail nor clarity of spiritual conception cleanse us of all duality which has clouded our unitary vision. Authority, scriptural injunction and misapprehension of the message of messiahs and divine incarnations have so debilitated the human will that man has veritably been reduced to a slave of the so-called higher will with neither the capacity for self-determination nor the power to overthrow this horrendous hypnosis that he is a helpless creature at the mercy of a capricious God.

The major world religions of Abrahamic origin believe in a creator God with His supreme will determining the course of the cosmos and of terrestrial life and adherents are expected to ever pay obeisance to Him despite the fact the He out of His infinite wisdom chooses to be cruel, capricious and conniving with the evil elements of the day whose toxic influence has corroded civilisation beyond recognition and continues to hold it in its noxious grip till date. The Sanatan Dharma (Hinduism) and its rebel child, Buddhism, are by contrast far more benign religions with a basis deep in profound philosophy which resonates to modern science. But even in the day-to-day version of these religions, authority plays an enormous role to undermine the individual will greatly and reduce the stature of the ordinary man much to his detriment in terms of the possibility of spiritual evolution. Where religion is supposed to emancipate the shackled human person, it forges further chains to bind him and this runs contrary to the essential purpose of the Vedic dharma which in trumpet voice declares the ever-existent freedom of the human soul.

FOR THOSE THAT CARE ...1

Help the Ramakrishna Mission in its work for human redemption, for the recovery of the nation from the oppression of a thousand years by alien culture and for propagation of the unique message of the Vedas of universal peace and harmony so very beautifully exemplified in the lives of Ramakrishna and Vivekananda. Devotees, unite your forces to uphold the cause of the Mother and the Master and, so, bring about the collective good of all. There are many branch centres whose expansion projects are in need of financial help and these are well worth visiting. Ramakrishna Math, Baranagar, is one such centre where the tireless and disciplined effort of Swami Vamanananda in conjunction with lay volunteers and sincere devotees is bringing to fruition the aspirant's dream, the resurrection of the ancient site of the original Baranagar Math which was the first monastery of the Master's Mission.

IT IS TWO MINUTES TO TWELVE

The world is warming up. What are you going to do to cool it?

Trump seems to believe that the Greenhouse Effect is a trumped-up issue for some mischievous political reason. What does one do about it?

What is the use of improving the standard of living everywhere at the cost of the environment when soon there will be no life anywhere?

Australia is having a heat wave while Europe suffers from cold wave. What more of evidence you need Mr. Profiteer to cure the Earth of fever?
Only a reorientation of living, a radical change in lifestyle, can save humanity from heating up to extinction.

Harakiri the Japanese commit, fasting to death the Jain. When the whole of humanity warms up to suicide, what would you term such pain?

Which would you prefer --- death in a greenhouse or an ozonised death? Soon the choice will pass and sentence will be pronounced. Act now to save your skin.

Simplicity of lifestyle, reduction of consumerism and sublimation of desires seem to be the way out of the terrible environmental mess we are in.

There is a critical hour for effective action to avert a catastrophe past which annihilation is inevitable. Are we now in that critical zone or is it all over?
2017 marks a new beginning. Let us for once unite as a species for self-survival. Else, there will be no one to fight in the future.

IN RESPONSE TO A READER'S THESIS THAT REVOLUTION IS RIFE EVEN NOW, THE FIRE LIT BY THE FREEDOM FIGHTERS BURNS BRIGHT STILL ... 1

But for that, Sir, an unbounded feeling for the motherland and an unassailable strength of character in the revolutionary is required, both being qualities in absence in the current crop of so-called revolutionaries. However, your idea in essence is absolutely valid for revolution is an ongoing process which knows no abating. Only it is a simmering phenomenon while in bud or in germination and manifests only in volcanic flow when times are propitious, the people are ready and the leader arrives to guide its direction. The idea matures in the fullness of time and great oppression hastens its advent when a people arise to shake off the 'sterile curse' of a consumptive civilisation and revolves round to alter its fate, when destiny is determined by the collective will of the masses and the existing order like a paper palace is rent and reduced to nothingness by the mighty stir of the populace that like an avalanche advances to reshape the existing order of things.

Such a historic moment freed us from colonial clutches when the Indian National Army led by Netaji directed our liberation. World War II provided the setting for the final assault when a debilitated people, suffering the yoke of a thousand-year domination by foreigners in the form of the barbarous Muslim invaders and the exploitative, perfidious British thereafter, revolved under the directorship of Netaji to free the country and set its future rolling once more in the direction intended by the Rishis (perfected seers of Truth), along the path of its natural evolution, unhindered by foreign occupation and its concomitant oppression. Netaji's armed revolution came as the climax to what had been simmering under the surface cover of political propriety given mass formation by that other great revolutionary, Gandhiji, to whom we owe our national awakening largely for it was he who had quickened the pulse of the nation at large in the first instance and carried forward the mass movement to its inevitable final confrontation with the conquering colonialist but shied away from striking the coup de grace in the form of revolutionary violence to uproot it from our soil on grounds of ideological compulsion and philosophical bankruptcy.

The Bengal boys, under the express inspiration of Swami Vivekananda who was in favour of a combined thrust of violent and non-violent force to oust the British from India, exhibited manhood enough to set the ball of revolutionary activity rolling and up came valorous souls like Kshudiram Bose, Prafulla Chaki, Aurobindo Ghosh, Barindra Ghosh, Bagha Jatin, Hemchandra Ghosh, Rashbehari Bose and a host of others, too countless to enumerate, who spilled their life's blood to shake the British Empire to its foundations and make it quit capital from convulsive Calcutta to a more temperate New Delhi.

Nivedita, protege and ideological inheritor of Vivekananda, was the great linkman between the departed prophet-patriot (to quote his revolutionary younger brother, Bhupendranath Dutta) and the Bengal revolutionaries. Herself an Irishwoman suffering the yoke of subjugation under the British, this leonine soul upheld the Swami's political philosophy ardently to provide the upsurge of nationalism in Bengal with the necessary philosophical basis and spiritual sanction as enshrined in the aspirations of the victorious Vivekananda whose volcanic personality had earlier set fire to the Celtic blood boiling in her veins. The result was that the Bengal boys found in her a living mother who embodied the otherwise disembodied ideal of nationalism. Ireland conspired with ignited India to free her from her colonial bondage. The Oriental hyperbole notwithstanding, the Irish free spirit in Nivedita synthesised with the Vedantic vision imbibed from her Master, laid the foundation of the national movement which through the terrible turbulence of the times led to our truncated freedom at midnight with a mutilated mother with arms amputated and trunk left bleeding with the wounds of her severed self. Had our leaders like Gandhi heeded her political mandate in time, it might have been a different saga altogether and the vision of Swamiji's united India would have been realised.

Alas! that was not to be for the Sister perished of hunger and disease, poverty and neglect, an overwhelmed heart, an overheated brain and an agonised soul that found neither friend nor solace in its solitary suffering for the commonweal, save in Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose and his wife, Lady Abala Bose, much before the fruition of her dream of a free India that would be the nerve-centre of human society for the coming millenium, the spiritual preceptor of the modern world and the seat of civilisation for future humanity.

Nivedita's contribution to the freedom movement, however downplayed institutionally for political expediency and as cover for historical imperatives, shines like the midday sun which may not be dimmed by mushrooming monsoon clouds. A solitary figure in those early days of awakening Bengal, Nivedita circuited the length and breadth of dependent India exhorting the sleeping masses to revolutionary action. Her mission transformed, from being a mere educator of a handful of Hindu girls to mass awakener of subjugated India, Nivedita attained to revolutionary fulfilment in line with her innate tendencies and in keeping with her understanding of what her Guru would have wanted out of her in those treacherous times when India struggled to be free of the British yoke and suffered relentlessly for it.

As the nation gears up to celebrate the sesquicentennial year of Sister Nivedita's advent on earth, it behoves us to remember that this Irishwoman of supreme selflessness and unimpeachable sincerity, who had dedicated her body, mind and soul to the cause of India's redemption, was much more than a mere educator of schoolgirls or even a protagonist of women's education in India. She was the very soul of bleeding India in those turbulent days of revolution when a suppressed people, long muted, found utterance in her organ voice and the spirit of India soared to its pristine heights to seek independence from material bondage whence she could fly to ethereal realms to fulfil her age-old aspiration of union of the heavens and the earth.

Long live revolution! Jai Hind!

End of Part 1
To be continued...

THE MESS BEFORE THE MICROPHONE, THE CHAOS IN CAMERA

Vivekananda has to be effectively preached. There is a dearth of good speakers today on Vivekananda. Most of those who speak well know mighty little about the Swami and those that have a thorough knowledge about his life and works do not have pronounced powers of oratory. Other than these a third category of smooth talkers are there who suffer form the dual disease of levity and pseudo-intellectuality and these are often the worst offenders as they make a sham of such seminal personalities as Vivekananda and inadvertently reduce them to accepted standards of popular culture when the reverse raising of popular consciousness to the heights of genius even for the while would have done society much good. When important occasions call forth speakers to address the nation on Vivekananda, this lack of preparedness is visible which makes the programmes lacklustre with the age-old monotony of the retelling of the same old stories in the same stereotypical way with the accompaniment of inharmonious music to complete the picture imperfect. Surely, our heroes deserve a better deal at the hands of their descendants, else, they will conclude that their lives were lived in vain for they could not bring about any improvement in even social culture which is relatively an easier accomplishment than the complete moral and spiritual transformation of man which they had attempted.

What is needed today is an overhauling of the entire system of propagation of the Word. Meritorious monks must be selected by the Mission who must be trained sufficiently in public speaking before they are permitted to speak on the prophet who was 'an orator by divine right' as the epithet goes about him. The speakers should be well read with a certain depth of being, who will resonate through their words spirituality in their audience. They must not be inordinately slow in articulation for television time is limited and so is audience attention span. Very often too little is said about Swamiji in the allotted half hour of programme and the audience has to remain satisfied being fractionally fed the outlines of Swamiji's life. It is a pity as well that more often than not there is neither order nor direction in the discussion as the moderator is not sufficiently well-informed about the subject to deepen conversation and to guide its flow. Also, the speaker's diction is often poor and presentation rustic. Prior preparation, ideally in training institutes of the Mission through the year under the guidance of seasoned speakers and scholars, could largely improve the situation. It must always be remembered that Swami Vivekananda was a speaker of the highest order and this should inspire aspirants to public speaking to improve their oratorical skills significantly so that they do justice to the Swami's cause before the world at large.

SURYA SEN --- REVOLUTIONARY WITH A STELLAR SHINE ... 1

SURYA SEN --- REVOLUTIONARY WITH A STELLAR SHINE ... 1

Surya Sen, popularly known as Masterda, died on 12 January, 1934 at the age of 39, exactly the same age at which Swami Vivekananda and Martin Luther King (Jr.) died. What is even more significant, for it is highly symbolic, is that Surya Sen died on the very birth anniversary of the leonine Swami whose dream of political freedom for his motherland inspired the revolutionary who led a band of youths to stage the daring uprising against the British at Chittagong, famous in history as the Chittagong Armoury Raid. The armoury was looted on 18 April, 1930, the arms secured but the ammunition could not be laid hold of. The revolutionaries hoisted the then Indian National Flag inside the premises of the armoury and then took refuge in the Jalalabad hills where they met the pursuing British forces to their gory death. After a valiant battle with the British in which twelve young revolutionaries were martyred and a large number were arrested, the movement died with the remaining revolutionaries including Masterda going underground.

For the next several years Sen remained incognito and ever on the move to avoid detection and arrest. Workman, farmer, priest, domestic help and even a devout Muslim --- these were some of the garbs Masterda donned to elude the clutches of the British detective police and its informers. However, such a life could not last forever in perfidious British India and he was betrayed by his host Netra Sen at whose residence he had lately sought refuge to avoid British hands. The host turned informer and the forces captured Surya Sen, broke his body and hanged him to death, then cast his corpse into the waters of the Bay of Bengal whence his spirit soared into the limpid spaces stretching beyond British imperial domain.

Or did it? For Masterda's work had remained unfinished, that of liberating India. Before his hanging, the British, famed for their civility, fair play and justice, had returned to their barbarous roots to break all the teeth of the condemned man with a hammer, pull out forcibly all his nails and break his limbs and joints one and all. They then dragged him unconscious to the scaffold to hang him. Surya Sen was executed on 12 January, 1934, just under 39 years of age, on the very birthday of his hero, Swami Vivekananda who had lit the flame of revolution long before with his own hands. Had Swamiji lived beyond 39, who knows if he would also have met the same fate of martyrdom as Masterda? For it was Swamiji who had ignited Bengal with the fire of revolution which in due course of time was to lay waste the vast British empire. No wonder Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi on Swamiji's demise had made this pertinent remark, "Had Naren lived on, the British government would have kept him in captivity."

But Naren's legacy continued in the rise of the Bengal revolutionaries which ultimately forced the British to shift capital from Calcutta to New Delhi, and the fire of revolution, once lit, burst forth periodically as a blaze that consumed the very life of British imperialism, a fact recognised in secret British files but not acknowledged by the protagonists of non-violence in India who tend to corner all the glory of striking off the British fetters through their cowardly emasculate means, reducing the valorous sons of the motherland like Masterda and his band of revolutionaries to mere terrorists, misguided idealists who had no sense of history or of revolutionary proportions to be able to successfully liberate the motherland by their violent means, at once impractical and immoral and a reprehensible method altogether.

Masterda had left behind in a last letter his political testament, so to say. He wrote: "Death is knocking on my door. My soul soars to eternity. At such an hour when life and death seem befriended, at such a moment of great solemnity, what shall I leave behind for you all? Only one thing do I leave behind and it is my dream, a golden dream, the dream of a free India. Never forget 18 April, 1930, the day of the Eastern Rebellion in Chittagong. Let the names of those that fell on that day to free the motherland off her shackles, be writ in blood-letters. May you never forget their sacrifice and may it inspire you to carry on the fight for freedom till freedom is finally attained! March on my friends, never retrace your steps. The days of servitude are fast receding and the sun of freedom shines on the eastern horizon. Arise and never give in to despair, for success is yours, freedom is at hand."

My countrymen, I have gravely sinned in not remembering to write about Masterda Surya Sen along with Swami Vivekananda on 12 January, 2017, a lapse that I now make good to partially undo the damage done. But for martyrs like Masterda and his martyred band of revolutionaries, we would have remained enslaved to the British even now and despite tall protestations of the votaries of non-violence for whom revolutionary violence was perfidy, would have been grinding the grain of bondage for Providence knows how long. It is, thus, meet that we reverentially study the lives of these forgotten heroes of our motherland and seek a living inspiration in them to rebuild our country to its pristine glory and, thence, surpass it evermore.

Jai Hind! Jai Masterda!        

Written by Sugata Bose

WHITHER VIVEKANANDA? ... 1

12 January has gone once more amidst celebrations of Swami Vivekananda's birthday and, in conjunction with it, the National Youth Day. Since 1985 this day has been celebrated nationwide as the National Youth Day and rightly so, for Swamiji was youth incarnate and thrust the onus on the youth to reshape human civilisation along the line of integrated spirituality that he envisaged, and the movement is gaining momentum with every passing year, but alas! the world, with the exception of India, has almost forgotten this seminal personality despite he being such an influence in America and, to a lesser extent, in Europe towards the end of the nineteenth century. It is a sad decline of popularity of this phenomenon called Vivekananda and the world is paying a heavy price for it.

In Eleanor Stark's book entitled 'The Gift Unopened' this subject has been dealt with at length. Swamiji had visited America in 1893 to participate in the Chicago Parliament of Religions and had created such an impress on American society that he himself had given an estimate of his work there. He had said that it could so happen that after he was gone bodily from the firmament of America, his message might be hidden from public view for centuries but it would not die. It would resurrect itself from within the depths of the American psyche where he had implanted his spiritual seeds and society would veer round to listen to its import. Sister Nivedita held a similar view which she had confided to Josephine MacLeod once and what we see today is, perhaps, a necessary and sad confirmation of the prophecy of the Master and his disciple. It remains a terrible shame, though, that we, Indians, also have not done and are not doing justice to the memory of this great soul who like an effulgent comet had darted through our material sky to light it up for a while with his burning brilliance only to then recede into the far reaches of the spiritual firmament whence he had come. It is time we take cognisance of this terrible lapse and start earnest conversation about Swamiji if we wish to avert imminent annihilation of the human race for which conditions are being readied and which, barring a resurrection of our good sense to uphold Swamiji in our lives, seems to be our collective unavoidable fate awaiting its catastrophic fulfilment in the fullness of time.

Shall we fail Swamiji? May we not reverse the devastating trends affecting, nay, afflicting human society? Yes, we may, but will we? If we wish to, then Vivekananda is the way. Upon the youth of the world lies this utmost duty to study Swami Vivekananda and to live out his preached principles to save civilisation from impending destruction. Hail Vivekananda, fountain of eternal youth!    

CYCLONIC MONK ... 4

Narendranath showed marked resemblance in character traits to his grandfather who had renounced worldly life, and took an early fancy for mendicant monks that chanced to come his way as he grew from infancy to boyhood. He would give them by way of alms whatever he could lay his hands on, his own cloth or other belongings of the family, and had to be kept confined in a small room when such monks appeared at their doorstep, to prevent such indiscriminate disposal of necessary articles. But it was of no avail as the boy would still have his way, throwing things out of the window of his room of captivity. The monks would always bless the boy, barely out of infancy but manifesting a heart that naturally felt for the poor and the dispossessed and exhibited an utter sense of detachment to things material and a courage of conviction to carry out his intended programme despite the odds being stacked heavily against him. It was a foreshadowing of future events that would give the modern world a new direction and align it to the evolutionary flow of the spiritual man through the incrustation of matter. In later years the Swami Vivekananda would himself stand at many a door, a penniless beggar begging for alms, as he traversed the length and breadth of his motherland as a mendicant monk in his epic voyage of discovery of the soul of India. Did he meet any of the monks of his childhood chance acquaintance then? Who knows? Would the child remember? Would they who had blessed the babe, recognise him, now grown into the mighty messiah of man, the messenger of Ramakrishna coursing through the concourse of men in pursuit of the God that eluded him even as He gave him glimpses within the frail form of man? Who will tell?        

WHEN THE LIBERAL LEADS YOU ASTRAY AND THE DEMOCRAT WOOS FOR VOTES ... 1

It is best that people develop a bit of manhood and directly confront the hideous and the horrendous with the language of the heart and enlightened reasoning instead of hiding behind sophistries. A false face with a true heart is a contradiction in terms and mere social propriety is not conducive to social welfare which is based on genuine good feeling for others and not a show of it. Pseudo-liberals and pseudo-intellectuals armed in linguistic embellishments, tortuous logic and an unconcern for the wider implications of extreme developments in society in the form of religious fanaticism, are as much culpable as those that merely engage in rhetorical criticism of such phenomena and only less liable than those that covertly conspire to fast-forward society to its impending doom.

Oil spilled into the ocean pollutes the vast water-mass but when it is spilled in dollar-terms by the billions into the mind of unsuspecting man to subvert democratic institutions the world over and take humanity back to medieval monstrosity, the situation becomes serious enough for thinkers to take cognisance of the hazardous effects of their educated indifference to these nefarious developments and their responsibility for promoting such perfidy on account of multicultural liberalism that allows horrendous ideology to proliferate, post-colonial compunctions of conscience that prevent combative action and plain gullibility that permits this cancerous flow of premeditated political perversion in the name of God and religion which is less rooted in philosophical principles and more geared to damning domination of the civilised world.



   

UNIFORM CIVIL CODE --- A NECESSITY FOR THE NATION, AN IMPERATIVE OF THE TIMES

Do not say your scripture gives you the right to question when evidently it commands you to submit to its dictates as the inviolable Word of your God. The freedom it allows you is to deliberate on issues not contrary to its tenets but in line with it. At any rate, scripture or no scripture, freedom to think, to question, to doubt and to challenge the tenets of tradition is your fundamental right and you must not cower under any authority, however holy or sacrosanct, to give up your essential human rights. You are intrinsically as holy as the greatest of prophets and it is but natural that you are, endowed as you are with modern scientific knowledge, wiser in many respects than those archaic absolutists that go by the name of messiah, messenger, prophet and so forth. So, under no circumstance must you compromise your freedom to be, to think, your freedom to be sceptical --- for scepticism, as Einstein says, is your birthright --- and your freedom to challenge existing dogmas and dictates from scripture, prophet, dictator or any absolutist source.

If your are living in a secular state and still say that you derive your freedom to question from your religion-specific scripture, then you are either under a hypnotic charm of submission to your religious culture from birth on account of constant indoctrination or else, you are a practising hypocrite and proselytiser of your perfidious tribal cult which ordains you to carry forward its malefic agenda of conversion, subversion and reversion to medieval monstrosity. If, however, you are enlightened enough to understand that India is a secular state and the collective will of its citizenry as enshrined in the Constitution of India bestows upon its citizens perfect freedom to debate, deliberate and even dissent on contentious issues of national life, then you are well on the path of fruitful democratic living which mandates you to work for equal protection for all under the law and no special privilege for such a vast minority as the Muslim community of 180 million in India. Your good sense should exhort you then to work for a uniform civil code which will benefit the Muslim women in its repealing of the iniquities of Islamic personal law and set up Indian Muslim womanhood as the model for the rest of the Islamic world, equal to men in all respects.

A democracy cannot thrive if a large portion of its population identifies itself so much by its religion that it must refuse to subscribe to the secular civil law of the land and adhere to its religious civil law although it is perfectly compatible with the nation's criminal code. How about the protagonists of Muslim civil law (by way of a thought experiment) suffering brutal Sharia punishment for criminal offence committed as their religious code dictates? Here they become wise enough to subscribe to the more humane secular criminal code of the land, violating thereby in principle the dictates of their shelved religious law. Why do we not hear them clamouring for the imposition of Sharia criminal law as well on Muslims? Is it because such imposition will adversely affect the misogynistic Muslim clerics as well and no more remain confined merely to Muslim women who, under the Islamic civil code, have to endure such ignominies as the triple talaq and all other iniquities of divorce settlements and remarriage negotiations which is a shame for a democratic secular country that has so far failed to protect millions of its own female citizens from social, economic and psychological exploitation arising out of this archaic Islamic law? This writer does in no way advocate, though, the efficacy of imposition of the criminal code of Sharia on Indian Muslims in bringing about fair play and justice between the sexes in the community or in effecting any wholesome transformation of the community's structural set-up. The intent here is to take the regressive sections of the population on a thought experiment, as earlier suggested, and thereby reveal their hypocritical stances on religious jurisprudence.

Now, my apologist Muslim friends. If indeed your religion permits you to question its tenets and deliberate on them, it is high time to do so and save half the population of Indian Muslims from this terrible bondage to Muslim personal law. Through your discourse you can set right this imbalance that exists in the Indian legal system and afford a fairer legal dispensation for your fairer sex, your mothers and sisters, your daughters and nieces, your aunts and associates. If, however, your claim to scriptural allowance of a conversation on essential elements of your theology and jurisprudence does not stand ground either on account of doctrinal demands or because of pressures of a living tradition, I can only sympathise with your predicament but, my dear friends, all major changes, all reformation movements in history have had to battle for every inch of ground gained by them in the bargain. So must you wage war against the terrible iniquities that afflict your societal living under the dictates of Muslim Personal Law whose repeal, it seems, is imminent, for Muslim women by the millions are on the march and can neither be suppressed nor held back as the advancing tide of civilisation casts archaic absolutism to the waste-bin of history. Liberal Muslims, wake up! It is time to change.               

ASK YOURSELF ... 1

Is the idea that a specific faith is the last Word of God on religion the proof of its peacefulness and tolerance?

Is exclusiveness of belief, adhered to and imposed upon vast multitudes, the best thing for democratic evolution of thought? 

Ought the whole of humanity be subjected to a single life's access to revelation? 

Must messengers and messiahs hold us to ransom even today with their totalitarian views on life and living when evidence points to truth lying in a direction different from where heavens and hells are located? 

How long must man subscribe to irrational fears of damnation when there is the sublimity of science, art, music, literature and philosophy to make life worth living? 

How long must death-cults hold humanity captive when the brief flicker of life is all that we apparently have and the promise of paradise is but a sensuous dream, bred and fed in the hope of a prolongation of earthly existence devoid of its pain and sorrow?

Are you free to think for yourself anything substantial relating to truth or are you but carrying the baggage of others' thoughts?

Why live in the past reflecting over mistakes made? Why look ahead fearing an uncertain future? Is not the present moment all that is, a compressed point of reality, to be lived and loved and traversed through unto wherever it may lead?

Why is it that there is no freedom to criticise the most violent religion on earth which reserves, however, the exclusive right to criticise and damn all that stands in its path of perfidious proselytisation?

Why is it that the Hindu population is declining in Pakistan and Bangladesh while the Muslim population is ever on the incline in India?