'CHALO DILLI' ... 6 (INCOMPLETE)

Netaji like Swamiji had stressed the need for character-formation as the prerequisite to national service. 'Service and sacrifice' was his mantra in the manner of his spiritual mentor who he had never met in person but had imbibed the principles of and made them his own in his mission to liberate the motherland from colonial bondage. And this was a singular feature of the personalities then. They creatively applied Swamiji's principles in their lives to serve the motherland unlike the current crop of devotees of both Swamiji and Netaji who merely clamour for justice but do not do effective work to bring about significant changes in their own lives as well as in the lives of their fellow countrymen who supposedly they represent and whose larger interests they are catering to.

The status quo about the historical heresies that have been perpetrated by the governments of independent India must be now overcome and we must unitedly rise to achieve this difficult but not unattainable task. But in and through it all we must never lose sight of the ideal of 'service and sacrifice' which was the galvanising element of the freedom struggle and which if not adhered to in our present mission, we are bound to fail in our stated endeavour. So will the malefic forces continue to win this uneven battle as we continue to protest offences by the million while making hardly a dent in this fabricated superstructure of lies. What is needed then is character-formation as I have earlier stated for it is only men and women of character who can translate Swamiji's and Netaji's large ideas into life's small changes so that the cumulative consequence in due course is significant in the life of the polity.

Now, how do we go about it, after all, this said translation of idea to deed? For this we must first do what Netaji had done in the formative years of his life. He was a brilliant student and an intellectual of the highest order. We may not be so and it may be beyond bounds for most of us to attain to the academic and intellectual heights of Netaji. But we must strive for academic excellence, for conceptual clarity and for disciplining of the truant mind through spiritual exercises and practice of purity so that we are in line to be worthy inheritors of the legacy he has left us behind.

Next we must have an ideal in life. It may come in a personified shape or the abstract idea, the pure principle. However, as Swamiji said, it is better to have ideal in life, for if a man with an ideal makes one thousand mistakes, a man without it will make fifty thousand. The ideal sets a standard in life which we must attain if we are sincere and prevents us from being a rudderless boat devoid of direction and swayed by the current of life in a chaotic manner. The ideal must be, according to Swamiji, not too low, for it will be debasing, nor too high and impossible of attainment, for it will degrade the individual, frustrated by his incapacity to live up to it and, so, impelled by such failure to lower it to abysmal levels. Thus, the ideal must be optimally set which will be possible for the sincere seeker to attain, yet, it must be comprehensive in its sweep and lofty in terms of principles enunciated.

Then comes the practice in real life terms, the interpretation of the ideal and its translation into programmes of human welfare with the widest reach exclusive of none in society. For this the creative genius is necessary in an individual attempting to show society the way and to lead the masses to a betterment of their existing state. Else, one must follow the leader who has such genius and one must diligently do so with perfect obedience for the preservation of organisational solidarity always except when such compliance is in complete violation of basic human values and in contravention of truth.