'CHALO DILLI' ... 7

26,000 soldiers of the INA died to liberate our motherland in the only full-scale war that we managed to wage against the British since the First War of Indian Independence in 1857. Are we men that we enjoy the fruits of their labour, their sweat and toil, their blood and suffered brutality at the hands of the barbarous British and, yet, we completely forget them in our mad rush for the fleeting pleasures of life? Do we realise that so many thousands of expatriate Indians lost their lives in liberating us, men and women most of whom had never even seen the land of their ancestors, yet felt an abiding bond with it, an umbilical cord attachment unknown to us who reside in self-inflicted amnesia here in this blessed land of their dreams?

We blame our politicians for perverting our historical narrative and concealing from us our true history but how often do we blame ourselves for not even caring to know that much of it that these evil men could not still keep away from our vision should we choose to open our eyes? Our historians are hired, our politicians perverted, our motherland partitioned and our polity, yet, polarised. We may blame all but will blaming others absolve us of our sin in not even seeking to discover the unreal and the real history of India that we may by comparison thence arrive at an estimation of what truly the national narrative ought to be? Can a nation of unlettered leaders guide us to our destiny of national self-becoming? Why expect so much from a bunch of nincompoops donning the leader's livery when our own efforts are worth much more to rely on? So, let us stop passing the buck in our national life and start instead the process of self-awakening, self-giving and self-sacrifice.

There is no  memorial worth the call for the INA men and women. Mountbatten had blown off the original one at Singapore raised by Netaji in the dying days of the War and Nehru silently seconded  it all along despite pretensions of patriotism galore. It suited his purpose for he was but the shadow representative of His/Her Majesty's Government, owing allegiance to its continued nefarious influence in our matters national through being the sovereign head of the Commonwealth to which India subscribed by becoming a member with Dominion Status. The Prime Minister of partitioned India --- which, therefore, is no India after all --- did nothing to rebuild the INA War Memorial in Singapore. It was local effort and sacrifice by ardent followers of Netaji that subsequently erected a replica of the said Memorial. That much for our commitment as a nation, as a government and as a polity to the heroes of the freedom struggle who had fallen in foreign soil and in Indian territory to break the fetters that bound us. And, what have we given them in return? Our love? Our gratitude? Our tears in remembrance? No, none of these. We have given them oblivion and now squarely lay the blame for it on the shoulders of our perfidious governments since 'independence', for, scapegoats our governments set up and scapegoats we set up too? After all, only a people devoid of character deserve and endure a government devoid of character too.

A nation that sleeps in indolence, that refuses to reflect on its past and draw lessons thereof, is not fit to be free. Its freedom does not last for long, for a debilitated population sunk either in abysmal poverty or engaged in eternal frivolity commits harakiri when the hour of reckoning comes. It is here that the responsibility lies on the shoulders of each one of us to study whatever material is available to us on the freedom struggle, especially, on its glorious phases of armed revolution beginning with the First War of Indian Independence in 1857 and climaxing in the war waged by the INA and the events in its aftermath like the Red Fort Trials of 1946 followed by the RIN Mutiny and revolt in the British Indian Army and the Air-force that led to the cowardly departure of the colonists.

We must stop blaming others till we have done our duty of learning every bit of information already available to us related to the revolutionary struggle. Once we are well aware of all the 'facts', we can well stake our claims to unknown data. Right now our own ignorance owing to indolence as students and as 'scholars' stands more in the way of our national self-awakening than the perfidies perpetrated by all the governments of the world against us. So, we must now 'arise, awake and stop not till the goal is reached.' Jai Hind!