INA WORTH ONLY A PAGE AND A HALF IN BIPAN CHANDRA'S 538-PAGE BOOK 'INDIA'S STRUGGLE FOR INDEPENDENCE'?

I am appalled to discover that in the 538-page book, 'India's Struggle for Independence 1857-1947' by Bipan Chandra, the INA has received coverage of only a page and a half. Why this apathy, nay, sheer antipathy towards our army of liberation? The entire INA saga has been brushed over, a mere clause or a sentence at times has been deemed sufficient elaboration on a vital episode and the narrative truncated beyond any reasonable recognition of the events that accompanied it. One hazards to construe this sinister obliteration of history as part of a larger conspiracy to erase the memory of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose from the public imagination and one may only rationally attribute this act of perfidy to the Congress Party which has over seven decades since independence stood to benefit the most from the exclusion of Netaji from the public discourse. If history books are written in such a truncated, partial manner, where are we headed as a nation in terms of understanding our roots, our culture and our heritage, be they political or otherwise? The antidote to this must be the right representation of historical facts without bias by right-minded historians who are true to their trade and not self-serving accomplices of political parties in whose hire-purchase they are with the express purpose of perpetrating lies to poison the minds of the masses. It is time now to be a trifle literate about Netaji and his great army of liberation instead of wastefully whiling away time expressing frothy emotion on the hero and his allies while remaining blissfully ignorant about the details of their march through the dense forests of Burma en route to India. Netaji's cause is the national cause and it needs the service of countless dedicated souls determined to unravelling the truth and disseminating such information among the masses. If a Bipan Chandra proves traitorous to the cause of our motherland and propagates historical heresies, then it is our duty to democratically counter him and his book by writing our version of Netaji and the role of the INA in India's struggle for freedom as well. Let such an endeavour consume our best efforts, then let the people of this nation judge for themselves and sift the grain from the chaff. Jai Hind!  

DESTROYERS OF THE RAJ ... 1

The barbarous British mutilated the dead bodies of Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru, packed them in sacks, then broke the rear wall of the jail, carried the cut corpses several kilometres away before semi-burning them and casting them into the Sutlej river. Such was their fear of the possible public uprising on the morrow (24 March, 1931) when the trio were scheduled to be hanged that they preponed the execution by several hours to the previous evening, 7.33 p.m., 23 March, 1931, so that their dastardly act would be over before anyone got an inkling of it. But the fire spread still and eventually evicted the British from Indian soil when the INA led by Netaji avenged the death of all the martyrs and destroyed the fabric of the British Empire, first in India, and then, as a sequel, in the rest of the British-colonised world. The contribution of revolutionaries like Bhagat Singh must be seen in this larger light and it must be understood that these immortal soldiers of the soul were liberators of the whole of shackled mankind suffering the yoke of colonial rule, the worst form of human oppression.

WAS GANDHI EVER INCARCERATED BY THE BRITISH IN THE CELLULAR JAIL? WHY NOT?

Gandhiji was a convenient candidate for the British to bank on to filter out violent revolutionary fervour and thus avoid a bloody conflict with India's revolutionaries. The British found in Gandhi a God-sent helpmate in their bid to maintain the Raj for they knew that his brand of passive non-violent resistance would never become a force potent enough to end their imperial hegemony over India. The British Indian Army, comprising mainly Indian soldiers, they could bank on to control Gandhian resistance. So, they touched not Gandhi as he was their buffer against the real threat of the violent revolutionaries among whom ranked Bose as their 'enemy number one'.

The British were delighted to find in Gandhi such a self-deluded ally of the Raj, unwittingly though for Gandhi it must be said, and took all possible measures to prop him up as the face of freedom-seeking India while waiting patiently to let the self-styled Mahatma wither away of old age and senility when his movement would die a natural death. They were, however, highly wary of Bose who they thought was the real danger and so, they could not even rest while imprisoning him within the Indian subcontinent and chose to banish him to Europe to gain health, imagining that it would cut him off from the mainstream of the Congress' movement and isolate him into insignificance. But such a sweet outcome was not to be as Bose used his hiatus in Europe to establish links with European powers for future revolution against the British when times would be propitious.

So far as the other revolutionaries who had been deported to the Andamans to be incarcerated in the notorious Cellular Jail where the most inhuman third degree torture was inflicted upon them, Gandhi, Nehru, Patel, Azad and the softies were not party to it. And why would they, after all, be banished there? Were they not unwitting allies to the British with their toothless emasculate movement which rightfully earned the scorn of Hitler as testified by Bose post his meeting with the German Fuhrer and which the British, whenever they liked, could at will smash to smithereens?

Yes, it must be admitted that the satyagrahis of Gandhi never had to endure the horrendous torture in prison cells the violent revolutionaries had to bear nor did they ever sacrifice so much of blood and body as the extremists did. They troubled the British Government but never truly threatened their existence in India. The British, in turn, thought it best not to repress them as brutally as they did the armed revolutionaries. Consequently, Gandhi and his brigade never had the privilege to taste true third degree torture under the British in the island of hell, and failed in the process, thereby, to graduate to the realm of real revolution and a like estimation in the public imagination. Would it were otherwise!

There the revolutionaries were living hell across the black waters in the Cellular Jail and here the Mahatma and his men were parleying with the predators for a peaceful transfer of power! Robben Island was there, for sure, but there was no Nelson Mandela inhabiting it. The Mahatma was adorning the Aga Khan Palace instead. No wonder he was so popular among the masses, for how many can muster such courage and strength of character to endure the assaults to human dignity in a colonial British jail that the armed revolutionaries laughingly did for the motherland?

Now, I hope, my friend, you have been reasonably responded to in your query by this writer and I thank you for having raised this contentious issue whose clarification rendered to you has in effect helped clear some of the cobwebs in my mind too.

May the martyrs' blood reddening the waters of the southern sea never dilute to oblivion! May their sacrifices and sacrileges suffered under duress at the hands of the barbarous British never fail to inspire kindred souls with the fire of real revolution and not its caricature that supposedly brought us freedom, a fact not testified adequately by historical evidence, rather negated by contrary narratives of the armed assault of the INA which in sooth liberated us but whose saga remains a tale untold for untold reasons! Bande Mataram! Jai Hind!

P.S. :
Comments :
Maj Gen Gagandeep Bakshi This is a very accurate analysis of how the British made use of the non-violent movement which they found very convenient and non-threatening.

NO MORE BEGGING, NO MORE SELLING SELF-RESPECT, NOW RETURN TO ROOTS

Our Prime minister should not go about begging for foreign investment from a country that has been the single biggest enemy of our best interests in the past. I mean England. They colonised us, destroyed the fabric of our economy and reduced us to ruin. We were the richest country in the world prior to British occupation with a share of 23% of the world GDP. The British took away all our wealth and built their blood-stained empire. In the process they reduced us to one of the poorest nations in the world with a defaced population broken in body and in mind and sullied to the soul with a foreign tongue and strange manners which have emasculated our city-bred populace and rendered them sterile. The Anglophile Nehru, who accepted Partition and Commonwealth status for a supposedly free country, did what he did in his times but to perpetuate his legacy even now is to invite self-destruction. If this nation has to live, it has to retrace its roots and alter its course to align itself with its age-old trajectory. Else, destruction lies in wait for it ere long and we will be sacrifices unto the death of the motherland. Such a thing can never be for India has been thus far preserved to fulfil her spiritual mission in the world.

Knowing this to be our national destiny, to be the spiritual preceptor of the world, let us start rebuilding our motherland on the basis of self-help and not on the basis of alms received from our historical destroyers. Let the Prime Minister look to the resources within to revamp our economy and not go about begging for money in England which has been built on Indian money at any rate. Let self-respect come to India with self-help and so shall we rise as a nation.

Culturally, it is time, indeed, to shake off the British yoke which still holds us. Half of the urban population is busy anglicising themselves and feels proud to do so. A country whose flower of youth is busy boring British and American modes and manners into its life and soul can scarce feel patriotic in the way it would had it been groomed the Indian way, taught the national heritage language of Sanskrit and been steeped in the culture of its glorious forefathers who had made the grandest discoveries of the Spirit ages ago which keep the western world even today in thrall, the very world our benighted people hold as the model for their upkeep and well-being. It is, thus, imperative that the governmental thrust be on nationalising education the right way and not in a jingoistic way at that. Only when our children learn about India's true heritage and not the Gandhian narrative based on test-torturing and fact-distortion will true national pride return to the land. Then we shall not feel shy of speaking in our mother tongue, not corrupt our vernaculars with unnecessary interspersing of English, learn to address our parents in our age-old ways and not as 'mummy-papa', their siblings in our mother tongue as well and not as 'auntie-uncle', and, in this way, we shall free ourselves at last of Macaulay's cultural contamination which has debilitated us as a nation.

But the leadership must come from the Prime Minister. He must no longer sell our self-respect as a nation by pleading for British help when his time will be better spent if he solicits assistance from elsewhere, namely, Japan and other Asiatic countries which have cultural solidarity with India, and it must be admitted that he is sparing no means for doing so as well. Let Britain pay for its perfidies perpetrated in India and not be allowed the luxury of easy atonement for its sins by offering a helping hand to us. In this lies our self-respect, in this lies nationalism, patriotism, call it by whatever name you will. Jai Hind!

HOW LONG YET MUST WE SLEEP?

In the name of satyameva jayate (truth triumphs) as the national ideal, the Congress Party has for nearly seven decades since independence attempted to perpetuate the lie of Netaji's death by air-crash and has undermined his seminal role in the freedom movement to corner all glory for Gandhi, Nehru and the like. But truth, for sure, triumphs and the day has arrived when facts will come to the fore to expose the traitors to the motherland. Friends, let us work with all our might to bring to light facts of freedom and not let fiction pervert history in our minds. I wonder in which other country in recent memory such a lie has grown overtime with such Machiavellian machination of the powers that be and such abject submission of an entire people been to gullible acceptance of everything that goes in the name of historical heresy, data distortion and diabolic destruction of all that was glorious in the sacrifice of blood and toil for the sake of the liberation of the motherland.

IN RESPONSE TO KANCHAN GHOSH'S COMMENTS ABOUT THE VOID TO BE FILLED IN MY WRITING VIS-A-VIS AUROBINDO GHOSE

I will try and write in the future about Aurobindo Ghose's contribution in the early phase of our freedom struggle. I am happy to hear from you, Kanchan Ghosh, for it is this concern for the nationalist cause that is needed today. Hope to soon fill in this void in my writing. Thanks for the suggestion indeed.

Not at all brother, Kanchan Ghosh. Why criticise you for inadvertently overstepping the delicate line of propriety, as you put it, why censure you who are such a conscientious lover of the motherland who we adore as our mother, and this was first stated by Aurobindo Ghose when he redefined the concept of 'motherland' as being not merely a geographical terrain but the vast body of people inhabiting the landmass with their hopes and aspirations, their history, culture and civilisation? You are a blessed soul, my friend, and you must keep contributing to this group page with your inputs and insights for all to benefit from and gain enlightenment. May Ramakrishna-Vivekananda bless you with vision and fulfilment!

BHASKAR SEN SHARMA, AN INTREPID CRUSADER FOR NETAJI'S CAUSE

What a brilliant assessment Bhaskar! Sheer illumination! Post this on my 'Netaji' group as an independent essay of yours and it will gain wide circulation. You are a genius. Each time I write on you, I feel humbled to realise how little justice I did to your enormous understanding of the events of those heady days of the freedom struggle. What lucidity! What profundity! Unparalleled.

REMEMBER, THE NATION MATTERS MORE THAN YOUR SELF-INTEREST

What more can I say, just this much, live for India. There is so much to do to build India. Stop exploiting the poor and the middle classes, O prosperous ones of our land, and, instead, serve all in the spirit that they are your very own, your flesh and blood, your heart and soul, the very essence of your being.

Doctors, do not think that you have acquitted yourselves well on your Hippocratic Oath if you are self-serving in profession in alliance with the medical barons who run posh private hospitals with grandiloquent claims and grander names but whose only intention is to squeeze money out of the pockets of the hapless patients in connivance with you all. Vivekananda will not forgive you.

Lawyers, do not tell a hundred lies to win cases for criminals justifying your action on the basis of your professional principle to win a case at any rate. Lying, bringing false witness and resorting to a host of other unscrupulous acts to further your narrow professional interests do not conduce to the well-being of our nation.

Brokers, do not think that there is no higher principle of karma operating that can punish you for your unscrupulous monetary transactions. There is a higher law for certain and it will take you to account for every act of treachery to the people of our glorious motherland. You are to be the safe-keeper of transaction, not its violator through dubious means that ruins the economic health of the nation.

Teachers, unto you belongs the most sacred task of generating shraddha (the intense mood of reverential pursuit of excellence even unto perfection) in your pupils who are the future of our nation, a shraddha akin to what Nachiketa had, as is depicted in the Kathopanishad, when he defied the snares of the world, the ephemeral pleasures, to attain to the highest spiritual perfection in the knowledge of the Self.

And, now my friends who are in business. Unto you lies the heavy responsibility of eradicating poverty from this land and not filling up your own coffers nor pandering to the vanities of your immediate kith and kin while squeezing the life-blood of the nation. What you draw from the nation in terms of acquired wealth, you must give back in equal measure to the nation and not by way of an insignificant sum in much-publicised 'laudable charity'. What you have in your possession, truly belongs to the people of this land and you cannot lay exclusive claim to it. Also, your means of earning must be fair and your profit-making not bordering on profiteering. How can you enjoy luxuries in life when hundreds of millions of your fellow countrymen, who pay for your wealth, live lives of abject poverty and misery? Reflect and turn on a new leaf. Serve brothers, serve, do not exploit.

And finally, our worst offenders, our politicians who are running a circus in Parliament these days. What to speak of you, brothers, and why not, sisters too, you need a holy dip daily in the Ganga to cleanse off your accumulated sins but one shudders to think of the state of the holy river burning with your horrendous sins! I charge you with destroying our nation, the hopes of a billion people, their dreams, their lives, their past, present and future. You have to account for your karma, I say, you cannot escape the ire of the very God who is the author and preserver of our beloved motherland. Corrupt souls of our motherland, it is time, indeed, to rectify your horrific stance, your despicable character, else, history will avenge the wrongs you perpetrate daily on a desolate, destitute people. Beware! Rectify! Save your hereafter. My best wishes, yet, go with you, for you, the benighted of all, need them the most. Jai Hind!

IN RESPONSE TO MY FRIEND BHASKAR SEN SHARMA'S COMMENT ON THE SAD GOVERNMENTAL NEGLECT OF NETAJI

Ever the hammer on the head from you, dear Bhaskar Sen Sharma. Your intrepid voice is a beacon for us in these dark days of diabolic distortion of deeds desperate and daring, redolent of the valorous kshatriya traditions which, debilitated India had well-nigh forgotten owing to the injection of a weakening brand of totalitarian non-violence by Gandhi, an effective method of paralysing the civil machinery of the British Indian Government for a day or two, no doubt, but utterly incapable of bodily evicting the British from the Indian soil. Netaji read the situation well for he had the penetrative intellect which Gandhi lacked. He understood that the source of British power with which they subjected 38 crore Indians was the British Indian Army composed principally of Indian soldiers working for the British. If he could somehow undermine the loyalty of these soldiers to the British Crown by quickening patriotic feelings in their hearts, then the British would lose their grip over India and would be gone in no time. At no point of time in their gory history in India did the British have a sizeable physical presence in terms of man-power either in their civil or in their military machinery that could have faced the raw might of the vast Indian population in direct combat and, it must be admitted, they yet kept their control over their Indian affairs with superb execution of administrative skills by employing Indians in their service to hold down India in bondage. Gandhi made many a hollow declaration of his intent to free India within a stipulated period of time but ever failed to fulfil the truth of his statement as his promises based on an unrealistic approach to the world of realpolitik inevitably failed. But when Netaji knocked on the doors of Gandhian truth-tranquillised India with his INA forcing its way through the north-east, India 'awoke to life and freedom' in no time. Andaman and Nicobar were the first to be freed and they were the first to throw off the colonial hangover when Netaji renamed them Swaraj and Shaheed. Next came Moirang and then the betrayal of Nehru, Gandhi and Jinnah to seal the fate of our motherland as the perfidious British, in a last-ditch attempt to weaken India for good, made common cause with Nehru and Jinnah to partition India while the Mahatma, now conscious of his damaging limitations, watched the proceedings helplessly. His plethora of blunders cost India dear as he truly oversaw the birth of Pakistan, the first Islamic State after the dissolution of the Caliphate, the seed of all future troubles for India and the world, the hub of terror and all that goes by the way of theocratic barbarism. That much for the Mahatma's contribution, by way of final resolution, to the cause of India's freedom which we owe, truly, to the gallant soldiers of the INA led by Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose.

Thanks a lot, dear Bhaskar, and keep enlightening us with your illumined inputs of knowledge and their interpretation, and so inspire others to take the cue from you to carry forward the work of the resurrection of Netaji and the INA.

PRIME MINISTER, WAKE UP! RENAME THE ANDAMAN AND NICOBAR ISLANDS, SWARAJ AND SHAHEED AS NAMED BY NETAJI AS PRESIDENT OF THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT OF FREE INDIA.

Why does Narendra Modi not restore the names SWARAJ and SHAHEED which NETAJI had given to ANDAMAN and NICOBAR ISLANDS, thus earlier named by Imperial Britain and renamed the same by them after erasing the names given by Netaji? These are small but significant steps towards de-Anglicising our nation and restoring her self-pride and dignity. There was a purpose to naming the islands 'Swaraj' and 'Shaheed' and that purpose remains thwarted in independent India. So long as the Congress ruled, it was understandable for Nehru and his ilk had everything to lose through the resurrection of Netaji. But the Congress is now out of power and it is time opportune to render justice to this episode of India's freedom struggle. The establishment of the Provisional Government of Free India in these two southern islands, notorious in India's history as the place of banishment and terrible torture of prisoners (freedom fighters) found guilty of sedition against the British government, is a glorious episode in our struggle for freedom and was the springboard from where freedom eventually came in 1947. Allowing the British names of these islands to continue and, thus, overriding the legacy of Netaji here is to sell our national dignity to the ones that tyrannised us here in the most inhuman manner. The British police used to put metal pins into the nails of the prisoners and drive them in before pulling the nails out in their bid to extract information from the political prisoners who were our brightest jewels, our bravest sons who gave their everything for the freedom of the nation we enjoy today. Shame on us that we allow this status quo on things which no other country in the world would have permitted, for we have become an emasculate lot devoid of feeling for our martyrs who liberated us! And a worse shame on our governments including the present one for its trepidation and undue circumspection on restoring the pride of our nation beyond mere lip-service of salutation to Netaji! We want concrete action and, that too, speedily. Rename the Andaman and Nicobar Islands SWARAJ and SHAHEED if you are a patriot worth your salt, Shree Narendra Modiji. I await the grand happening. It will send a shiver through the nation and our youth will rise up in unison with it singing : 

KADAM KADAM BADHAYE JA,
KHUSHI KA GEET GAYE JA,
YE ZINDAGI HAI KAUM KI,
WOH KAUM PE MITAYE JA.

I solicit your response.

DESPOILED DIGNITY ... 1

The British, in enslaving us, took our dignity away. The Muslim invaders earlier had done the same. Today, in free India, our corrupt politicians have ruined us in health, wealth and spirit and their deed is not done yet. Ancient scriptures, along with sublime passages enunciated on humanity, have also passed terrible judgement on the infidel, women and the depressed classes at the lower end of the social spectrum. Dictators have tyrannised nations, sent continents to war and destroyed civilisations. The history of the world, despite the grand achievements of the arts and the sciences, has been a tale of continuous violence and war, tyranny and the ravaging of the spirit of man such that humanity has been dreadfully despoiled of dignity to the point of a despairing self-annihilation. And the same applies to the domestic front as well where men and women for their petty self-interest keep hurling abuse at each other and reduce themselves to brutes wittingly or unwittingly. Where comes humanity then? How may one reasonably justify the otherwise unjustifiable 'righteous anger' which is the cause of so much unhappiness at the grass-roots level of human society, the family? Where is the dignity of familial living if husbands and wives so mistrust and misjudge each other that anarchy reigns supreme at the root of society? Whither humanity? Hold on. Ramakrishna will show us the way out of our predicament. I have heard he has the solution to life's problems.

To be continued...

RESPONSES TO DIVERSE COMMENTS ON GANDHI'S SIDELINING BOSE

Photo : Bose at Tripuri as Congress President, in a critical state of health, forced into attendance by the intransigence of Congressmen over a deferment of date for the Session requested by him, the refusal being attended by some Congress leaders alleging that he was feigning sickness by way of a clever political ploy.

What do you feel about Gandhi's role in sidelining Subhas Chandra Bose from the mainstream of Indian politics in 1939? Do you think the Mahatma was justified in his action in his pursuit of his own brand of ideological politics? I solicit your opinion.

Right in a way you are. Let our emotions be transmuted into constructive action for the cause of the resurrection of Netaji. But again, if we do not have public discourse on the matter, then the issue will not get currency enough for the fruition of the very cause of the hero which lies in wait for so long. I appreciate your sentiment, though, Abhishikta.

Gandhi acted in an autocratic unethical manner, pulling political strings from behind the curtain and ousting Bose, first from the Congress Presidency which he was forced to abdicate, and then, from the party itself when he was unceremoniously expelled. The only way he could then serve the nation was from overseas which he did after his great escape from India.

The politicians of the day like Nehru, Patel, Azad and the like were in no way brainless. They lacked character enough, true, but they were shrewd custodians of self-interest which they realised by remaining loyal to Gandhi at any cost, even if it meant the fall of the nation to facilitate their rise.

These politicians, perfidious as they were, stooped to any length to suit their personal ends and literally sold the future of our motherland, in effect, to Britain, Pakistan and later, as an inertial consequence of dubious, debilitating Gandhian non-violence, to China.

Falsities and fabrications furthering familial ends, that of the Nehru-Gandhi descent, has literally ruined the manhood of the nation.

Gandhi, I hear, later rued the loss of Bose at the time of India's catastrophic independence amidst Partition when he himself had lost the rudder of the freedom movement and Nehru made common cause with Mountbatten while giving lip service to Gandhi in terms of his great devotion to him. Gandhi had, in effect, then felt let down by his protege and resigned to the state of affairs which had now gone beyond his mortal control.

Tanman Lahiri, I am a very ordinary person just like you and like everybody else. Thanks for your magnanimity but the issue is Netaji and not me.

Did Gandhi support Netaji's actions in Germany and East Asia, did he? Well, I am yet to be illumined to that effect on this issue as you put it across.

Perfect analysis and articulation, dear Mohit Babu. I remain beholden to you as well for the information you have given me regarding the Netaji documentaries.

I sometimes wonder whether there has been any psycho-analysis done on Gandhi's actions and motivations in life, especially, with regard to his idiosyncrasies which are galore and, often, quite grotesque.

Brother, do not hate Gandhiji; love Netaji instead. Do not waste your emotions on someone you do not like. Also, you will be doing a great service to yourself and to the world by releasing yourself from any such negative emotion which neither does good to you nor does it conduce to the well-being of the cause we cherish, that of resurrection of the one and only one we adore as our beloved Netaji. 

Perceptive, and precisely so. You have hit the hammer on the head. Your observation about the vastly varied backgrounds from which they hail as being one of the the prime causes of their temperamental difference and consequently, the wide divergence in their political approach, has expanded my vision about Mahatmaji and Netaji. Your originality of thinking has enlivened the issue in my mind and I must, in due course of time, try to understand these seminal personalities from the vantage point of their childhood environments. My sincere thankfulness for this. 

NIRMALANANDA, THE APOSTLE IN WAIT

The leonine disciple of Sri Ramakrishna, the one who was seen in the shrine of the Alamabazar Math guarding the image of the Master from coming to any harm during the great earthquake of 1892 when so many of the others had run to the ground floor to seek safety. This was the messenger of the Master to America and, later, to Southern India where he galvanised the Ramakrishna Movement like none other. Glory unto Tulsi Maharaj, one of the seventeen direct disciples of Sri Ramakrishna, now almost erased from public memory by historical forces. We await his resurrection in the public imagination. Brother Manoj Sivan is doing yeoman's service for the cause. Thank you brother. May Thakur-Ma forever bless you for your selfless service!

WHEN HISTORIANS LIE WITH IMPUNITY AND PEOPLE BLISSFULLY SWALLOW UNTRUTHS

How dare this Prof. Rudrangshu Mukherjee compares Netaji in terms of iconic stature in West Bengal with the likes of Sourav Ganguly, Amartya Sen and Mamata Banerjee in an almost comical, dismissive way while deriding him for shaking hands with fascists like Hitler and Mussolini which he finds despicable, although, it must be said that he does recognise Netaji as a true patriot, as if by way of granting a feel-good tip to a subordinate who he has just vilified? Who are these so-called professors, devoid of character, who dare make a mockery of the life and contributions of our greatest hero while dismissing our reverence for him as so much frothy Bengali sentiment? Followers of Netaji, be scholarly and take up the challenge to rewrite the life and achievements of Netaji with filial adherence to truth and, so, give a befitting reply to these unpatriotic liars masquerading as historians.

IN RESPONSE TO THE ACCURATE ASSESSMENT OF GANDHI BY CHANDRA KUMAR BOSE

At last a solid diatribe, Chandra Babu, exposing the weaknesses of Gandhi which cost India dear. It is time to rewrite Indian history in a dispassionate manner such that the decades-old lies are held before daylight, the falsities and fabrications which have well-nigh emasculated us as a nation are laid bare before the awakening young generations such that Netaji and his INA's seminal role in bringing freedom to our motherland be realised. To top it, the modern-day so-called liberal intelligentsia, for reasons best known to themselves and which reek anyhow of western patronage fulfilling its diabolic designs of neo-colonialism on erstwhile colonies, have taken upon themselves to perpetuate the Nehruvian myth of India's struggle for freedom and achieving independence through the mode of non-violent passive resistance. Eulogising Gandhi for social welfare programmes conducted by him is highly commendable as commendable the programmes themselves were, but to paint the Mahatma as the saviour of dependent India oblivious of the mischief made by him to thwart the rising star of Subhas Chandra Bose is mischief indeed. How India paid for the Mahatma's mistakes, unconscious as well as deliberate, for he was a queer combination of common ignorance and hawkish political cunning, is for all of free India to dwell on. How Nehru betrayed Bose at every step, lying in his ideological loyalties and holding the Mahatma to be his trump-card for future portfolio even as the failed prophet of Indian nationalism held on to him as his protege and buffer against Bose, is for future historians to unravel for the current crop are all sold to the almighty dollar and the sterling pound as they vie with each other to sell the motherland to foreign investors who give currency to their dubious dissertations with a patronising pat of the boss to boot.

Chandra Babu, your great-uncle sacrificed everything for the nation and succeeded in eliciting the same response from 60,000 INA soldiers as well, not counting the countless patriotic expatriate Indians who gave their health, wealth and life to serve the cause of freedom at their Netaji's call. How can we rest in peace and allow this perfidy of distortion of history even after seven decades of independence and the attempt by eminent historians to tone down Netaji's contribution to the cause of freedom? Gandhi and his brigade humiliated the Tripuri Congress President which Subhas Bose was, forced him to resign, then expelled him from Congress and finally, when the hero, indomitable as he was, armed in Vivekananda's undying mantra of self-reliance and uninhibited patriotism devoid of self-interest, essayed his course through the continents of Europe and Asia to knock upon the doors of his motherland with a mighty array of freedom-loving revolutionaries, the British quaked in fear to behold their loyal Indian soldiers turning upon them. Gandhi then derided Subhas as a modern-day Robin Hood who had caught the imagination of a section of the youth and the womenfolk and, thus, downplayed his movement in a clever and calculated way, quite not in keeping with the truth he so espoused, for it was a deliberate and blatant lie that the Mahatma yet resorted to, to gain a political end. Gandhi taught future generations of Indian politicians deceit in defeat and machination to muster support, a lesson which Congressmen learnt from him first-hand to bring about the future degradation of the country while ever clamouring in the name of their illustrious preceptor. And what Nehru did is a blasphemy I cannot recount here in response to your impassioned articulation but which I, for sure, will in future publish to let people know the brutal truth of the perfidies he perpetrated against his comrade-in-arms in the freedom struggle.

Mahatma Gandhi was never equipped with the refined intelligence one needs to be a statesman. He was a mediocre student throughout his academic career right from his school days, never excelling or showing any promise whatsoever that would mark him out as an outstanding public figure, especially one who would be the helmsman of an entire nation gone dry of kshatriya valour as is enjoined upon in our scriptures as the necessary condition for national well-being. The British had disarmed India entirely after the terrible losses of the so-called 1857 Sepoy Mutiny as the British mischievously dubbed it but which, in effect, was the First War of Indian Independence. Thereafter, the Indian National Congress was founded by a retired British civil servant by the name Alan Octavian Hume in 1885 to provide a safety-valve for brewing revolutionary fervour and allowing it a manageable constitutional channel to seek redress. This was a calculated British ploy and the disarmed Indians, having no other means of expressing their grievances, fell for it. The British had put in a lot of research into the Indian psyche and the workings of Indian society before employing this stratagem to contain revolutionary activity in India. The understanding they gained from their study was that Indians were an extremely spiritual people who could be well-relied upon to serve them loyally once they were sworn into the vow of loyalty to the British Crown. In especial, the Sikhs and the Gurkhas were unflinching in their loyalty to the master and these the British sought to enlist in their armed forces to expand and defend their Empire. Added to this was the divided Indian society on the grounds of religion and caste. Hindus and Muslims they sought to separate and to achieve this malicious end the British patronised the All India Muslim League whenever it was expedient to rule the land by instituting divisions in the body politic of India. To top it all came the Dalit Movement of Ambedkar and the creation of separate electorates for the provincial legislatures. In this delicate and dangerous mix of circumstances, Gandhi carried on with his non-violent passive resistance impulsively without plan or detailed programme, starting his movements as abruptly as he did end them, subject to his sudden fits of ideological compulsions and political misgivings, while holding on doggedly to his facile conceptions of humanity and the befriended enemy in the world of realpolitik which deceived him time and again to seal the doom for India that followed him blindly.

But not all. Not all were as gullible or as intransigent in ignorance as Gandhi was and there were wiser souls who widely differed with him but had not the mass-base to counter him effectively, but who, nonetheless, played a seminal role in the eventual emergence of the true liberator of India, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. We are reminded of C.R. Das of hallowed memory who was Bose's political preceptor and whose untimely death cost the fledgling hero the loss of a mentor he banked on in those early days of his political tutelage. The revolutionaries of Anushilan Samity, Jugantar, Hindustan Socialist Republican Association and the Ghadar Party who followed the masculine brand of revolutionary extremism, flood the patriot's vision when he looks back on those heady days of fervent political activity, those fearless soldiers of the soul who laid down their everything at the altar of the motherland to secure her freedom from the hands of the barbarous British but who were vilified as murderers and fringe lunatics by Gandhi in his moments of messianic madness and, otherwise, during saner hours were derided by the Mahatma as misguided idealists sinking into the abyss of corrupting violence. These then sporadically formed the alternative front which advanced the cause of freedom and struck terror into the heart of the British Raj such that in 1911 they shifted capital from calamitous Calcutta to the relatively docile New Delhi. But even here the British became the targets of North Indian revolutionary violence and it remained their only hope to parley with the mild Mahatma and give him prominence as the face of freedom-seeking India to prolong their rule in India even as they did their utmost to foil Gandhi through the likes of Ambedkar and Jinnah in their bid to keep the Indian struggle weak and divided.

Such was the state of Indian politics over which Gandhi never had any real control, as future events were to testify, and which, despite not having the resourcefulness or power to grapple with any measure of success in terms of real political achievement of winning freedom for an undivided India, the Mahatma experimented with as his means of attaining personal spiritual freedom. Facile though his political postulates were and naive his political programmes thereof, the Mahatma struck a chord with rural India in a measure unprecedented in history and led India to her eventual partitioned doom. En route he was manipulating to the core when it came to political adversaries like Bose and spared no means, fair or foul, to achieve their political demise, albeit in a Machiavellian though non-violent way. He used every trick of the lawyer's trade to conduct his dubious dealings with his perceived threats and he followed no ethical principles when it came to a head-on clash with a political opponent within the Congress. His much-vaunted truthfulness of intent then took to flight and what remained of him was his true self, the scheming politician and not the saint which ever was a facade on a much-compromised man masquerading as a mahatma. Where was the simplicity, the innocence in Gandhi whose every move was calculated to suit his own ideological ends irrespective of whether such a singular stance in a complex national situation would conduce to the eventual well-being of the motherland or not?

Admittedly, Gandhi faced a colossal task in awakening India to revolutionary non-violence, building a mass-base unparalleled in world history and, that too, without the use of violent propaganda or the use of force, and in this he was a phenomenal success. The point is not about his success as a mass leader. The point is as to where it eventually led India. It led to Partition and not to the freedom which was his dream and the lifelong dream of all revolutionaries, violent or non-violent, save of those that fought to fill up portfolios and fill their coffers on India achieving independence, whole-bodied or truncated, it mattered not to them. The chronicling of history has to be factual and its analysis has to be dispassionate and not founded on emotional attachment to personality. Here, Indian historians have failed miserably in being objective on account of their political affiliations and professional tie-ups with interested parties. Gandhi and Nehru have been unduly given the lion's share of space in the history of dependent and independent India while marginalising the seminal contribution of a political stalwart like Subhas Chandra Bose who, in point of fact, was the real liberator of India from British hands at the end of the Second World War. The INA thrust in Imphal and the subsequent INA Trials at the Red Fort set the country ablaze leading to the Royal Indian Navy Revolt in 1946, the Jabalpur British Indian Army uprising and the Royal Indian Air force rebellion. The country was in a fit of revolutionary fervour with the British Indian Armed Forces changing loyalty from the British Crown to the nationalists fighting for freedom. The British realised that the days of the Raj were over and it was time to quit the country. All these developments took place under the shadow of Netaji who had been reported to have been killed in an air-crash the previous year, 18 August, 1945, to be precise. Netaji in absentia wielded power over the masses like Caesar's ghost. His shadow loomed large on the entire landmass which had been ignited by his legendary exploits across East Asia. India became free, not because of Gandhi but in spite of Gandhi and the architect of this liberation was Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose.

Then followed the worst perfidy of all time. In the absence of Netaji and with a weakening Gandhi whose political sagacity was now being severely put to the test, Nehru, Jinnah and Mountbatten made common cause to partition India, ostensibly to avoid civil war, but in reality for the fulfilment of far more sinister designs for which millions died during the subsequent riots and during the transfer of populations across the borders of the newly born Pakistan on both sides of India. The holocaust that was sought to be avoided did take place and India stood on independence an amputated land with both arms severed as Pakistan claimed her territory on either side of India. Gandhi had fasted on unnumbered occasions in his life to achieve his political ends but now he was prudent enough not to resort to any such means to prevent Partition for he felt it would prove futile to the cause, and the deed of non-violence he finally signed with the murder of his motherland in which he inadvertently played no mean part. The political situation had precipitated to perdition, exactly as Netaji had forsworn it would in the case of a negotiated settlement of independence with the British. He had in conference with his trusted INA lieutenants articulated his fervent desire to seize independence form the British before the World War was over. Else, he had said, the British would for certain partition and permanently debilitate India.

Netaji was supposedly dead and was purportedly in peace at the Renkoji Temple of Tokyo. Gandhi fell to the assassin's bullet within five months of freedom. Patel died in 1950 after integrating the landmass of India. Now there was none to compete with for the coveted seat of the Prime Minister and Nehru reigned free of fear for the next 14 years till his death in 1964. But before that he suffered brutal humiliation at the hands of the Chinese in the 1962 Sino-Indian War. One more threat, they say, haunted him always. Was it the possible return of his old comrade, Subhas Chandra Bose, whom he had betrayed at every count throughout the latter's political career in India and whose eventual incarceration and possible death in a Siberian labour camp, many suspect, he had the power to prevent by reinstating the hero home but did not care to do in his bid to secure his own position politically as the Prime Minister of India? Was Netaji dead or was he alive and a witness to the high drama of India's independence and subsequent severe toil?

READ THE WORKS OF NETAJI, IF YOU WISH TO SERVE HIS CAUSE

Read 'The Indian Struggle' by Subhas Chandra Bose to understand the workings of the Indian freedom movement. The direct words of Netaji, right from his pen, act like electric current that runs through the system. The given work is a classic study of the period dating 1920-1942 of the freedom struggle, the Gandhian era, so to say, when the freedom movement gained in momentum but suffered from the obvious flaws of over-emphasis on non-violence and passive resistance as the means for attaining freedom. Bose differed in principle with Gandhi, although, he held him in the highest regard personally despite the Himalayan political blunders the Mahatma made which cost India dearly.

Along with this book, also, do read 'An Indian Pilgrim' by Bose which is his unfinished autobiography. Here, you get to know the man as he saw himself. Pilgrim he indeed was, a voyager through the unknown world of men and ideas, a seeker of truth, yet, one who could never rest to lead a quiet life of contemplation, for the call of the nation summoned him to her service every time he settled in his seat of meditation. Profoundly spiritually inclined, the young Subhas yet immersed himself in the service of his motherland relinquishing a prospective flourishing career in the world of British Indian civil service. A lesson for our youth today when selfishness is supplanting these glorious human virtues of service and sacrifice for the common weal that was the wont of the freedom fighters, prince among whom was Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. Jai Hind!  

DARE TO ANSWER, O BETRAYERS OF THE NATION!

The Congress Party has to answer the nation why it destroyed classified files on Netaji. Who stood to gain if Netaji was kept out of the public imagination in independent India?

What people lack is the character and the will to persist in the unravelling of worthwhile information on Netaji, long suppressed by successive Congress governments. Also, more and more genuine researchers need to come forward to do concrete work on Netaji instead of the multitude merely airing fair and foul emotion on the issue.

"You may not believe in the vengeance of God but you will have to believe in the vengeance of history," thundered Swami Vivekananda in America one day as he uncovered before his awe-struck audience the mockery that was British imperialism in the name of civilisation. The prophet went on to say that the Chinaman was the vengeance of history that would alight on the British and that it would serve the British right if they, a mere handful compared to the mighty millions of the Chinese people, were to swept into the North sea by the latter for the perfidies committed by them in history. Today, when we are at the crossroads of a new discovery, albeit a painful but long-awaited one, that of the fate of our leader, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, Swamiji's epic pronouncement, as if by way of a verdict passed on the barbarous British, seems pertinent in relation to Nehru and his ilk too, they who plotted the downfall and, possibly, the death of the true liberator of India from the British yoke.

IN DEFENCE OF NETAJI'S FAMILY AGAINST CARPING CRITICISM FROM OVER-ZEALOUS CRUSADERS FOR THE CAUSE

This is the spirit --- a spirited rejoinder to all that is being aired by 'perfected patriots', 'self-acclaimed researchers' and 'heirs apparent to the leonine leader' with a practised persistence, vehement and vitriolic, which by incessant repetition is, however, failing to produce the desired effect of inducing conviction in facile theories running contrary to the tenor of the hero's being and, therefore, is being rejected, in the absence of tangible evidence, by many an ardent devotee of Netaji. There are followers galore of sensationalists propounding preposterous propositions centring Netaji, for credulity abounds in the average mass of humanity who lap up conspiracy theories wherever there is an element of mystery and in our hero's case there is no dearth of such shrouded stretch where imagination runs wild in pious pursuit of preferred propositions irrespective of scientific rigour in approach casting deliberated doubts on the plausibility of such presumptions. All things said and done, however, truth cannot be discerned amidst the murkiness of misapprehension where the essential element of scientific enquiry, objective and dispassionate, without a tinge of malice, self-aggrandisement or verbal aspersion cast on a seeming adversary to one's proposition, is lost. The prime requirement of the hour is, thus, an intensive search for truth uncluttered by histrionics, hyperboles and heresies founded on fabrications and falsities. The solidarity of a movement demands that all participants must exhibit adequate civility towards one another in their individual pursuit of truth and that access to information on the basis of research or reading on Netaji ought not to arrogate for oneself the divine right to insinuate and insult whosoever one chooses in one's 'superior wisdom' to vent one's venom upon.

Netaji was a supremely human person, compassionate to the core, with a heart 'as broad as the sky' and a soul 'as deep as the ocean'. He was such a catholic personality that his staunchest adversaries, antagonists in ideology and execution of his Presidential programmes at Tripuri, received his warmest regards nonetheless and he sacrificed self-interest to prevent partitioning of the movement that had been geared to win freedom for the motherland. Knowing this to be our heritage, we ought to, out of mutual respect, guard against the vice of over-zealousness for the cause to the point of being insensitive to others' feelings of honour and dignity. Moreover, if we are patriots worth the salt, we shall avoid casting aspersions on his immediate family out of a natural sense of love and sympathy and a kindred feeling for them, for such is the law of love that it refrains from slandering those who are dear to the one we adore as our nation's cherished leader. Let us in real intent be worthy of Netaji and his cause even unto the resurrection of the truth of his disappearance. Let us debate the issues in a healthful manner, agreeing to disagree if necessary on every count but forever casting aside divisive tendencies that tend to weaken the movement. Netaji is our leader in this search for truth and may his spirit animate us into becoming loving adherents of his cause and not enemies spitting venom ceaselessly resolving to nought our aspirations and efforts! May Netaji bless us all with a tinge of the virtues that had raised him to the pinnacle of glory and humanity above all! Jai Hind!

THIS LIFE AND THE LIFE BEYOND (UNFINISHED)

Death inexorably moves in on all. Dictators and devils die, gods and ghosts die, men and mortals die, all die inevitably with the passage of time that consumes it all. Even time eventually dies when its play is done as the universe winds up its network that had so long trapped us all. Phenomena, perishable and pernicious, holds us all in its thraldom as death dances over its domain. The cyclical pattern of things deludes us with the vision of a seeming permanence in this ephemeral dream of life, persistence of vision lends continuity to this diabolic design where disparateness assumes dissolving shapes and particulate motion masquerades as solidity of being. But despite this bewitching sensory drama that fascinates the mind of man and keeps him from tracing his roots, there remains ever an underlying current of consciousness whose feeble call man hearkens to at times and a whole vista opens up of limpid spaces, luminous, free, unbounded by death or decay, an unbroken mass of pure consciousness, the Self brooding on the Self. This, of course, is the Himalayan height of realisation, subtle and sublime, not accessible to all who dwell on commoner plains of mundane existence. But the principle is there. It lives on in the genius of extraordinary souls whose preoccupation is the pursuit of truth transcendental but which is a pointer to the fact, thereby, of the organic capacity of the human species at its evolved best to comprehend reality as it is and not merely as it seems to be. Uniformity is the rigorous law of Nature and from it follows the possibility, nay, the certainty that all will in due course apprehend this absolute truth of man and Nature and the Reality beyond. The panoramic world with its myriad enchantments then fails to hold the blossoming soul of man seeking perfection as it peers higher and higher into the heavens and the realm beyond, breaking free of the bonds that had held it so long. The Universal Enchantress then makes way for the chosen child that has rebelled against her dictates and releases him in the infinitude of freedom but not until he has had his cupful of cosmic experience in all its delights and despairs. He becomes now a living soul as he witnesses phenomena as the cover of consciousness and history as the surface scratching of toddlers on the page of experience. While the leonine soul emerges out of the meshes of Maya, the rest of humanity, faltering and failing, fumble about in the darkness of cosmic nescience, subject to death and decay, in the terrible transmigratory cycle that spares neither prince nor pauper but renders all equal in the sameness of death.

Such is the human predicament. Ignorance, primeval and uncaused, has sprung up whence to direct this dual drama of life and death, this cosmic spectacle of minor proportions, this wakeful dream of self-oblivion, man knows not. Prophets arise and sound their clarion call to break the dream but few ever respond in true intent to their earnest sentiments including their close associates and heirs for most, consciously or otherwise, fashion truth after their heart, truth which is comfortable or convenient and not which carries the purest imprint of the divine. Thus, the message is lost in the man as personality ruins principle and the movement, which had sprung in the Mother-heart of all that is serene and sublime, meanders off-course into the shallow waters of murky materialism whence there is no return to its pristine source despite pious protestations of followers to the contrary. Thus, all spiritual movements, after an inspired beginning, peter out gradually to more mundane organisational existence and the life of the Spirit which animated the Prophet and his Apostles is supplanted by a routine culture where daily discipline settles the soul into passive acquiescence of hierarchical authority that stifles so often individual genius and threatens thereby the very life of the Order. For all things must perish when they fail to refresh themselves from the eternal fountain of joy that abides in the depths of the soul and nourishes the creative faculty in man which is the sustenance of his being.

Thus, on the individual and the collective plane, in the routinised or the rambling way, difficulties galore spring up to oppress the soul of man which must yet triumph over material contamination to affirm the freedom of the Self, the supremacy of the Spirit over matter and lend light to the dark corridors of this terrestrial terrain, this theatre of fratricidal feud, this stage of sensory unreality. And through it all runs the torch of life, ever kindling, ever dimming, but never quite extinguished for good as the fire of fresh life keeps up the image of the Reality which underlies it all, nameless, formless, waveless, free. Life is transcended and so is death as the shadow of this cosmic spectacle pales into insignificance before the splendour of the Self. Thus is the victory sealed as the very face of Reality surfaces as the cosmic dance of death and every whirl reveals, in flash of light and love, the life within that is, pristine pure, pure delight. This very Earth is then heaven as bliss reveals all, this very Earth is hell itself as darkness shrouds the Self and this very Earth is Existence Absolute as separation vanishes before the integrated vision.

This admixture of good and evil is then an in-built structural element in the fabric of the man-universe that denies alteration, a perception problem for man seeking a rectification of vision as much as it is an evolutionary proposition that demands wholesale realignment of mental forces with the passage of time leading to higher insights into the core of Reality. The objective universe will remain the same but the subjective vision of man will, with evolution, slowly change and the balance of good and evil spiral upwards along a tapering mountainous detour till the road narrows to nothingness and the pilgrims reach the summit of realization where they are not nor anything is, the mount, the road, the men, the mode, all dissolving, coalescing into an integrated mass of consciousness, a void seeking itself in its nothingness, an infinitude brooding on itself in self-oblivion, in Self-awareness, a hollow wholeness in eternal solitude without a stir or motion, the ocean, waveless, tranquil, free of splash or bubble, spherical, unbounded, nor large nor small, dimensionless, limitless, nameless, formless, free.

This, then, is the other world, this, the life beyond in its absolute sense, the very world of everyday occurrence transforming from its manifoldness to its unitary status and the transcendence thereof, the panorama painting poetic dreams passing from partitioned phrases to its pristine wholeness, a ponderous point perishing into the prevision of phenomena, the Presence, pure and perfect, parallel, free. Yet, we have to contend with the dual syndrome of material life and struggle to combat the devil of delusion and death that stalks all of life. Shall we ever succeed in eliminating death and evil? No, for ignorance hallucinates hells and heavens which knowledge dispels and the flip side of good is forever evil, both assuming relative merit from our graded perception mode. Adjustments, advances, amendments are all subjective even though they seem external to our human apparatus. Through all these brushes of the paint, the artist reforms the substance of his dreams, reshapes the canvas of his mind till the fruit of his fancy is ready for deliverance. And then alone does he envisage at last that this life, after all, was a phenomenal dream, full of the dual throng of good and evil in the fabric of life and death, but that there is a higher reality too, a sublimity soaring past the highest heavens into the very kernel of existence lodged in the secret chambers of the human heart where a lamp shines ever leading to the sun of the Self, inward, deeper, gravitating to the essence of things. The Ancient Poem is there, come ye all and read into its meaning. The rest, who knows what destiny has in store for them? Death, decay and destruction await all but few apprehend the truth to escape the clutches of this ancient foe and emerge triumphant free, masters of life and death. For them is life a play and the world a vast stage where respective parts are being enacted by humans as per the divine director's bidding. But so few have access to the inner recesses of this reality about us that one cannot but wonder at the Divine Enchantress’ mesmeric spell that keeps us so befuddled as to so induce in us utter Self-oblivion.

Self-memory and Self-oblivion---these are the dual aspects then of this phenomenal universe and the transcendence thereof. The children of light remember their roots and are blissfully free but the children of the world forget their selves and suffer. Theirs is an eternal drudgery, the tyranny of the routine rigmarole, the tedious tending of the material self in the desert-sand of life. Effulgence illumining all on one side and darkness enveloping all on the other and in between is a glimmer of hope hinging on cross-linkages of the twain. It is a continuum all through, phases merely separated in time along an upward slide which nothing can thwart. Or, perhaps, one may prefer to term it the downward drift to the core of Reality, the gravitational focus, the essence of Being. Whatever the name, the destiny is divine for it is subtle and transcending the domain of physical phenomena, each movement along the ascending scale a quantum shift towards the finer, phenomenon tapering from grosser to subtler realms as it out-reaches itself to finally dissolve in an all-absorbing void, the vast unknown whence there is no return. The universe merges and so does the self in this abyss of nothingness and everything is blotted out in an all-encompassing cipher, beyond bounds, beyond cognition, the indecipherable end-point of things. As the universe zeroes in on itself, the material cover of things is rent apart and the spiritual shines in abiding effulgence from the source of stellar glow, the luminous core of transcendence. All that was dark and desolate is then lit up in a blaze of supernal light with bliss flowing in unceasing cascades and a self-existence that has been perennially there, undivided, whole, conscious and integrally so, without part or partition, self-brooding since eternity and incapable of replication or self-mirroring save in delusion which touches it not.

The 'this side' and the 'that side' of reality, the obverse and the reverse of the same coin tossed in play reveals but a single face of it, hiding the other. But it is all a threaded network across the face of reality that part reveals, part conceals that which is ever beyond the web, it is all a percolation that defies territorial bindings as it makes its way across defined domains, ever revealing slices of the truth beyond in the evolving process of phenomena, a reminder to the lost horizons of their ancestral roots in the centre whence they have sprung forth to ramble along expanding periphery. But the call is on and the flock must return to base camp before the vespers are done with and the nightfall beckons a fresh reckoning of things for a future foray into the unknown.

This then is the saga of existence, the this and that side of life ephemeral and life eternal. This is the cosmic dream, the clash of forces and the resolution thereof, this the sheer significance and the insignificance of terrestrial play. What a vast Cosmos and what a vaster Reality beyond! But how magical it is that the key to its centre lies in the deepest recesses of the human heart, that the core of consciousness is in the human soul, that the secret chambers of knowledge and bliss lie locked in the innermost cellars of this temporal temple where since antiquity is being matured the fermented fruit of realisation, the wine of love in the distillery of the Cosmic Mother-heart enthroned therein. The Self witnesses it all as the dance of the Divine holds the universe in its death throes and the life beyond. Shadows, they loom and shadows, they disappear when the hour cometh. Why, none call tell. They say it is a wrong question to ask. But the question remains and the questioner remains too and none knows why. Perhaps, they all get resolved in realisation when duality dissolves in the paradox of the infinite nothingness and the triune of the observed, the observer and observation all get unified in the unity that is the Void where causality and its queries are all absorbed in a comprehensive consciousness which knoweth it all but may not express. On this side, however, let us dwell on our dualistic deliberations of life and death and the entire spectrum betwixt the two.