NETAJI --- MAN, MYSTERY AND MYTH ... 7

NETAJI --- MAN, MYSTERY AND MYTH ... 7

Gandhi's philosophy of conversion of the enemy's heart through the practice of non-violence against violent brutality of the adversary was a novel concept that was entirely impractical and totally unsuited to the world of realpolitik where barbarism is the persistent policy. It cost India dear and will destroy her future as well if we do not shun it as the guiding national policy and come to terms with the world as it is and not as Gandhi would make us imagine it to be. If Partition, Pakistan and China have not been lessons enough, then some more shocks will knock Gandhian philosophy out of our system but, alas, at what a price!

The people of India must not be fed unrealistic ideas of the world and about human nature through wrong education and false identification with moral principles that have no bearing with real life. Emotion and adulation have a place in citizens' lives, it is true, but when systematic brainwashing is done to keep a polity passive, it augurs not well for the future of the people. The nation must be self-reliant in every possible way and here the defence of its borders must be accorded paramount importance, not merely in terms of speeches delivered by politicians of significance but in actual terms of allocating sufficient funds in the Nation Budget for the sustenance of the military programme. The current scenario is nowhere is near satisfactory and the requirements of the armed forces are not being met adequately which in times of a major war will for sure cost us dear. All this stems from our continued adherence to the Gandhian legacy which has gripped our minds and will not relent till it has destroyed us.

The situation is grim as generation after generation continues to be fed this false narrative of non-violence as having been the principle preeminent in liberating India from colonial-imperial bondage of the British. This lends the polity an erroneous and inflated idea of the practical value of non-violence as a guiding principle in matters of statecraft when under continuous security threat and weakens the people psychologically with unreal conceptions of love for the enemy that do not stand the test of the hour and inevitably leads to national loss that is avoidable with more robust thinking and policy. Our history over the last two thousand years and more is replete with such instances of foreign aggression and conquest thanks to the legacy of mass non-violence advocated by Buddhism and Jainism and their latter-day proponent in Gandhism.

It is, thus, imperative that we review the history of our freedom struggle and find out the true causes of our eventual freedom. We ought not to digest narratives dished out to us by the powers that be for they are deliberate distortions of our historical past. By constantly feeding us with falsities and fabrications in the name of the then historical situation, the Government of India has kept us in the dark about much of the real causes of our eventual freedom and its evolving revolutionary phases prior to the culminating act of independence. Such systematic programming of the national mind suits the political dispensations at the helm of affairs to continue with their post-independence agenda of subservience to the erstwhile colonial masters. It is not merely a psychological servitude but a real neocolonial aspect of our Commonwealth-affiliated independence as well.

The Government of India have since independence harboured a strange reluctance to put up a robust national front as ought to be the case when a nation comes into political being after a protracted revolutionary struggle. And here lies the catch. Did we win independence on 15 August, 1947 or were we given a truncated Dominion status by way of alms thanks to the palms of the Congress that were ever in the act of compliance with such servile receiving? How far are we independent even today after all? What were the terms and conditions of the Transfer of Power and what were the conditions attached to our affiliation to the British Commonwealth of Nations? Why are some of these contentious documents classified? What has the Government got to hide from the people? Why do we accept the Queen of England as the Sovereign of the Commonwealth of Nations when we are supposedly a Republic that ought to have no such allegiance to the British monarch? Why is it that the Queen of England requires no visa to visit India even though the President of India requires a British visa to visit that land? These are questions worth mulling over for they are intimately connected to our sovereignty and independence. How prophetic were Netaji's words from afar Singapore and Rangoon that India must make no compromise with the British in seeking independence but must wage war against the colonists to seize power! Alas, the nation did not heed his advice and it must pay heavily for it yet!