EVIL, THOU GOOD REVERSED!

Birth of evil is potential. Birth of good is potential too. Both require circumstances propitious for manifestation. And oft the twain manifest in unison to resolve out a new order through mutual conflict. The balance of the life-forces is dynamic and ever-shifting. Karmic imbalances, thus, set in and when the scales are overly tilted to one side or the other, the restoring couple sets in to reaffirm equilibrium of sorts for life to effectively subsist. But the past momentum must be countered and inertia overcome as well before the intended good may result. A bloody conflict ensues as the demonic forces unleash their might against the divine forces and a titanic struggle results that deluges the world in an ocean of blood as evil battles every inch of the way even as it recedes into the potential fold whence it had emerged. The forces of good win the day but after a cataclysm has been seen through in which millions have been martyred and human civilisation ground to the dust for a fresh rebuilding. Though the forces of evil have been forced back, the agents of evil eliminated, evil itself has merely taken a backseat for the while in its subtler psychological realms where it plots its return to establish its future kingdom on earth. Good reigns also for the while but time takes its toll and it decays gradually and later with accelerated motion for evil to once more displace it. The roles are, thus, reversed and the process repeats in an unending alternating wave train of progressive relative distinctions to constitute life on earth. And through this ceaseless ferment life evolves unto its divine end. Magical! Mysterious! Mythical!

TWO DELIGHTFUL CONVERSATIONS ON THE VEDANTA : 1. WITH SUBHAS KUMAR SINHA 2. WITH DEBAPRASAD BHATTACHARYA

Subhas Kumar Sinha : Reality underneath the virtuals ?

Sugata Bose : The virtual is in essence the Real. The Real appears to be the virtual quite mysteriously, the process classically called Maya, but essentially the appearance being an appearance is by definition and in actuality a myth. There is but One and it appears as manifold reality or, should we put it this way, manifold relativistic phenomena. This universe in reality and in essence is verily Brahman. @Subhas Kumar Sinha

Subhas Kumar Sinha : There may be very many relative feelings /appearances but there should be one absolute truth.

Sugata Bose : You are right, Subhas Babu, but when I say relativity, I mean the summation of all that is there to phenomena whose ultimate and substantial essence is Brahman, the one absolute Truth in which there is neither limitation nor attribute, neither condition nor binding, the One which transcends the trinity of space, time and causality and abides ever-free, the Vast Void which is the resolution of multiplicity, the Infinity which is the Zero.

Subhas Kumar Sinha : What I feel that absolute is which we can not feel/experience but when manifested in Maya(like energy transformed in to various activities ie light,sound,velocity etc) we feel it we live with it. I am just sharing my feelings.

Sugata Bose : Here you are falling into the Vedantic pitfall of attributing reality to your phenomenal self which the Vedanta totally denies, holding it as an ever-shifting simmering appearance with nothing substantial to it except the Absolute Brahman which is the Witness to all of phenomena and partakes not in it. This shadowy world of feelings, perceptions and sensations the Vedanta categorically denies as being but an appearance with no subjectivity to it in so far as such perceptions are concerned and merely having baseless shifting objectivity to it in the world of multiplicity. Hence, the perceiver being not admitted as being existentially real, such relative perceptions by it are not given any credence to in Advaita Vedanta. Its verdict on the whole affair is but this : When one realises Brahman, phenomena disappear for good and all that remains is the existential residuum that is 'Tat' (That) or Brahman, to attribute the nameless one with a name for linguistic convenience. All doubts are dispelled in realisation and all knots of the heart, so to say, as the Bhagavad Geeta puts it, are cut asunder, and the Self (Atman) shines in uninhibited splendour. न तत्र सूर्यो भाति न चन्द्रतारकं
नेमा विद्युतो भान्ति कुतोऽयमग्निः।
तमेव भान्तमनुभाति सर्वं
तस्य भासा सर्वमिदं विभाति॥१५॥ @Subhas Kumar Sinha

****

Debaprasad Bhattacharya : Isn't the situation prevailing His Will? How much freedom does one have to turn one's mind to Him?

Sugata Bose : Well, that is the standpoint of dualism, Debaprasad Babu. There the Omnipotence governs human destiny and charts out each action. But from the standpoint of non-dualism such assumptions are entirely irrelevant for it categorically denies the existence of phenomena and all that it entails as so much myth or a mysterious dream of ignorance, inexplicable on account of it being insubstantial. In the absence of an absolute reference frame within the realm of relativity, there is no valid explanation as to anything in phenomena and all attempted explanations are assumptions for human convenience that lack credible rational basis in the ultimate sense of the term. Thus, renunciation of relativity is the only way out in one's attempt to transcend, if at all possible, the dual frame and arrive at an understanding of life and reality from beyond the featured plane. But the problem cannot thus be solved as well for, the moment space-time-causality disappear in the Absolute which is the Vast Void in relative terms or the fullness of the Whole, to put it the other way round, the Will disappears too and so does divine dispensation. Hence, the dynamics of Maya lose meaning entirely and there is no more any need to establish or substantiate that which is essentially hollow. The Vedantist, thus, is appreciative of the dualist's belaboured attempts to establish over phenomena the suzerainty of his Personal God which he sees as a handy tool to deal with everyday reality but cannot quite subscribe to it from his comprehension of core consciousness as being transcendent and non-participant in this mythical phenomena. Advaita Vedanta is, thus, indulgent towards all forms of dualism and qualified non-dualism which still remains dualism of sorts, without compromising on its essential stand that all these systems are fundamentally flawed in their assumptions, hypotheses and rationalisation thereof. The Advaitist maintains that there is no way by which phenomena may be explained and its causal relations established in law as governed by a Cosmic Deity and he quits the discussion calling Maya 'anirvachaniya' (indefinable). To him the universe and its divine dispenser are non-real and, therefore, he does not feel the compulsion to explain phenomena the dualist's way. @Debaprasad Bhattacharya

Debaprasad Bhattacharya : While I fully accept your beautiful explanation, I also recall Thakur's words like 'even a leaf doesn't move without His Will', 'practice of Jnana Yoga is difficult', 'on the one hand you say So'ham and on the other, you scream when a thorn pricks' and so on. These words seem to be very practical in our day to day life, in the relative universe, one may say. Isn't it extremely difficult to transcend this relativity? But you are right, one must endeavour, otherwise one remains where he/she is. Thanks a lot. Best wishes.

Sugata Bose : Yes, so it is that the great Master who we behold as the Lord and final arbiter of our terrestrial destiny decrees and we may humbly bow down to His Will, as you initially put it. There is a great joy in such submission, too, for, the dual trappings notwithstanding, the Lord's infinite compassion and, in the final analysis, boundless love make even great sages forgo dissolution into Brahman and retain ever-so-slight a distinction with the Supreme Soul to savour the divine ambrosia, yet, holding onto Self-awareness, nonetheless. For love of God at the highest level, sages say, is consonant with Self-realisation and ever so sweetening an experience for the soul that its sheer bliss the devotee cannot forsake even unto repose in the Absolute Self. The relative reality of such bliss-savouring notwithstanding, the Real remains, nonetheless, transcendent and is unaffected by all such interplay of the forces of the Divine within the realm of relativity. Interestingly, though, M had questioned the Master once as to the possibility of absolute uninterrupted blissfulness within Maya and the Master had negated such possibility, for within Maya everything is eventually fractured by the trinity of space-time-causality and is, therefore, not eternal or uninterrupted at that. The Vaishnav schools of dualism hold the eternal Krishna and His eternal devotee sporting in Golak Vrindavan eternally and, although, it is a very intoxicating and even temporarily uplifting idea for the aspirant, it, however, is fundamentally flawed in its assumptions of an arbitrary Personal God and his eternal personal associates sporting in an eternal transcendental realm. So far as the Divine Will is concerned, it cannot be expressed except through the realm of the senses which is fraught with primal error of dual perception with no base to stand on. Hence, even this Divine Will cannot be accepted as the ultimate nor can the Personal God, despite our conditioned preference for it, be deemed the supreme. Words confound but deep thought tending to realisation gets an inkling of the Real which is ultimately comprehended in what is termed 'Aparokshaanubhuti' or the immediate realisation, that is, unconditioned comprehension devoid of relative reference frame. For practical purposes, though, it is fruitful for the while to ascend the ladder of relativity through the use of dualistic props and supports but then such a process will be long and winding and with no certitude of eventual resolution unto the Absolute. However, we are commoners by hypnotic constant assertion and, so, choose to repose faith in a make-believe-theology with no rational basis or philosophical basis at that. Our humdrum terrestrial existence requires the fulfilment of a plethora of desires whose fulfilment if truly attempted would lead to social chaos which would be the very antithesis of what society is structured for, order and collective well-being. Hence, out of this social necessity, human ingenuity has manufactured religion, rituals, laws, modes, mores and manners and even what one may term 'social religion' with its ethics and morality and justice and righteousness. Sharp divisions have arisen between good and evil, right and wrong, fairness and foulness, with divisions sharpening and blurring in alternate bands in the spectrum of time and terrestrial evolution. These have been attributed to the Divine Will by sages and thinkers and debunked too by other scholars and savants who have reposed no faith in theological assumptions. The protagonists of duality have averred that the Personal God may be apprehended by the clarified vision bereft of all material contamination and have affirmed that their faith in their God is not an assumption but a verified and verifiable fact of spiritual experience. One such supernal soul was Ramakrishna Paramahamsa who soul the veritable laboratory for the testing of all the affirmations of all the religions of the world down the ages and whose realisations thereof we cannot disregard simply as so much gibberish fr his life testifies to a higher order of spiritual enlightenment where all the streams of spiritual thinking have met and coalesced into a vast confluence of the soul. Still, we must be rationally sound and cannot throw caution to the winds in our reasonableness when comprehending that which is supposedly the essence of all, the Absolute, if at all there be such an ultimate reality, the sceptic would quip in. Realisation then, Debaprasad Babu, is at the heart of the matter and the only resolver of such an enigma as the sensory universe is and we may choose to play schoolboy games at interpretation of phenomena without realising that this truth eludes language, formulation, reason and all the 'dual throng'. The Real laughs as Relativity plots its downfall and Relativity clings to the Real even though they are parallels that never meet, and such is Maya, Debaprasad Babu.

****
Written by Sugata Bose in response to the comments of Subhas Kumar Sinha and Debaprasad Bhattacharya

PAUSE AND REFLECT

1. Do not be deluded by leaders or surrender freedom unto them. Learn to critically think. Your safety is in your own hands.

2. The masses are kept ignorant by leaders to suit their own ends of this neo-imperialism that camouflages as democracy.

3. Be not seduced by the spoken word for the intent behind you cannot see. Awaken consciousness to combat evil and let not freedom go.

4. The worst danger that lies in the hero-worship of leaders is that it often paves the way to dictatorship and its concomitant evils.

5. Such are the situational pressures, such the exigencies of the times that intelligent people surrender their rights to tyrants.

6. Brainwashing, indoctrination, creating the myth of personalty, that is all there is to the malefic leaders who delude the masses.

7. Concentration of power in the individual must be checked at every level for democracy to truly function. Stop blind adoration.

8. Infatuation for eminence does you no good. Emulation of their achievements is a worthier endeavour to engage in. Be free.

9. Like as the nucleus locks up energy
    While electrons whirl to react,
    Power is lodged in the Atman
    Whose work manifests as fact.

10. When all support seems to have gone and everyone has left, a final friend yet remains in the substratum of consciousness.

11. In the darkness of despair when all seems to have been lost, when life seems like slipping away, He arrives to lift us unto Him.

12. Will He fail us in our desperate dreams when the billows rage on to crush us and we cry to the heavens for deliverance? Will He?

13. They who have gone ahead, we mourn for them. They who now struggle for breath, may we not ventilate their lives a bit?

14. Capitalism strikes its roots into the bloodstream of the masses. The people bleed as class conflict surfaces.

15. What does the future hold? Self-destruction and end of civilisation? Or, will there be a resurgence of humanity? The choice is ours.

16. Spirituality must be the basis of life, else, civilisation will collapse. Greed for wealth and lust for power cannot sustain society.

17. The individual will has ruled the destiny of nations for far too long. The collective will must now take charge of human affairs.

18. Is God an autocrat, albeit, a benevolent one? Or, is He a tyrant mercilessly running His cruel fiat over us, pawns in His chess game?

19. God suffers the fate that God decrees on man. Man in his  vanity chooses to be the ultimate God while the Real God laughs.

20. A curious mixture of truth and untruth has conjured up this universe and all that it entails. Renunciation is the way out.

21. Subtle are the trappings of higher Maya, subtler still the intelligence that sees through it and escapes.

22. Our thoughts are all within a framework, structured by words and images, conditioned by earlier influences. The object is to transcend it.

23. Resolve thoughts, dissolve into consciousness.

24. Birth of evil is potential. Birth of good is potential too. Both require circumstances propitious for manifestation. And oft the twain manifest in unison to resolve out a new order through mutual conflict. The balance of the life-forces is dynamic and ever-shifting. Karmic imbalances, thus, set in and when the scales are overly tilted to one side or the other, the restoring couple sets in to reaffirm equilibrium of sorts for life to effectively subsist. But the past momentum must be countered and inertia overcome as well before the intended good may result. A bloody conflict ensues as the demonic forces unleash their might against the divine forces and a titanic struggle results that deluges the world in an ocean of blood as evil battles every inch of the way even as it recedes into the potential fold whence it had emerged. The forces of good win the day but after a cataclysm has been seen through in which millions have been martyred and human civilisation ground to the dust for a fresh rebuilding. Though the forces of evil have been forced back, the agents of evil eliminated, evil itself has merely taken a backseat for the while in its subtler psychological realms where it plots its return to establish its future kingdom on earth. Good reigns also for the while but time takes its toll and it decays gradually and later with accelerated motion for evil to once more displace it. The roles are, thus, reversed and the process repeats in an unending alternating wave train of progressive relative distinctions to constitute life on earth. And through this ceaseless ferment life evolves unto its divine end. Magical! Mysterious! Mythical!

25. Births and deaths are all hallucinations and so is life in the limited sense. It is infinitude all the way.

26. It is a continuous life like the flow of time and the alternate bands of birth and death, night and day are but so much seeming division.

27. Pure consciousness is God but man vanishes there and where man attains fullness in Man, there God vanishes.

28. This duality of God and man has far too long suppressed the evolution of man. Let the formulation be complete in MAN = GOD.

29. It does not bespeak of strength to surrender one's fate to an arbitrary being called God. Man, make thy own fate and fashion thy God.

30. The dual dream reaches its climax in the revelation of the Personal God. Slash through this final myth and 'see' the Self.

31. The world must be deluged in spiritual vibration to raise its interactions beyond the violent mode. Else, annihilation awaits all.

32. 

HELL ON EARTH

1. One had to be a Jew in the Holocaust to know what it was to be in Hell.

2. Human life counted so little during the Second World War. It was just so much waste that had to be disposed.

3. Hitler was an evil man, the mass hangman of History.

4. What was brutality in Germany then that so many sank to such savagery? The Beast had been let loose to resolve ancient issues.

5. The Nazis attempted the elimination of the most brilliant race on earth, proof enough of the diabolic force powering them.

6. When the dark descended on the Jews, it was but the culmination of ages of persecution which now reached its nadir.

7. Such brutality, such brutality, such Nazi arrogance! Treating Jews worse than animals, calling them swine! O Lord, where wert Thou!

8. On what vitality did the Jews survive the Holocaust? Oh, their Lord failed them in their hour of trial, they did not fail themselves!

9. Hitler had a dense dark about him and he plunged the world in darkness. But this was what Europeans and Arabs had done for long.

10. Infants died, oh God, where were you, where?

NIVEDITA 150

1. As we step into the 150th year of Sister Nivedita's advent on earth, let us read and reflect on this glorious chapter of our nation's history.

2. Sister Nivedita dedicated herself to our motherland in a way so complete that she erased the very memory of her life before India.

3. Nivedita's devotion to her Guru translated into love for her preceptor's motherland. She became the 'Dedicated One' of India.

4. Versatility was her forte. Nivedita was one those rare renaissance personalities who graced us to expedite our evolution.

5. But for Nivedita there would have been no J.C.Bose as we know him. Sister played a seminal role in his eventual creative output.

6. Intrepid as she was, Nivedita inspired fearlessness in the revolutionaries as they surged ahead to overthrow the Raj.

7. The hallowed moment has arrived. Happy birthday, Sister! You are 150 today. b. 28 Oct., 1867, Dungannon, County Tyrone, Ireland.

8. On Nivedita's 150th birth anniversary let us come forward to help the Ramakrishna Sarada Mission expand the Nivedita School in Kolkata.

9. Nivedita's greatest contribution lay in interpreting Vivekananda to the world, his inner workings of mind, thought processes and ideas.

10. The youth must in all humility take up the study of Swamiji and Netaji to be able to grasp the identity and ethos of our motherland.

CHARACTER-FORMATION

1. Character-formation is the need of the hour. All western modes of shameless socialising must be eschewed.

2. This blatant display, this unabashed exhibition, this unrestrained exposure, all these are not in keeping with the Indian ethos.

3. What glory is in intoxication to the point of losing self-control? Why do so when there are meditative methods of exhilaration?

4. When self-oblivion strikes its death-blow, materialism is the result. But one must be wary of theistic materialism too.

5. We have to improve the level of our rational discourse and not degrade it by hijacking it through emotional effusions.

6. It will be heartening to see readers looking for the meaning I intend to convey through my posts and then commenting accordingly. Commenting without understanding the import of a write-up is tantamount to distracting all from the involved discourse. We have a fixed opinion which we tend to thrust on others. This is better avoided to allow fruitful intellectual deliberation. While commenting, the self must not be blazoned. The idea must reign supreme and not the ego. Intellectual discourse demands it. Each and every word carries meaning. Commenting without comprehending the import merely distracts deliberation, diverts discourse.

7. Ramakrishna Mission monks are the hope of humanity. Those that disparage them are doing disservice to the world. Being objectively critical of Ramakrishna Mission is one like Netaji at times was but being maliciously so is quite another. To have the audacity to speak disparagingly about R.K.Mission and without repentance at that is the height of youthful misadventure.

8. Men who have barely taken the first steps of vain learning dare condemn me as a fanatic! How fanatical is that?

9. As we step into the 150th year of Sister Nivedita's advent on earth, let us read and reflect on this glorious chapter of our nation's history.

10. I feel sad when young people, immature as they are, pretend to know more than they do, and from this arise all egotistical assertions. Humility takes to wings in the wake of deployment of the lower self as arsenal to combat goodness. The result is ruinous.

NIVEDITA UNFULFILLED

Jayanta, your devotion towards Sister Nivedita bespeaks of your nobility of soul which is being enhanced each passing day by your absorption of her vibrations through your contemplation of her. Blessed indeed you are for blessed is the one that remembers fondly this leonine soul who bled her way to death's door to resurrect India! She is evidently with you, inspiring you to do deeds that she has left behind for posterity to accomplish. Few, alas few, do anything substantial for her cause which is to galvanise the country into self-regeneration as her great Master, the Swami Vivekananda had impressed upon her. The task remains unfinished and unfulfilled as Sister passed away in her prime, wasting away her virile form through poverty, neglect and excessive labour as she strove to quicken the life of Indian womanhood through education and to awaken the masses into revolution against the imperialist British.

IN RESPONSE TO A FACEBOOK FRIEND WHO HAS CHARGED ME THUS : ''WHO ARE YOU TO DICTATE? WE ARE ACCUSTOMED TO HOTCHPOTCH LANGUAGE.''

Dear friend,

In response to your query I say this that I am myself, difficult to define who I am, for I am the subject-matter of the Upanishads. You understand what I mean, I hope. So far as the use of language is concerned, what bothers you more --- my post or your inability to adhere to your mother-tongue effectively, perhaps? Moreover, raising this pertinent point I am doing a great service to the motherland by exhorting her children to return to roots and I am very well within my rights to do so on my profile wall, I hope you get this too. So far as you are personally concerned, you are welcome to your hotchpotch language but there are saner souls who will take my counsel seriously and with wisdom to modify methods and bring sanctity to their linguistic expression out of dutifulness to and love for the motherland.

I wish you well.

Thanking you,
Yours sincerely,
Sugata Bose

ta

IN RESPONSE TO DR. JAYANATA CHOUDHURI'S DEMAND THAT THE INDIAN ARMY SHOULD BE RENAMED THE INDIAN NATIONAL ARMY (I.N.A.)

Alas! that will not come to pass. Before such a glorious change of name of the Indian Army to the Indian National Army (I.N.A.), this servile attitude of the nation must change and we must strike off our connections with the British Commonwealth of Nations. Then and then alone will the people turn around and historians, not heretical mercenaries traitors to the nation, but patriotic sons and daughters of the soil with the spirit of the land luminous in their hearts will set about rewriting the history of this benighted nation and the saga of the redoubtable revolutionaries who bled their way to the nation's freedom. Then some future leader with spirit forged in the fire of true nationalism will blazon across the world the glory that is India and rename its defender, the Indian National Army (I.N.A.).

SWADESH PREM

1. Banglabhashay katha bolte lajja paben na. Engreji bhasha matribhashar sathey mishiye bolay kono majrjada nei.

2. Matribhashar punarutthaaner majhei shikshar prakrita prakash.

3. Bangladesh rakta diye bhashake roksha korechhe. Amra epar-Banglay ki pratiniyata shei bhashar dushanrup-apoman korchhi na?

4. Kon desh eto hatobhagya je tar shikshitajon nijo bhashay katha bolte hoy apaarok noy lajjita? Bhashar misraney kono gaurab nei.

5. Aaj hotey sacheshta hon jatey bisuddha matribhashay katha bolte paren. Ei durbalata thakakaleen nijeder aar deshapremi bolben na.

6. Jatir charitra shiksha, sanskriti o bhashake kendra korey gorey othhe. Je jati nijobhasha byaboharey asamartha, tar utthaan asambhab.

7. Amader nijeder phire pete hobe swaadeshikota bhashay, shikshay, sanskrititey, dharmey. Karmer pratiti kshetre hote hobe Bharatiya.

8. Engreji bhasha bisuddha bolun, Bangla meshaben na. Bangla bhasha bisuddha bolun, Engreji meshaben na. Sangmisran ubhaybhashar ghatak.

9. Bhayanak dengue rog ey akranta bahu manush aj mrityur sathey sangramey rato. Asun amra sakale eder jonyo jop-dhyan-prarthana kori.

THE DIVINE BELOVED

Krishna Neeti would be my choice, for I am a servant of Sri Krishna, the flautist perennial, whose meandering musical melodies keep up this universe in its variegated balance and whose final call, rhapsodic divine, beckons us home unto Him.

SHOULD I NOT SEEK THE REFUGE OF THE GURU?

Of course, you should. And you have, thus, preempted my future posts on the Guru. The Guru has been excluded from this, the enlistment of all who are co-pilgrims in this sojourn where the secrets are held in deepest chambers embedded right in the core of the spiritual heart. There the Guru dwells in conjunction with the Divine Beloved, the epitome of grace, the incarnation of mercy for the fallen one who knows not how to rise from this dark depression where duality spells its even charm and destroys all in the fullness of time. Yet, in fullness proper the Guru shows up at the gateway of life with his benign face ushering us on to a higher end where all is peace and all is bliss and all else dwell in heavenly swell. The Guru shows the Way, the disciple follows and unto him is opened up vistas never imagined, realms lying deep within his own self which career him on unto freedom.

Om! Shanti! Shanti! Shanti!

WORLD WAR II --- AN ANALYSIS

It was a vast collection of crooks that spelled the doom of mankind but it must be understood that historical conditions and rooted barbarism in masses of people distributed throughout the so-called first world that did the deal. Forget not British barbarism during the War and through the centuries preceding. So with the French, the Portuguese and the Dutch. Last of all and the most horrendous destruction of innocence was sanctioned by Truman and the Americans outdid Germany, Italy and Japan in winning the premier spot in the primitive act. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are conveniently sidelined to lay the entire blame of brutality perpetrated during the World War II on Hitler and his Nazis alone. Churchill decimated Bengal in a savage act of man-made famine that sent into oblivion over 4 million Bengalees. The horror tale may continue but suffice unto the hour will be to say that Hitler carried barbarism to its extreme ends when he launched his programme to eliminate an entire human community who he in his conceited ignorance dubbed sub-human. The Holocaust was the ultimate in satanic activity and the death-camps closest to the scriptural depiction of Hell. However, my contention still remains that events are charted out as resolutions of countless earlier episodes, present possibilities, situational exigencies and the will of the individual who symbolises for good or for evil the common will of millions who are gullible enough to believe in him. Thus, dictators arise and carry out their course of malefic action to the horror of the world and, yet, such is human folly that men make the same error again and again in reposing faith in such demoniacal beings.

All things said and done, we must draw lessons from history and there is no better way to do so than to keep our minds impartial in judging past events and even personalities and regimes that have done untold damage to evolution and human progress, whose very deeds have sent the world to despair. Still, we must maintain sanity and not be content in dealing with our historical past in emotional irrational terms with scant understanding of the deeper issues that had impelled the world on to such cataclysmic episodes as the two World Wars. We must also remember that the victor ever writes the history of the world and never does he reveal all of his own misdeeds. The blame is laid on the vanquished in war and centuries pass before a semblance of the truth surfaces before an enlightened and dispassionate future citizenry who rewrite history to amend its heresies.

THOUGHTS GALORE

1. How can we say that the Personal God is infinite? Seen through the senses and having attributes finite, He/She must be finite too.

2. The comprehension of Shankara's Advaita Vedanta requires subtle intelligence which is not what many possess. Hence, the disputes.

3. The Personal God is the primary prop to religious practice and its final superstition as well before knowledge dawns.

4. It is the Absolute that shines through the senses, so to say, to give this delusive phenomenal appearance to its infinite Self.

5. The Personal God is as much a myth as the myth of the universe. It, being the earliest projection of Brahman, is the primal myth.

6. Conservatism strikes at the root of progress. But evolution still demands the triumphant march of the chariot of Truth. Break free.

7. We are caught in the senses in a narrow thought spectrum beyond which lie on either side the subconscious and the superconscious.

8. God cannot be realised within phenomenal bounds for the Spirit ever eludes the reach of the senses.

9. God realises God as the universe drops off.

10. Prosperity pursues the cheerful face, the glum-faced one is condemned to poverty.

11. A secret purpose Thakur brought to accomplish which is unfolding by the day as his mission spreads its wings.

12. Much of external policy you may do, compromise heavily with life, but unless the policy within matures, respite there is none.

13. If you are spiritual, you will be cheerful. A smiling face, not a counterfeit one at that, is the sure sign of spirituality.

14. I exhort you all to save a bit to help build the Ashramas of the Ramakrishna Mission that are in acute shortage of funds.

15. Sharpness of mind is necessary for discrimination between the Real and the unreal. The purified intelligence is the instrument for it.

16. Being honest in monetary dealings also involves reduction of profit-margin that it does not drain  the masses of future security.

17. Create wealth on one side by creating poverty on the other. This is not the worship of Mother Laksmi. Reflect.

18. Earn your profit at the expense of your brother, then propitiate your divine Mother with offering. Ah, how religious you are!

19. Must you not help those that are in distress? Are they not your own ones, your very own Self in a myriad guises?

20. Religion is not just performance of rituals. It is serving, helping, supporting those that are in distress.

21. Easy to criticise politicians and shirk one's duty to the nation. Him I call a man who works to alleviate the misery of the masses.

22. The whole of the universe is in the womb of the Mother. Sense it, feel it, realise it, then transcend it.

23. A certain civility is expected of all not to overdo comments to highlight self. It may be done on one's profile instead.

24. When the call to depart comes, none but the yogi gets to know in advance, for only the latter is in union with the Divine.

25. Never refuse a genuine monk if he graces you with a request for help for his Ashrama. He is a representative of Ramakrishna.

26. Waste not what you have today that you may give it when the call comes to stand in support of the Mother's work the RKM does.

27. In the hour of grief, my friends, let us stand together. May Maya inharmonious move us to strength and never to cowardly retreat!

28. How long does this puny person last?
      So long as wealth and health do stay.
      The fell sweep of death takes all,
      Carries all away.

29. Every moment a baby is born,
      Every moment a death.
      Life but lasts in the interim hour,
      With its perilous quivering breath.

30. Words are tinged with fire. They carry their import, leave their imprint on receptive souls. The rest receive in the fullness of time.

31. Truth, hidden in files and shelves
      Reveals slow but sure, do know.
      Truth hidden in human hearts
      In fruition time will all let go.

32. Vigorous work is the need of the hour to lift the nation out of poverty. We must give shape to the 'Welfare Dream' of the founders.

33. So much blood was spilled for the revolution to free our motherland. Was it just to fill the coffers of a few?

34. Love for Netaji precludes love for the motherland and love for our poor and suffering masses. Can we not do something for them?

35. The middle classes are being crushed under the weight of slow-encroaching poverty and slowly sinking to be bodily one with the poor.

36. The Europeans dominated the rest of the world because of superior technology, organisation and quite a barbarous attitude.

37. Nazi Germany is blamed for World War II but it was the legacy of the earlier Great War and its horrendous Treaty of Versailles.

38. World War II was a massive resolution of global forces let loose in a frenzied moment of historical culmination.

39. An individual may be singled out to bear the responsibility of a cataclysmic episode but it is historically untenable as such.

40. I am in no way defending Nazism but am only trying to highlight the relative barbarism of the British for centuries globally.

41. We have to be impartial while judging historical episodes. Mere denunciation of a regime will not let us objectively view facts.

42. The Treaty of Versailles was so damaging to Germany's interests that it provided the springboard for the Nazis to seize power.

43. The Nazis would not but could have avoided WW II if they had wished and been wiser. The Treaty of Versailles played into their hands.

44. Greater peace on earth may be ensured by increasing sattva in men which is why Swamiji had said, "Man-making is my mission."

45. The individual freed from primeval ignorance, civilisation may be saved. The collective good of all lies in individual freedom.

46. Hiroshima burnt and Nagasaki. What was the purpose? Testing the Devil's device? Why? Just to end the war or else?

47. How can we ever forget the horrors the British have inflicted on us? Have the Jews forgotten the atrocities of the Nazis?

48. The attempt to eliminate an entire human race was not savage but demoniacal. Evil incarnated as Hitler.

49. The grip Hitler had on the German people in the wake of the Great Depression is an instance how superior will holds the masses.

50. The worst barbarism was perpetrated on the Jews by an insane group, power-drunk and satanic in its very disposition.

51. If pity leaves the human soul, then what remains? The savage preys to satiate primal instincts. Nazism, the nadir of civilisation.

52. War is so crucial to the economy of the developed world that peace itself is war for them. Hence, peace meets are hogwash.

53. A handful of people by gaining control of the system exploit the masses for their own good life. This is politics and industry.

54. How may the masses be rescued by a State that itself runs to facilitate exploitation by capital? Whither the Welfare State?

55. The Nazis observed no law, the British feigned such observance, the tormented suffered anyway. Now to choose between the two evils.

56. Civilisation was in crisis from 1939-45 and continues to be so in the wake of nuclear armament and environmental degradation.

57. The senseless killing of men in war shows that something is fundamentally wrong in material civilisation. What is it?

58. To stop war it is no use being non-violently weak but one must practise strength through developing the defence of one's nation.

59. Armament is a practical necessity to the extent one needs it for one's national defence. The rest rest on alliances and diplomacy.

60. India may send out peace missions but unless she strengthens herself militarily, no one is going to listen to her peace talks.

61. Fundamental issues will have to be addressed. Nobody censures the capitalist for malpractices. Spirituality calls for transparency.

62. Ramakrishna shines in his own glory. Nobel laureates and savants needn't be quoted to glorify him. A life lived preaches him best.

63. If you believe Ramakrishna is God incarnate, you will live out his grand principles and desist from hollow propagation of his name.

64. We reduce the greats to our stature when we glorify them vainly by quoting what men of fame had to say about them.

65. It is difficult to comprehend Ramakrishna and the magnitude of his mission. Glorification is all in ignorance of the Real.

66. Ramakrishna unleashed a vast force that quickened the subliminal consciousness of humanity and set it on the royal avenue of God.

67. Every principle of Ramakrishna is being violated now and the price of such denial man is paying copiously. Still he refuses to learn.

68. Which devotee dares declare money is mud, mud money? It will take greater character fibre to say so, deeper love for Ramakrishna.

69. Death ever approaches the one located in space-time-causality. Fear grips him too. The sage who has vanquished death is fearless.

70. No God will ever have mercy on man. Man, do thou mercy on thy brethren. There is no higher worship than service to humanity.

71. Out of the sea of humanity Man arises and they call him God. This Man is the ideal for man, none else, none else.

72. Help the Ramakrishna Mission transform human society. This is the vibrant body of divinity that needs your material support.

73. Arrogance digs its own pitfall. Humility, pure and simple, founded on the vision of the same Self in all, saves man from bondage.

74. Fall a thousand times but rise again to assert your unfailing divinity. This is the way of the Vedanta, this the way to be free.

75. In the depth of depression, in the dark of desolation seek not the help of any if you wish to cross this mighty ocean of ignorance.

76. Was Hiroshima justified?
      Was Nagasaki justified?
      America answer.
      Weren't they the worst war crimes that have gone untried?

77. The victor writes the history. What can the vanquished do? He is ever the victim.

78. The mercy of the Master is so immense that it takes millenia for it to unfold.

79. When I visited Belur Math the first time, the triumvirate sat adorning it --- Bharat Maharaj, Surjo Maharaj and Prabhu Maharaj.

80. I understand, I also am that Great God who is manifesting in myriad forms to enact this divine drama of terrestrial existence.

81. Life on earth is so helpless. We're marooned on an island with sinking body and we fight to sink each other in the ocean that swells.

82. All this experience of life could be so much virtual reality while the Real eludes the sensory grasp. Awake, my Soul, from slumber!

83. Decadent western culture is infiltrating Indian society evermore and Indians are supinely submitting to it. Hail Nivedita! Shame India!

84. Thought vibrations are potent. We have to flood the world with a deep spiritual current to combat the surfacing of evil.

85. Indian spirituality must not remain localised. It must spread to the remotest corners of the world to usher in a new civilisation.

86. The killer dengue is claiming the lives of so many. Come, friends, let us chant-meditate-pray to the Lord to save the afflicted.

EFFLORESCENCE OF THOUGHT

1. An endless stream of ideas flood the mind and out come the ideas in tandem with them. They reveal the interior of the mind though.

2. It is so difficult for man to accept he is God till he envisions the Truth in 'samadhi', the state of super-consciousness.

3. Those who have dualism so ingrained in their bloodstream can somehow not understand that dualism needs phenomena to stand on. Hence, the Personal God can never be the ultimate Truth which must be independent of the observed, the observation and the observer.

4. Sutra dilam ami, chinta karo tumi. Keno bhaya abaar bojhatey bolo? Lekhay roibe truti, kabya lobe je chhuti.

5. The creator-God has so entered the bloodstream of nervous man that the Truth of his being God just cannot find room in him. And, yet, the truth is but this that Man is God. No dualism must be allowed to dilute this statement. Such is the age-old hypnotism he suffers from that man dares not acknowledge this truth of his own Self as being the supreme God, always preferring to posit instead a governor God who rules over him when none in fact does so. It is his own Self whose image he externalises and glorifies in ignorance. This the fundamental idea underlying dualism, a practice, even if temporarily seemingly efficacious, is essentially erroneous. The Vedanta does not find following among the people, for few can even grasp it intellectually, much less practise its principles. There is nothing holding you to bondage save the very idea which is a myth, being bred in imagination and subsisting in it too. Give up this vain identification with the body and in a flash you will see that you are God.

6. The first thing you must shake off in the spiritual path is fear. Fear of what and by whom? God fearing God? The second thing automatically follows. Affirm that you are God. There is none to condemn you, none to save you. Save yourself. The third element is to turn the outgoing mind inward. The senses must be subdued through the observance of purity and austerity. Next comes truthfulness as the means to practice of rectitude in life. The crookedness of the heart will be straightened thereby. Constant contemplation of the Divine within is the next step. Love, unconditioned and unalloyed, must flow freely unto the One within. Solitude is necessary for tranquil recollection of a long-lost memory. The depths of the ocean of consciousness must be plumbed. Pure spaces in the heart and serene surroundings are ideal for the yogi. The dust of desires settled, finer waves will have to be dealt with. The body chastened and its forces harnessed becomes an able instrument for awakening the inner harmony coiled up as 'kulakundalini'. This spring of energy dormant at the base of the spine must be made dynamic and forced up the spinal column along the 'sushumna'. Next you must avoid arguing with others as it disturbs the mental equilibrium so very essential to subtle spiritual perception.

7. How difficult it must have been for Swamiji to drive home Vedanta into English heads! No wonder he did not try it in India much.

8. The dualist can scarce conceive the glory of Advaita Vedanta when he is servile before his imagined God. Awake, great souls!

9. To be Self-reliant is a more honourable spiritual option than to pray for mercy to an imagined God. Stand on your own feet.

10. Practise self-reliance and do not pray to an arbitrary assumption for help, for all help that ever came, came from within yourself.

11. I am not this name and form
      That I must in duality dwell.
      I am the boundless Self supreme,
      The sea that never doth swell.

12. Advaita accepts dualism as relative truth and rejects its absolute validity as such. Absolute Truth must be beyond name and form.

13. Long ago Swamiji had said that dualism breeds fanaticism as it cannot stand on rational foundation.

14. Human weakness, if pointed out, weakens the being, it seems, further. Yet someone will have to speak out the undiluted Truth.

15. Crucify me, if you will, for giving out the whole Truth but you cannot crucify the Truth nor suppress it any more.

16. Man divorces in marriage so often but his marriage to matter seems so stable in endless polygamy, lawful, sound.

17. India must yet teach spirituality to the rest of the world, for humanity at large is in terrible bondage to matter.

18. Fight back if you are a Vedantist, never give in. The whole of this universe cannot crush you. In you it rises, floats, sinks.

19. Never give up, never give in,
      Fight on till you win.

20. Horrific pictures dead Jews in Nazi death camps and more pitiful pictures of the dead in Churchill-created Bengal Famine of 1943.

THE CURSE THAT IS POVERTY

Those who attempt to eradicate poverty must comprehend the depth and magnitude of the problem and its real causes. The selfish desire to possess is at the heart of the matter and springs from the sense of desolation of the physical body marooned in this island called Earth where life is but a flicker and survival so insecure. Thus comes the propensity to hoard wealth, earn it at the expense of the well-being of others even by means patently unethical and to create a system whereby such selfish activity of self-preservation may gain perpetuation and validity in the eye of law and social opinion. That countless millions will thus be grounded to the dust merely to gratify the millionaire's dust of desires is the scant object of the rich man's attention. His life is an endless pursuit of the ephemeral emeralds of this earth and his chariot of coarse collection charts its course over the corpses of countless commoners who have not yet learnt so well the art of deception or profit-making from one's own mother.

As the multitude suffer, the rich man seeks the perverse pleasure of providing the dole for the poor, scant realising or oft realising full well that such poverty thrust upon the masses is his own handiwork. Thus, the handful enjoy the elixir of life while the rest of the populace, the teeming millions must wait on these princes and princesses to fulfil every whim of theirs as if they are by birth or buying entitled to the ownership of all that is considered worthwhile in life. While life is festive somewhere, full of the delicacies of the palate and the senses, in far too many places it is a veritable damnation as vitality saps in the individual owing to unlivable conditions of living.

What more can I say than to empathise with my sisters and brothers eking out their existence on earth and awaiting final release from their daily death. I wish man awakes from his slumber and stops murdering fellow man in this bloodless cruel way as capitalism enjoins him unto doing.

SHADOW ON THE DOOR

How symbolic the photograph of Bose with Hitler and Ribbentrop is in the light of the shadow of Bose's profile cast on the door! Chasing the mirage of the Indian dream, ever-drifting, ever-shifting as in a sunlit desert, Bose entered Hell itself to win his Mother freedom. The shadow of his personality would loom large in Hitler's mind for sure as reverse after reverse in the ensuing battles would drive home the validity of Bose's prophesy about the Russian misadventure to the Fuhrer. Who can say how many times Hitler must have thought of the phenomenon that Bose was, for only a lion can recognise a lion, never a sheep as a timid Mahatma nor an opportunist as a cowardly perfidious Pandit? The later developments of Netaji's life have remained so shadowy in the wake of his mysterious disappearance post 18 Aug,1945 that the shadow cast on the door seems indeed symbolic, portentous of the life to follow.

WORDS OF TRUTH

1. First consciousness, then poverty, finally enlightenment. The three follow each other in invariable succession.

2. The disciple of devotion is the preceptor of the morrow.

3. Fill the mind with noble ideas all tending to a glorious ideal. Out of such fullness of thought will emerge the man of realisation.

4. Thou art the greatest God there can be, never belittle thyself. To quake in front of an imagined God does not befit thee. Arise!

5. Hitler, full of vanity springing from race superiority complex, failed to appreciate initially the full sweep of Bose's personality.

6. The Nazis must be given their due and so much more the Japanese for their great help in the liberation struggle of India.

7. Some say Netaji is still alive; others that he is dead. Some others will not hazard opinion in the absence of evidence. What do you say?

8. To charge the Fuhrer in his own office and ask him to expunge from his book racist comments made by him against Indians requires extraordinary valour.

9. How symbolic the photograph of Bose with Hitler and Ribbentrop is in the light of the shadow of Bose cast on the door!

10. Those who attempt to eradicate poverty must comprehend the depth and magnitude of the problem and its real causes. The selfish desire to possess is at the heart of the matter and springs from the sense of desolation of the physical body marooned in this island called Earth where life is but a flicker and survival so insecure. Thus, comes the propensity to hoard wealth, earn it at the expense of the well-being of others even by means potently unethical and to create a system whereby such selfish activity of self-preservation may gain validity in the eye of law and social opinion. That countless millions will be thus grounded to the dust merely to gratify the millionaire's dust of desires is the scant object of the rich man's attention. His life is an endless pursuit of the ephemeral emeralds of this earth and his chariot of coarse collection charts its course over the corpses of countless commoners who have not learnt so well the art of deception or profit-making from one's mother. As the multitude suffer, the rich man seeks the pleasure of providing the dole for the poor, scant realising that such poverty thrust upon the masses is his own handiwork. Thus, the handful enjoy the elixir of life while the rest of the populace, the teeming millions must wait on these princes and princesses to fulfil every whim of theirs as if they are by birth or property entitled to the ownership of all that is considered worthwhile in life. While life is festive somewhere, full of the delicacies of the palate and the senses, in far too many places it is a veritable damnation as vitality saps in the individual owing to unlivable conditions of living. What more can I say than to empathise with my sisters and my brothers eking out their existence on earth and awaiting final release from their daily death. I wish man awakes from his slumber and stops murdering fellow man in this bloodless cruel way as capitalism enjoins him to doing.

PROPHET OF NATIONALISM ... 1

Churchill's befriending Stalin did not make him a communist, neither did Stalin thereby become a capitalist. How did Bose then become a fascist by alliance with Hitler?
Those were heady days with the entire world in turmoil and Bose utilised the force-field of the World War to give British imperialism the necessary shake to overcome its inertia and reduce its citadels to ruins. His motion to free his motherland in effect released such revolutionary fervour in the whole of Asia that he became the catalyst and the inspiration for suppressed peoples everywhere. Bose in retrospect has thus assumed a far bigger significance than was evident at the times when he made his gigantic presence felt across the world. He was the mainspring of revolutionary activity in India, the mighty force that brought down British India to its knees and sent the colonists packing.
Bose careered the downfall of the British Empire by setting India free. It was but a matter of time before other colonies took the cue and launched their liberation struggles. Leaders across Asia except the top brass of the Congress who had plotted the downfall of Bose unsuccessfully were lifted into inspirational heights to emulate Bose and brought their countries freedom.
The British Empire's sun did set at last where it had scorched the people for two centuries and had plunged the ancient land, the mother of civilisations, into servile darkness. But what happened to Bose? Where did he vanish from Leon Prouchandy's house in Saigon on the 18th of August, 1945?

PAUSE TO REFLECT

1. Stop exploitation, else, there will be a revolution.

2. Capitalism has provided comfort to many but reduced the masses to abysmal poverty where life itself is hell.

3. Let us help the Ramakrishna Mission fulfil its numerous unfinished projects of social good. Let us serve the Mission.

4. What we hold as our own belongs to the world, to larger humanity. Our labour cannot claim its fruit to be its own.

5. Act while there is time yet. Soon it will be past the mid-night hour and the dark will envelope all.

6. No system can remove exploitation unless there be men in large numbers with developed character to run the system.

7. The Indian society built about the axis of spirituality, if freed from social restrictions and democratised, will be the ideal one.

8. Why blame any for their misdeeds? Just spread the Word and see what a wonderful change will come about.

9. Change does not come about by activism of the sort we see but by contacting the Divine that is at the heart of phenomena.

10. The nation is too divided today in terms of ideology. Let a common ideal, the well-being of all, inspire all. That is nationalism.

11. Long before religion arrived on the scene, long before God hijacked the masses, men were divine as much as they are today.

12. Vedanta freed man from bondage to matter and Vedanta freed man from bondage to God. Vedanta declared the divinity of man.

13. Man in essence is none but God. God is but the shadow of that Man. The Real Man is not this puny earthly figure.

14. There is an identity of God and Man which is so difficult to comprehend, yet so very true it is. The foundation of all is the One.

15. Netaji was preeminently a spiritual person who had turned revolutionary to deliver his motherland from imperial-colonial bondage.

16. Alliance with Hitler was not a spontaneous decision for Bose but one enforced by Gandhian non-cooperation and Stalin's refusal.

17. The exigencies of the times, the unique historical opportunity to utilise the War situation to free India impelled Bose onward.

18. The German-Soviet Non-aggression Pact was tottering. Each feared the other's invasion. Stalin compromised to befriend Britain.

19. Bose arrived at Moscow to seek Soviet help. But Stalin, sensing impending German threat, refused. Hence, onward to Berlin.

20. Read the Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, otherwise, you will never be able to fully appreciate the life and works of Netaji.

NETAJIPREMI DUI PAGOL BHAKTA

Dhanyo lekhani apnaar, Ashraful Islam! Ki anuraag Netajir prati, taar ek kanao jodi amar thakto toh kritaartha hotam! Aar dhanyo Drjayanta Choudhuri! Ini Netaji bishoyok tathyer jnanobhandaar, sakshat cholomaan bangmoy biswakosh!

Rachaita : Sugata Bose

HAPPY 75TH INDEPENDENCE DAY!

What a slap on the face of British imperialism it must have been when in Singapore on 21 October, 1943 Netaji declared the formation of his Provisional Government of Free India (P.G.F.I.)! In essence it meant that Netaji had dared the British and declared Indian independence and what remained thereon was but the eviction of the alien occupier from the motherland by armed assault on them.

Nine States of the world including Germany, Japan, Italy and USSR (?) gave diplomatic recognition to the Provisional Government of Free India and as per international law operative then, India in international legal terms had achieved independence notwithstanding the bulk of its landmass having not yet been liberated from the occupying British forces. Imperial Japan had pledged to hand over to the P.G.F.I. the control of the Andaman and the Nicobar Islands, a pledge which they fulfilled on 29 December, 1943 when formally the islands were handed over to Netaji who headed the P.G.F.I. Thus, the Provisional Government of Free India at its inception itself was legally the administrative organ of the new-founded State of India.

A State by definition must have the following four features:
1. Territory to rule ;
2. Sovereignty, that is, absolute freedom from internal or external control by any agency in its functioning ;
3. Government to administer the affairs of the State, make laws, execute them and safeguard them against violation ;
4. Population to govern, that is, the citizenry.

All these features were existent in the provisional State which the P.G.F.I. represented and this is how they existed:
(a) Japan assured and then handed over Andaman and Nicobar Islands to P.G.F.I. Thus, the provisional State had Territory.
(b) The provisional State was free of all control, external and internal, in its functioning. Thus, it had Sovereignty. It had its own national army (The Indian National Army) to defend its territorial borders (of Shaheed and Swaraj, and all other captured British Indian territory) and to wage war against the colonial-imperial alien occupiers of the motherland. It had its own national bank, State currency, postage stamp, national anthem, national flag and national greeting in Jai Hind.
(c) The Provisional Government of Free India was itself the fulfilment of the third requirement of Government for a State.
(d) P.G.F.I. governed over the resident Indian population of Shaheed, Swaraj and Imphal in Manipur for a sizeable period of time to fulfil the fourth feature of a State.

Thus, to all intents and purposes and fulfilling all international legal requirements for the creation of a Sovereign State, the Provisional Government of Free India came into being on 21 October, 1943 at Syonan or Singapore. This was, thus, a historic happening that may only be called the Independence of Undivided India and as it predated the Partitioned Dominion Status received by the motherland on 15 August, 1947 by just under four years, it must be recognised by all Indians and in consequence by the world as the true date of our nation's independence. However, our belonging to the British Commonwealth evidently stands in the way of our present Union Government from recognising it as such and, so, the saga of feeding Indians with the colonial lie of independence achieved on 15 August, 1947 continues.

But there is no power on earth which can prevent an enlightened citizenry seeing the light at last that we were after all liberated from colonial bondage 74 years ago on this very day and we are, therefore, treading a hallowed hour, the 75th independence day of our ancient undivided beloved motherland. We must, therefore, not let this hour go past without breathing in its holy air, the air of genuine freedom, undiluted and undivided, full of the pride in our people's struggle for this liberation achieved, soulful remembrance of the martyrs to this freedom and full of the resolve to fight on for achieving the territorial solidarity of our partitioned motherland. Jai Hind!

P.S. Spare some time today to duly celebrate this day of our motherland's true and honourable independence, the fruit of the labour of love of countless revolutionaries climaxing in Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose.