IN MEMORY OF RASHBEHARI BOSE AND HIS WIFE, TOSIKO SOMA

These are the unsung heroines and heroes of the freedom struggle, forgotten minstrels of the music that is freedom. It is the tragedy of our times that we have failed to give recognition where sure it was due and thus have we debilitated our nation till character is a quality in absence and corruption rules the roost ruining present performance and future possibilities.

DEWDROPS OF DAWN

This group page is only for the freshest flowers of humanity, the youth in their efflorescent age, in the blossoming springtime of their life, in all their aspirations and dreams of future attainments and present performance, their hopes fulfilled and belied, their delights and despairs, laughter and tears as they forge fresh pathways through the uncharted terrain of the unfolding horizon. The young, the fragrant, the innocent mass of humanity, they who in bud shape the course of the future flow of civilisation as they blossom to maturity through the trials and tribulations of their storm-tossed existence on war-ridden earth, the terrible terrain they have perforce to make their homeland despite ethereal dreams harboured in the secret chambers of their hearts whence they fly to freedom on the wings of poesy, this page is manifestly for the self-expression of these delightful divinities and for the reportage on their universe of aspirations and attainments. It shall be the abiding duty of all members to abide by the spirit of the page which is the spirit of eternal efflorescence. I thank you all and leave the reins of this group in the care of that disembodied being, beauty, which, in the words of the poet, is a joy forever. Blissfulness, innocence and beauty --- may the trinity permeate this page and render unto us a holier, a happier and a healthier heralding of the future!

Photo : Rafseena who scored 1180/1200 to top her plus two Board Examination and then perished out of the shame of exposed poverty by the swooping media.

AN APOLOGY TO THE MEMORY OF A.M. NAIR, THE REDOUBTABLE REVOLUTIONARY WHO WAS LIEUTENANT TO RASHBEHARI BOSE AND A PRINCIPAL HELP IN THE GREAT CAUSE OF NETAJI'S BID FOR ARMED STRUGGLE AGAINST THE BRITISH

An apology is due from me too. I had, in my initial ignorance entirely of the glory that was Nairsan, condemned him as a dubious source of information for Narayanan Gandhi to pass adverse judgement on Netaji. I stand by my original contention that Narayanan Gandhi is, perhaps, misreading Nairsan's memoirs, on account of obvious human fallibility, and misjudging Netaji thus, as also that he is forwarding all his propositions on Netaji on the basis of a single source of information, however significant in historical terms it may be, without taking recourse to alternative narratives of equal or near-equal validity whereby he may arrive at a synthetic and a factually more credible account of the life and works of the epic personality he chooses to run down almost in an irreverent casual way.

But future posts on A.M. Nair from his memoirs by this gentleman, for whom my gratitude grows by the hour for such service rendered unto us despite his apparent and not real dislike of Netaji, have dispelled illusions fraught in ignorance of historical fact and have endeared me to Nairsan in a very real and moving way for which I may never be thankful enough to this friend in the apparent shape of a foe who has cast such a spell over so many that it recently necessitated his expulsion from a very significant group on Netaji.

My apology is by way of expiation of an error, never in intent but sorely out of an easy inverse gullibility to data in currency that excludes Nairsan's seminal contributions to the freedom of his motherland from self-exile, compounded worse by Narayanan Gandhi's constant seeming aspersions cast on the premier patriot of our nation, and I feel happy that the hour has not flitted by before I had the measure of things to atone for past predilections, however unconscious.

A.M. Nair stands luminous in my awakening mind as the paragon of freedom, as the champion and mastermind of the Pan-Asian anti-British movement and as a great organiser of revolutionary enterprise, himself being no mean revolutionary as his multifarious anti-British subversive activities in Manchuria amply testify to.

When in a group altercation with Narayanan Gandhi I had overstepped limits of conversational civility regarding A.M. Nair but once, he had categorically castigated me for such transgression. Still I apologise to the memory of Nairsan for that lone, none too indecent but uncivil to an extent perhaps, remark where I had thrown the fool's challenge to the erudite out of fanatical allegiance to existing data base in my ill-informed mind.

It, therefore, becomes pertinent to note that reverence to a hero of one's adoration and of worldwide adulation even, does not necessarily preclude the idea of examining the said personality from a parallel perspective, however laterally displaced the viewpoint may be. This is the true scientific spirit that guides genuine research in the domain of historical episodes, dispassionate and detached, with but the unearthing of truth the sole motivation for study without personal preference or prejudice painting a predetermined picture which so often is the case with historical narratives where the victor in war determines what ought to be recorded and what ought to be expunged from the saga of the epochal events.

My abiding gratitude to Narayanan Gandhi for making available this invaluable piece of literature for the wider audience, albeit in snippets, through painstaking translation from its Tamil version, when copies of the original book in English are countable in fingers and are prohibitively expensive.

A.M. Nair, affectionately addressed as Nairsan by his Japanese associates and friends, stands transfigured before my widening vision as a being of prodigious revolutionary potency, a phenomenal participant in East Asia's expatriate Indians' struggle for their motherland's freedom and a conscientious chronicler of the turbulent times prior to and during the progress of the worst cataclysm humanity has witnessed in its chequered career since time immemorial.

As the saga of the East Asian struggle for India's independence unfolds before our clarified vision with every page of Nair's memoirs translated sending a current of contemporary consistency through the disparate data in my brain, I wonder how such a phenomenal person, almost larger than life in attributes and attainments, could have been given the go by independent India's government. What a shame that the country of his birth --- for whose freedom he spent the prime time of his life, whose executive machinery for eventual armed revolution he was a principal player in perfecting --- could not recognise the sterling spirit of this revolutionary of transnational attainments and it was left to imperial Japan to bestow on him a coveted civilian award in keeping with the Japanese tradition of honour the patriot.

My essay in apology and admiration ends here as I await the advancing days in the hope of hearing more from that treasure trove of historical data, 'An Indian Freedom Fighter in Japan : Memoirs' by A.M. Nair. May our country even now awake to the historical injustice rendered to this redoubtable revolutionary and do what it feels best in its wisdom to honour his epic contributions towards the attainment of our political freedom! At the least let history prevail and not fabricated fantasies. Jai Hind!

TO BE OR NOT TO BE A NATION

Caught in the cauldron of the Second World War, yet, emerging triumphant in defeat to liberate his motherland from the barbarous hold of the British, the hero remains unheralded in the history of the times save in fascist terms, having been forgotten by a nation that has betrayed him before the wide world and failed to resurrect his memory in shining apparel, in the very resplendence that he lent his countrymen through his lifelong ardour and unprecedented sacrifice climaxing in that ultimate thrust on the borders of British India that in real terms and in its aftermath ejected the colonists for good. If ever there was a patriot, this was it. Like Rashbehari Bose before him, he traversed the path of revolution alone, against insurmountable odds, and came so perilously close to victory that in his very defeat was sealed the fate of the British Raj and, with the jewel in the Crown gone, the Empire, that never saw the setting sun, was itself eclipsed and came to a crashing collapse that altered the contours of the world for good.

And such a one who had walked through hell to bring us the pearl of paradise, the cherished fruit of freedom, O such a one we have in our somnolence relegated to the backyard of the brain as we perish in perpetuity for such perfidy. From the hell-fire the hero emerged to attain to the heaven of spiritual freedom which in his motherland's breaking of British bondage he saw it manifest from wherever he may have been. But when shall we emerge from this hell-fire of ingratitude, amnesia and sheer oblivion that now threatens to annihilate our very existence as a nation held in truth? It is not proper that we trumpet in international fora like the United Nations and in like multilateral meets as a nation steeped in the hoary tradition of truth while we practise the most dastardly variant of untruth in regard to our mightiest prophet of nationalism, our premier patriot, our liberator from the abyss of servitude.

Politicians of the past may have found it convenient to sidetrack Netaji and vainly imagine thereby that they may relegate him to the waste bin of history but ground reality changes not. History has her own elephantine memory and plants in her fabric the seeds of the present flow, formulations pregnant with future possibilities, encapsulations denoting the entire episodic range whence arise the edifice of futurity. The ocean en masse is infinitely stronger than the wave which is a surface-dweller, and fashions fresh tsunamis to sweep off present perfidies and leave behind a harvest of deeds divine of forgotten times, forgotten climes, the lost symphonies of the soul. They recede from the shores of human memory, but only for a while before they deluge on the return in an all-advancing tide sweeping hindrances from the path of human progress and refashioning the state of human affairs as allows for rapid movement towards the destination, the goal of human freedom.

What then will be our stance towards these luminaries of our freedom struggle? Must we remain apathetic towards their memory and fail them in every possible way to seal our own fate? Is this what freedom is all about, the freedom that we so vaunt of as being the foster-child of non-violence and truth practised in cyclical bounds of the spinning wheel? Or is there something more to morality than the Mahatma could conjure with his magical wand wielded before a degenerate Congress leadership that towed his line to avoid sidelining of self and to promote positional advantage on gaining independence through payment of portfolio for perfidy perpetrated against the patriot nonpareil?

The proposition is there before us : 'To be or not to be a nation'. The choice is ours to make and upon it rests our future fate. No harm shall come to Netaji or to Rashbehari Bose or to any other valorous son of the soil like Bhagat Singh, Surya Sen, Chandraseskhar Azad, Bagha Jatin or the countless others who manfully fought for freedom and gave themselves up on the gallows or before the British bayonet. They have paid their debt to the motherland with their every pulsation of being, with their soulful sacrifice to free her from British bondage and with their very lifeblood to pay the price of freedom. It is we who are on the hammer now, in the witness box of the 'high court of history', and it is our deposition before the jury that will count now either to convict us or to acquit us in this contentious case where we are at once the perpetrators of offence, the defendants thereof, the prosecution and the defence counsels, the jury and the judge, for here in this national scenario there exists no separation of powers when our very own life-story is reset, readjusted and recounted in the right spirit for posterity to behold it with the eye of honour as inviolable truth passed unto them.

This, dear countrymen, is where we stand. Netaji, betrayed by our political ancestors in the Indian National Congress, we are running rapidly towards ruination as a race and unless we can fast alter the narrative to what in sooth his contribution was towards our attainment of freedom, and rebuild our nation following the blueprint laid down by him, we are going to a precipitous end as a nation, a catastrophic culmination of all culpability of the past. Lest such a doomsday visit us, let us in real earnest work for the redemption of past perfidies and reinstate the heroes of the freedom struggle to their rightful place. Else, we will have to pay an incalculable price for the sins committed as the nation slides into a corrupt congregation of conflicting cultures, a mass of political nothingness with neither ideal nor philosophy to hold on to save a rotting complex of ruinous liberalism on the one hand and archaic articulations of unlived principles on the other, combating each other in myopic malevolence and securing, for sure, the destruction of the nation with it.

Such then is the state of things in our motherland where, barring the armed forces, not one segment of the political hierarchy or the social superstructure speaks in unison with the solidarity of the nation in mind and with national interest uppermost in their agenda. The country has been dismembered at birth despite the bravest efforts of the armed revolutionaries to win freedom, united and whole, before the World War was over. But such an event never came to pass as history unfolded in a variant way, and these martyrs, who kissed the dust of the Road to Delhi as they fell to Allied assault, their spirits could never reconcile to the dastardly deed of Partition, their comrades-in-arms who faced trial and tribulation in British custody on apprehension, they could never accept this betrayal by the Mahatma's camp despite tallest protestations by the sage of Sabarmati that had but little bearing on the eventual outcome of things. And the country is threatened even now from fissiparous forces within, and must we wallow still in selfish dreams and delightful desires while the motherland goes to ruin?

Perfidies are past, rectification is at hand and the hour goes by. Netaji lives on in the fringe of national consciousness, the INA has been buried for long and the armed revolutionaries need to be exhumed from the graveyards of history. It is time we bring these heroes centre-stage. Else, the rot continues and this emasculated entity we call our political nation may never see manhood enough to rise to full sovereign glory. The history of the freedom movement needs to be rewritten objectively, dispassionately and without deliberate deletion of the daring deeds of the revolutionaries that ran contrary to the tenor of the non-violent movement of the Mahatma, and these must be retold to every school child that a nation of heroes be brought up in the future who will guide the destiny of our motherland right.

What shall we do then? Stay accursed a nation of half-men, punishing innocents with power of capital and a mandate gone wrong? Or, shall we rise as a nation, fired by the idealism of Swamiji, by the patriotic fervour of Netaji, the self-immolation of Bagha Jatin and the lifelong struggle for freedom for one's motherland while living perennially in self-exile in a foreign clime separated by oceanic distance from the very dust he held holy. I mean Rashbehari Bose. The ball lies in your court, my countrymen, and you may do what you like with it. But the price will have to be paid if we step amiss once more. I rest my case here. Vande Mataram! Jai Hind!

Photo : Courtesy, artist signed in the portrait who I, hereby, thankfully acknowledge but am unable to do so personally, and, courtesy, Anuj Dhar's post where I saved it from.

A REQUEST SENT TO A POSSIBLE LIAISON MAN, LEON http://leonmr.blogspot.in/…/murgi-lunch-at-nairs-restaurant…

Dear Mr. Leon,

Can you please request Mr. Gopalan Nair to republish A.M.Nair's autobiography entitled 'An Indian Freedom Fighter in Japan : Memoirs of A.M.Nair'. This book is currently out of print but is somewhat in demand, owing to some publicity given by us, Netaji devotees, and the demand, I am sure, will be significant once the new publication, if it does take place, that is, comes along. Kindly forward this request on my behalf and also see if you can get me some detailed information about Mr. Gopalan Nair such as email id etc. so that I may communicate with him regarding this matter of utmost importance. I shall remain indebted to you for this service rendered and if it does result in the republication of the said memoirs, the nation will remember you with gratitude, Mr. Leon.
Thanking you,
Yours faithfully,
Sugata Bose.

WHEN EXISTING NOTIONS ARE CHALLENGED AND CROSS-CURRENTS FLOW

Bravo! Brilliant Madhuri Bose. What a pertinent piece of advice! I hope Narayanan Gandhi will now take cognisance of this and widen his horizons in his supposed bid to understand the historical intricacies of the said times.

Narayanan Gandhi, we await every bit of your recounting of the narrative from the memoirs of A.M. Nair. Do expedite the process of narration in your blog and here as well. Thanks for the effort.

Absolutely valid point, Chandra Kumar Bose. Narayanan Gandhi has descended into the field of argumentation before even having made a detailed study of Netaji's life and works which makes his case rather arbitrary and assumptive.

Bravo, Chandra Kumar Bose! What a starter! Narayanan Gandhi now has work at hand and what a task it will be if he is true to it! It will be an enlightenment for him of a political sort, and why? it may lead to spiritual enlightenment as well, for knowledge begets knowledge and vision ever stands at the end of it all.

Chandra Kumar Bose, brilliant! Never knew you wrote with such aplomb and dexterity and why not, when the case is as pernicious as the maligning of our greatest leader in the name of a quoted authority who hardly stands to any measure of relative greatness for his unitary account to be of such significance as Narayanan Gandhi seems to be making of it.

The problem with a debate that has no moderator ever is, dear Narayanan Gandhi, that it meanders along meaningless tracks and, hence, intransigence on the part of the opposed parties to rationally debate points leads to a dead end where each sticks to his prior position and neither has moved ahead to a resolution of the motion in contention. This we may avoid by being sincere in our effort to know more as Chandra Kumar Bose has rightly observed and I seriously feel you may give it a thought as well to bolster your own knowledge on these epic personalities of the freedom struggle instead of arbitrarily, on the basis of one book alone, passing pronouncement on the preeminent patriot of our times and, perhaps, as some emphatically say, of all time.

Or perhaps, Chandra Kumar Bose, Netaji did not misjudge Gandhiji at all. In his 'Indian Struggle' his analysis of the Mahatma's personality, achievements and failures, and even his prospective career, considering the viable alternatives that could chance given the historical conditions, clearly reveal that Netaji had read him adequately accurately, perhaps, better than the Mahatma did himself. However, to give solidarity to the freedom movement and to prevent a schism in its ranks, Subhas Chandra Bose had ever given the Mahatma his due, and even more, to defeat the wily British from exploiting open differences in the ranks of Congress when he was at home till January 1941 and, thereafter, beyond the bounds of the Congress but within the ambit of the freedom movement when he was abroad, post his great escape from British Indian territory.

Who does so, Narayanan Gandhi? I am making the effort to popularise your translation of snippets of the said memoirs of A.M. Nair and hence the debate has ensued already. What if the people of India take exception to your assertions about Netaji on the basis of your reading and understanding of A.M. Nair's memoirs which they, on the basis of their knowledge on the same subject from diverse other authentic sources, hold it to be a diatribe against the premier patriot of our country? You should not get discouraged by that but should rather, I say, feel happy to be illumined by such inputs of theirs as they ought to be by yours, provided, of course, you do not run an agenda for attempting to run down our greatest hero since the days of Shivaj in an irrational assumptive way.

Expectant. Can hardly wait, for the English translation done by you, Narayanan Gandhi, is eminently good and the contents intriguing and withal a fresh perspective on the history of the times in that part of the world from an eye witness which makes the narrative of particular historical interest whether one likes it or not. History is the impersonal account of events intensely personal and, hence, the raging controversy when accepted versions are challenged.

DEWDROPS ... 1

Man is divine. This is the sum and substance of the Vedanta.

God is both personal and impersonal and must be realised in all His aspects and phases for true universality to dawn on man.

This universe is a dream concocted by a product of the dream itself. The mind is the primal element of the dream and its derivatives in a descending series of degree compose the world. Smash the mind and with it dissolves the world.

The ego has a strange hold on humanity and conjures this phenomenal universe of name and form. Austerity essentially consists in dissolving the ego by refusing it sense attachments for survival. Desires banished, aspirations transmuted, the ego drops off as so much unnecessary appendage.

Surface aberrations notwithstanding, all of humanity stands secure in the divinity within, in the essential spirituality at the core of consciousness.

The relative values of life are assigned as per the standard of that which is absolute and, hence, the realisations of sages and saints hold premium even in a world vitiated by material cravings.

Violence is an integral element in phenomenal life in light of the fact that death is the violence Nature inflicts inevitably and in finality on all within its domain. Non-violence is an ideal that is reached only by transcendence of the phenomenal and by secure establishment in the Absolute. Till then the non-violence referred to in common parlance consists of the attempt to pacify the turbulent senses from inflicting physical damage to any. Psychological harm is violence as well but often eludes that epithet under the cover of high-sounding verbal delusions constructed to cause a configured escape route for the offender.

You may fool the whole world but cannot fool yourself who are the eternal witness of all your doings. Know It to be that God who you, in your extroverted understanding, know as your self, reflected manifold at a distance from its essence, yet, ever abiding in its majesty deep within where the eye peers not nor the mind gets access. It is the soul supreme, the Self which is truly the only reality in a world magically bound in space-time-causality.

The man of character is the man of the Spirit. He alone may be called spiritual who manifests a character untainted by the desire for gold and gain, for flesh and form, for fame and family.

Duty is far removed from love. Love is the spontaneous expression of the soul seeking its own domain in a world fractured by material cross-currents. The vision opens up as love, seated on the wings of poesy, flies to ethereal heights where aught of earth touches not the soul caught in the sublimity of the Self. There where duty is not, love is, and there is freedom from the eternal rigmarole of mundane material living.

    

WHITHER NETAJI? ... 1

My father used to emphatically say, "Such a dynamic personality as Subhas Bose was, he would never remain in hiding as a monk while the country suffered from so many of its ills. Therefore, in all probability, he must have perished in the air-crash. Had he been alive, would he have chosen to live incognito? Certainly not. He was too valorous a person to resort to such a cowardly act. Moreover, he had such an effulgence about him that nowhere in the world would he have been able to hide his identity, assuming that he wished to, for people would have recognised him."

But my father today is no more. He has passed away in 1996 with that idea of Netaji's supposed death. And since then so much new information has surfaced with the publication of the Mukherjee Commission Report to widely re-initiate the debate about the Netaji Disappearance Case.

But what is the truth after all? Let serious and unbiased research be on without the taint of politics undermining such involvement. I exhort the youth to have a re-look into the history of this phase of the freedom struggle, 'Bose post August 18, 1945', and discover the truth that there be and the truth thereof.

IN RESPONSE TO A FACILE ACCUSATION AGAINST A PREMIER MEDIA HOUSE

Reprehensible ignorance of yours, madam. Do take care enough to read the post before you give your comment by way of facile judgement. This was a live video show beamed from inside and outside of Jamia Millia Islamia and is no dubious doctored entertainment as your facile imagination construes it to be. The pernicious problem of social media is that people resort to flinging thoughtless, casual and highly damaging comments which have neither substance in fact nor elementary civility of articulation, instead of taking the pains to find out the truth for themselves about the contentious issues before getting into such serious stated positions, and it is into this pitfall that, madam, you have deliberately or inadvertently fallen either by way of the inertia of past prejudice or by way of present gullibility. In either case it will in future be worthwhile to make caustic comments after having done your basic homework on the subject that you intend to speak derisively of.

THE TASK AHEAD ... 1

There is so much suffering in India and so much to do to mitigate it. Let us all feel for our brethren and serve each other with all our might. Today, this seems to be the path ahead of us as we struggle to build our nation. Free we are politically today but bound in hundred chains socially and economically with a bankruptcy of moral character that is debilitating the nation by the day. There is no point merely singing the glories of the past and wallowing idle in a memory which we care not to live out in our daily lives, although, awareness of such is of supreme moment, for out of the past are built pathways for the future running through the present. But the ideals must be made practical and realised in real life, and the thoughts given shape in deeds.

This is the need of the hour as the poor suffer from want and the rich suffer from surfeit and the middle class squeezed in between suffers from the pangs of smashed ideals, crumbling philosophy and crashing character. Morality murdered, life has become for most an exercise in cynicism with corruption corroding every aspect of national aspiration. Must we sit and weep then? No, we must not. We must manfully reorient our lives towards future fulfilment of our national aspirations and with it the attainment of true freedom for our billion-strong brethren who will then have the basic requirements of decent living for the furtherance of their evolution on earth. And to bring about this transformation, let us follow the golden words of Sri Ramakrishna : 'Serve jeeva (the sentient being) as Shiva (the Divine Being)'.

Vande Mataram! Hari Om Tat Sat!

RASH BEHARI BOSE RECOUNTED BY SUBROTO MITRA --- A THRILLING, GRIPPING TALE, A MUST-READ FOR ALL

What a marvellous write-up Subroto Mitro! Thrilling account, gripping tale recounted in your own inimitable style. The narrative moves so fast that it veritably brings to attention the vitality of the revolutionary movements with which Rash Behari Bose was associated. The short pithy sentences used makes the reading rapid and the directness of approach to the events without undue meandering or emotionalising lends vigour to the story-telling. The heavy package of facts without infiltration of the self of the writer keeps the historical element unalloyed and pure and with the powder necessary to ignite the mind of the reader to an adequate comprehension of the subject of the essay, the revolutionary Rash Behari. The account is so heavily laden with information that its narration involves a feverish pace which sets afire the imagination and one's understanding is set aglow with it. One almost hastens to hazard one's opinion that indeed it was these stalwarts who bore the brunt of the sacrificial part of the mission of freedom and not the docile detractors of their daring deeds, the dull disciples of the demagogue of non-violence. Subroto Mitro, how can I thank you enough for this superlative effort at encapsulation of such a protracted struggle for independence that had formed the burden of Rash Behari Bose's brain for so long? Blessed indeed, blessed brother, blessed you are by the spirit of the masters who plotted the downfall of the pernicious British Empire which in toxicity has almost no parallel in human history. A fantastic tale. Finished reading it just now and am transformed by the sheer power of the revolutionary happenings. A lion of a man, indefatigable, indomitable, undeterred by repeated reverses, he lived on to push the plunderers out of India and then retired to rest for ever after. My salutations to the stellar being, prostrations to this high-priest of revolution and my camaraderie to this ripping writer of a reflection resplendent but drifting in the current of conspiracy. You have won me over friend Subroto Mitro, you have endeared me for good.

WHEN MODERATOR TURNS MEDDLER

Moderator obstructing the flow of argument of invitee at every point --- this is the everyday scene in an important television news channel where chaos and cacophony replaces reason and order as panellists attempt to deliberate issues. Whether the panellist speaks sense or not is beside the point here. The moderator's job is to help engage speakers in a civilised debate.

In the case under consideration Justice Katju in his rather vicious offensive against Netaji ought to have been countered point-wise in a rationally tenable way instead of being heckled at every turn, and I am no admirer of someone who disparagingly speaks of Netaji, calling him a lackey of the Japanese. Yet, civility must prevail on all sides during a debate or a discussion. This is my firm opinion.

Television journalism that transgresses basic norms of civility is reprehensible when to drive up the television rating points is the sole objective of the moderator for it benefits his channel thus and benefits him as well, for sure, financially. Discussing Netaji in this, so to say, commercially viable way is distasteful. It is such a shame that so much of television time is lost in chasing wild geese when it may well be utilised in the presentation and examination of facts related to the case in point.

Let rationality prevail in Indian television deliberations and those that do deliberately derail rational deliberations, let them be boycotted by a sane audience for the upholding of proper standards of public discourse. We have a lot to learn from the television medium and it is incumbent upon television anchors to remained anchored to basic rational and human principles as they beam their programmes across the air to shape the opinion of millions. Only then may this, so to say, the fourth pillar of democracy be counted on as being conducive to the welfare of the people at large.

A RESPONSE, HOPE NOT, ILL-ADVISED, FOR NETAJI BECKONS ME ON

Perhaps, Madhuri Bose is here alluding to Aurobindo Ghosh's escape to Pondicherry to pursue sannyas manifestly but really to avoid arrest by the British police as many of his detractors are inclined to believing. Therefore, the renunciation reference initially as the first stated point of the ethical code is not, it seems, directed at Gumnami Baba, may I interject, dear Azad Hind. Later during the interview, however, she has been explicit in her stand that the Bose family exhorts the protagonists of the Bhagawanji narrative to come forth with adequate rationally acceptable evidence to support their rather facile claim, a narrative which she finds otherwise unacceptable in the light of the type of personality that Netaji possessed, dauntless in life, petrified of nothing. She finds the mendicant monk in hiding story rather incongruous in so far as it related to Netaji by dubious assertion and she will be satisfied not by theoretical plausibility of the narrative being true but by incontrovertible evidence as to its veracity. I am no spokesperson for Madhuri Bose and perhaps am transgressing into forbidden terrain but as an avid witness to the unfolding drama surrounding Gumnami Baba and as a student of the life and works of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, I could not but air my thoughts in response to your comment in the hope that I may thereby clarify the content of the two points of the early ethical code of Netaji which I took the liberty to print from the talk of Madhuri Bose. May the authoress of the talk herself give her clarification to you, Azad Hind, if she so graces us, and that will clear confusion for sure, assuming of course that it in the first place is there. My sincerest thankfulness for your conscientious approach to the study and propagation of what you are more or less convinced of as being the true narrative of the Netaji disappearance mystery. In advance I offer my sincerest apologies to Madhuri Bose if in any way I have miscarried the intent of her words through the posting of this rather belaboured response of mine.

IN RESPONSE TO A MISCARRIAGE OF INTENT AS PERCEIVED BY AN EARNEST READER

Well, that is your own inference, dear friend, but it is not corroborated by my essay. I have not mentioned or implied that Gandhiji and Netaji moved millions from the same platform. Rather, it is common knowledge and, hence, needed no specification, therefore, that they moved along parallel pathways to move the said millions, unless, of course, if by your assertion you imply that Gandhiji moved the masses and Netaji, war-bound as he was then during the tumultuous days of the great cataclysm that was tearing humanity apart in the first half of the 1940s, did not. But even then it must be admitted that Netaji did move three million expatriate Indians in East Asia and countless more within India who he inspired to rise up in rebellion against the British at a time when the Quit India Movement had been crushed, the leaders of Congress incarcerated and a hapless population left leaderless and without political direction. Throughout the 1940s, post his great escape, Subhas Chandra Bose exerted tremendous influence on the masses in India and virtually became the most dominant voice for freedom in active political life till 18 August, 1945 and thereafter post his disappearance till India achieved freedom on 15 August, 1947. His shadow loomed over the ramparts of the Red Fort during the INA Trials and, like the ghost of Caesar, scurried home the enemies to the future republic. Netaji in absentia was present everywhere as the soul of a suppressed people seeking liberation after two centuries of darkness and induced destitution.

Thus, in all fairness it may be said that the Mahatma and Netaji worked along parallel planes towards the same objective, that of national freedom and that both drew adherents by the millions to support their cause. The relative success or failure of their respective political endeavours is not for me to pass judgement on for I am not sufficiently well-endowed with intelligence and understanding to comprehend the complexities of the historical flow with its inevitable prejudice towards the victor in war. Therefore, I bring my humility as offering at the feet of all the hallowed heroes of the freedom struggle and in this I find my mark and with it my peace. I have not done anything close to the seminal achievements of the heroes of the independence movement and I wish to emulate them ever so feebly in laying my soulful service at the altar of freedom of the motherland which is an ever-evolving process and never quite a settled case once and for all. Vande Mataram! Jai Hind!

WHEN A NATION STOOD UP IN ARMS AGAINST THE RAJ

You are absolutely right, @Tamojit Ghosh. The INA offensive on Indian soil, albeit eventually in defeat, and the subsequent INA Trials at the Red Fort in 1946 led to nationwide protests against the British Raj culminating in the Royal Indian Navy Mutiny at Bombay, the Army Mutiny at Jubbulpore and the Air Force Mutiny, all three occurring in close succession in the same tumultuous year of 1946, which put paid to all further British aspiration towards imperial dominance in India. Thus was freedom achieved for which the INA assault in the final phase of the freedom movement was of momentous significance. It catalysed the whole nation into rebellion and brought about the quick exit of the British from their treasured colony.

The British were a clear-headed people and understood that in the developing doubtful scenario of the Indian armed forces serving them loyally any further, the backbone of the Raj was broken and that it was best to pack bag and baggage and set sail for home lest another Revolt of 1857 forced the issue in a bloodier way. The compliant Congress that had played no mean role in the eventual outcome of independence, then could not stand firm to aver what ought to have been the inviolable principle of the maintenance of the territorial integrity of the motherland, and in submission to Jinnah's perfidious demand for a partitioned India, settled for the dismemberment of the motherland to the eternal horror of those who had laid down their everything for the sake of a unified freedom.

It was not merely the Congress' effort or the INA assault or the international situation consequent on the Second World War that liberated India but it was the cumulative resolution of historical forces that did it. India became free on 15 August, 1947, a dominion of the British Empire from which she steered partially clear on assumption of Republic status on 26 January, 1950 when the Indian Constitution formally came into effect.
Our prostrations to the martyrs who had laid down their lives for the achievement of freedom and our salutations to the countless millions led by Mahatma Gandhi, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, Lokmanya Tilak and other seminal leaders who had sunk in their ploughshare to achieve this freedom. May the God of India's destiny (Bharatbhagyavidhata) preserve our freedom and may we, imbued with a sense of pride in our heritage and gratitude towards the freedom fighters, work diligently ever to recover our lost glory as a nation! Bande Mataram! Jai Hind!

WHEN IN BUD THEY DIE, THE HOPE OF HUMANITY, THE HEART OF A HEARTLESS WORLD

Oh, what a pain, what a loss! Divinity writ large on her face, pure and innocent a visage as can be. How in the bud everything is lost, great God!

You point at our supposed unconcern at this tragic loss, madam, and, yet, may I pose a counter-question to you : ''Are you concerned as well by such terrible happenings and may you then set about doing something about it by way of redress, if you can, that is? It is young people like you who can bring about significant changes eventually in society through the implementation of your well-thought-out programmes, your well-charted policies. And this indeed is self-governance."

The girl was a rare element of the student community and, yet, what a calamity befell her, heaven knows how! We have to raise other bright children in her memory and I will spare no means to awaken mass consciousness in memory of Rafseena. Perhaps, negative peer pressure and the concomitant shame of exposure of a well-guarded fact, poverty, intensely personal, took its toll on a hyper-sensitive soul and doused the flame of life even in bud.

Our tears will be well shed but will not suffice to end these incidents born out of terrible inequities that plague our society. Our children must be protected and may the resplendent Rafseena in life and in death serve to be the beacon for a society deeply divided and struggling to get past these perfidies of poverty, these calamitous consequences of corrosive capitalism that ensures the perpetuation of economic slavery of the masses to a handful of mercenaries masquerading as men!

NETAJI, BLINDLY ADULATED OR READ, RESEARCHED, RELOCATED?

Let the photograph, impressive as it is and expressive of the lustre of the soul of its subject, not detract viewers from the reading of the text of the essay and the offering of the desired defence to Narayanan Gandhi's arguments against the achievements of Netaji in the climactic phase of his career. The mere giving of a 'like' and a post-unconnected comment shows the audience in a poor light which is certainly not desirable, especially, when Netaji, the supposed soul of the nation, is under attack. A vociferous thrust from Shri Gandhi demands an equal response in reasoned argumentation and not senseless jibes aimed at the offender.

It is time to take up serious study of Netaji and not indulge in mere picking up stray bits of data hither and thither and, mixing the same with adequate emotion, to hold them out as offering for the deity divine. A serious disservice is being done to India's premier patriot by refusing to delve deep into his life and times, his career and contributions to the world at large, and his thought and message for humanity struggling to cope with the odds of life and the tyranny of the times. Netaji must be studied and not merely read, read and not merely admired at a distance, adulated but brought to bearing as well in real life through service and sacrifice for the motherland. Else, such hero-worship devoid of substance is tantamount to a mere mass of nothingness which the hero, surely for all his epic attainments in life, does not deserve at the hands of his professed followers.

It must be borne in mind that the life and achievements of Netaji are as important and worthy of attention as the mystery surrounding his disappearance and death. Those that consider themselves dedicated to the cause of resurrection of the liberator of India from historical obscurity, consequent on a persistent perfidious policy of the powers that be, would do well to take up the task of rewriting the narrative of the INA and its hero themselves by doing significant research on the subject and not wastefully indulging themselves in the condemnable act of the giving of a superficial 'like' or dotting down a comment quite unconnected to the post and reflective of a poor association with the iconic personality that Netaji remains. Here rests my case and await I the reasoned responses of the readers and the follow-up programmes of the 'faithful'.

NETAJI VILIFIED, NETAJI UNDEFENDED, AND YET THEY CLAIM TO BE HIS FOLLOWERS

These are preposterous assertions that need factual validation for a proper debate to ensue. Till then, however, this needs a countering in terms of reasonable deliberation and defence as it seems to be a wild swipe at our foremost leader, deliberate and dastardly, seemingly aimed at working up a controversy to seek public attention at the expense of a great hero which is so ironic, and it reeks of a perfidy that is symptomatic of a decadence that afflicts this pernicious personality who enjoys dishing out distorted imagination as veritable truth. I seriously request all members who are students of Netaji to put up a vigorous defence against this malicious campaigning to set the record straight and also not to exhibit weakness of armoury by indulging in ineffectual invective against Narayanan Gandhi, although, I am sure by now, he will have held me culpable to the same offence. I await your response, for this sort of continuous vilification of Netaji may not be allowed to go unchallenged, especially in light of the fact that Narayanan Gandhi has thrown the challenge already into our court and must be biding time to see how we, ardent followers of Netaji, react to his forays. Despite my strong disagreements with this misinformed gentleman's facile claims from an out-of-print book by A.M.Nair whose Tamil version he purportedly claims to be in possession of and from where he supposedly is gleaning information to level charges against Netaji even to the point of a total restatement of the narrative of the INA and its epic leader, I must say that he in one way is challenging us to make a more serious study of Netaji and not merely rest content, as the majority of us are prone to, with a lazy adulation of this seminal personality of world history and so thinking that we have done our best to honour his memory and message. Narayanan Gandhi seems to relish taking us on in this battle of words and let us not fail him in the fulfilment of this toxic tirade he has initiated by giving him the resounding verbal rebuttals he relishes best and which, if he is receptive to reason and is endowed with sufficient sanity, will set him in good appreciation of the epic life and attainments of the subject of our discussion, our well-beloved Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose.