WHITHER MANLINESS? ... 1

How can men by the millions in my beloved motherland so lack the virile fibre and melt down in 'musical malady' or 'poetic paralysis' that is far removed from the fire felt in the boiling brain of the genius who conceives of such original impulses in the corridors of his creative self? Whither manliness? Where is that steely strength, that courage of conviction in one's ideals, that superior sense of sacrificing all for the common weal and that leonine bearing that bespeaks of a dignity born of purity and holds in abhorrence all weakening impulses of sense-gratification? Whither that strong blood in the being that made the enemy quake in the high days of the revolution that sent Bengal up in flames against the colonial corruption?

Now it is an effeminacy so debasing that anyone endowed with a modicum of manhood feels a revulsion to witness what goes on in the name of any public interaction in the media or entertainment worth the call, replete with poetic insertions and accompanying effeminate mannerisms. One wonders if this is the land that gave birth to such lions among men like Swami Vivekananda, Bagha Jatin, Rashbehari Bose, Kshudiram Bose and Netaji. A thousand heroes of Bengal perished on the gallows and from the bayonets and bullets of the British. Did they die envisioning that their future generations would so degenerate that they would while away their lives in sentimental superficiality oblivious of the serious obligations of earthly existence? Could they who faced with their bare breasts the bullets of the Britishers have ever in their wildest imagination conceived of the current corruption in the populace consequent on a surfeit of ill-digested ideas of the fine arts and literature and music? Would they who suffered hellish torture and execution in the British Bastille of the Andaman Islands have ever contemplated that men following them would sing and dance away their lives like effeminate entities hardly resembling them in any remote way and totally devoid of the sum and substance of what is termed virility?

Today, one shudders to see the spreading virus of incontinence in our society whose patent manifestation is this pseudo-poetic propensity and musical malady that afflicts public performance before an audience or entertainment programmes dished out for the viewers. Would it were that men and women were better trained in restraining their weaker elements in public at least. That much would have been service to the nation as the vicious virus of effeminacy would not have gained mileage in the media and would, thus, have not done that much damage in propagation as they are currently apt to doing.

It seems it is a provincial perversion consequent on absence of the fire of brahmacharya in the system. But one wonders when monks of the most esteemed order as well and well-founded in continence give in to these effeminate presentations of music in quite the reverse order to what their founder had preached and had expected them to practise, what scientific conclusions may be drawn from the experience overall than to infer that this is, perhaps, a genetic propensity in the weakly structured psycho-physical system characteristic of our particular race and that environmental and cultural conditioning have further deepened their hold on the psychology of the people thus? It then seems like a case hopeless of redemption. But the effort to instil manliness in the masses must still be on. To that effect this writer shall not be found wanting in exertion, for manhood is the message of the messiah in Vivekananda and manhood the masses must attain despite the maladies that mar its maturity at the moment.

Vande Mataram!