PROMISES MADE, PROMISES UNKEPT

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has terribly failed the cause of Netaji. He hardly ever mentions him in foreign countries as the patriot premier of India and instead goes about speaking of Gandhiji in the selfsame vein as his predecessors in the Congress administration who were at the helm of affairs. It is idle to expect much from him for he does not seem to be very much interested in doing anything substantial anymore for the cause of the resurrection of Netaji and the INA in the narrative of the national struggle for independence beyond what he has already done in the form of opening up the 100 classified files on the leader for which we must be grateful to him, though. The Intelligence Bureau Files are yet to be declassified and the foreign files are to be pursued as well through high-level diplomatic contact with the respective foreign governments.

But there is a lethargy in pursuing the case of the disappearance of Netaji and one wonders why it must be so. Who are being thus protected from public scrutiny and whose interests are involved in this biggest unsolved case of the twentieth century? Why can the Government of India not come clean with every bit of information available to them on Netaji? Why is it that successive Congress Governments since the ones headed by Nehru had made a hush hush over anything related to Netaji and kept information about him to catch the dust in secret files in government shelves? What is meant by the statement that our relations with friendly foreign nations will be jeopardised by the wholesale pursuit of truth in this matter of Netaji's disappearance? Who are we afraid of as a sovereign nation and whose interests are we trying to protect by continuing adherence to untruth even as we blazon before the world the lofty national principle of 'Satyemeva jayatey' (Victory unto truth)? Has truth become a secondary element in our national life and untruth the reigning deity? Is Netaji no more relevant to India and must therefore be relegated to the waste bin of history? Then we are not far from national annihilation as Swamiji had predicted would happen to us if we shifted our stand from spiritual values and there can be no spirituality in the sustenance of untruth of the most vicious kind.

For us commoners then there is only one recourse --- individual effort and lifelong sacrifice to know and to propagate among the populace as much information as we possess about our patriot premier. In this reeducation programme of the nation shall the seeds of the future awakening be sown whereby future generations shall afresh take up the cause of Netaji and hopefully bring it to fruition. Jai Hind!