IN RESPONSE TO A QUERY AS TO WHY THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA DOES NOT RESTORE THE NETAJI-GIVEN NAMES, SHAHEED AND SWARAJ, TO ANDAMAN AND NICOBAR ISLANDS

Politics is dirty business today and all are culpable in varying degrees for preservation of self-interest. Hence, the lethargy in restoration of the names SHAHEED and SWARAJ for ANDAMAN and NICOBAR ISLANDS which were given them by Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose during his Presidency of the Provisional Government of Free India in the islands in the latter half of the Second World War. This is, of course, an affirmation being made on the basis of the rather arbitrary assumption that the Government will one day wake up to the cause of restoring the honour of oppressed India here at the Cellular Jail of infamous memory. The Indian Government is ever wary of association even remotely with wartime fascist Japan. A worse fear grips them the moment Netaji comes to the fore in the public imagination, for here is one, they feel, who can even now, at a distance of seven decades from the hour of occurrence of the aforesaid events, sway public opinion in a manner that the very foundation of the noxious Nehruvian dispensation may be severely undermined and the corruptions of the corpses laid bare. Netaji must be allowed to sleep, so the governments of independent India have resolved, else, the power brokers of the land will lose their sleep. How on earth does one otherwise explain the terrible step-motherly treatment meted out to our beloved leader throughout the history of independent India? Hence the delay.