NETAJI, THE PATRIOT PREMIER (UNFINISHED)

Right you are and, therefore, do join me in this crusade to uphold the life and message of Netaji, his ideas and ideals which can transform not only individuals but the nation at large. Netaji's principles are to be studied, absorbed, assimilated and activated in national life for our motherland to stay united and strong, and for our composite culture to flourish where anything Indian will be dear to us irrespective of what religious denomination it belongs to. Moreover, this alone is the way ahead for a people as diverse as us and is also the sure path to the preservation of our heritage and history. In the process we must not allow appeasement politics of any kind, be they of the minorities or of the majority community, to pervert the secular-democratic fabric of our nation which is the best thing the Constitution has afforded us with, barring its proffering of special status to certain segments of the population for now an indefinite period of time. The national issues are complex and there must be no attempt to over-simplify things and in the process get into the act of trivialisation of matters profoundly deep and calling for great circumspection in handling. The complexities of our national life are such that only an eclectic approach to the problems besetting our polity will succeed in making any forward movement. Herein lies Netaji's significance as a leader of universal sympathies and a national outlook with no provincialism marring his attitudes and actions in our historical past of which he was such a seminal participant, and it is his ideas and ideals that, therefore, ought to be the springboard of our future course of action in the development of our country and the flourishing of our civilisation. Here it must be mentioned that Netaji himself was a very complex personality having a most intricate mix of universal values and influences that cannot simply be categorised as this or that but needs careful study, analysis and understanding before one may arrive at a synthetic view of it. These are seminal beings, epoch-makers who transform human history who, as such, cannot be confined to our pigeon-hole conceptions of humanity. To have a fair comprehension of them, we need to expand significantly in consciousness ourselves and therefrom attempt our understanding in the light of their life and works. This is no mean task but one worth giving one's life for, for in it lies the genesis of our future flourishing.

A word more and it is this that Netaji was much influenced by the life, personality and philosophy of Swami Vivekananda in whom he discovered in his adolescence his life's ideal. Vivekananda gave him a universal outlook that not only broadened his mental and intellectual horizons but also immensely fostered his spiritual personality that could thereby withstand the pressures of international politics at a most momentous period in world history. The dynamic monk in Vivekananda struck the boy Subhas with the fire of patriotism and ignited in his being a veritable conflagration that eventually consumed in its flames the vast mass of the British Empire.