NETAJI IN RETROSPECT ... 3

Netaji is a much misunderstood man. Imagine how it feels to be labelled ‘war criminal’ by your own countrymen for your efforts to free your country from British bondage. And that is what he remains even after seven decades since the Second World War in the records of the victorious Allies, a label which no other self-respecting sovereign nation would have allowed without making serious effort to erase such appellation.

America took help from the French to gain liberation from the British in their War of Independence. The French were the enemies of the British historically till the First World War allied them against the Germans in a common war effort. Netaji applied the same principle of the ‘enemy of the enemy being one’s friend’. He found in the Axis Powers his friend against the British occupiers of India.

America ended the Second World War by dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Was this not a war crime of the worst order? Should then not President Harry Truman be considered ‘war criminal’ for, after all, the nuking of the cities led to unnecessary civilian deaths by the hundreds of thousands?

Churchill caused the death of five million Bengalis in the man-made Bengal Famine of 1943 when crops were exported from Bengal to the European War Front to be stocked as buffer for the soldiers fighting for the British, in anticipation of future requirements. This was the worst genocide perpetrated by the British under specific command from the evil Churchill. Should he not, therefore, be called ‘war criminal’?

Reflect, friends, before you think you have done justice to your motherland in any mean measure, before you practise your daily perfidies of pious pleas and prayers to your partial Protector who you have permanently purchased as your prime possession for the sake of self and familial priorities, oblivious of the plight of the martyrs who bled that you be free today to indulge in your daily indolence of deliberated dastardliness. Jai Hind!