HOW LONG MUST THE MARTYRS WAIT TO SEE YOU BECOMING MEN ?
The narrative must change. Enough of lies about our freedom movement. Now we must search for the true causes of our freedom and not believe in concocted stories thus far propagated with impunity. This continuous lie in the name of the one who seldom lied, I mean Mahatma Gandhi, is a shame and must stop in this, his 150th birth anniversary. Let the nation know about the contributions of our armed revolutionaries, their untold sacrifices, the torture they bore at the hands of the British who spared them no barbaric third degree method to extract information once they had apprehended them somehow. And then, of course, the dreadful saga of hanging.
We very well know that had it not been for Netaji and his INA, we would never have been free in 1947. But the credit for winning freedom has been almost entirely given to Gandhiji and his non-violent method of agitation which is a blatant lie. And we accept this lie, too, for we have neither manhood nor spine to resist this false narrative. We are so lazy that we do not find time or energy enough to dive deep into our history and find out the truth for ourselves. Everything has to be brought right before our eyes for us to see it.
We are apt to doing two things --- one, lazing in pleasurable self-consciousness and, two, blaming the government for everything that ought to have been our civic duty to have done. Thus, when it comes to learning about the history of our freedom movement, we are apt to laying the blame on the government's incapacity to have furnished us with all the details and for its role in propagating a false narrative about it. But we conveniently shirk all our responsibility towards discovering historical facts for ourselves, so unconcerned are we about our motherland. No wonder we suffered a thousand years of political servitude at the hands of the Mohammedans and the Europeans whose ill effects are still on us for our character has not changed much from the one Macaulay induced in us and continues to be colonised by western culture of a debilitated kind.
As I pen these lines, a fond hope arises in my mind that they will inspire my countrymen to take up the task of studying the history of our freedom movement but immediately arises the despair that this is not going to be my lot to see as I know full well that all that this piece of writing will receive is a few causal exclamations of 'Jai Hind' or 'Jayatu Netaji' that will not be followed up by any substantive work on the freedom movement. This scepticism has a rational basis and it is founded in past experience. Hope I will be proved wrong this time and will actually succeed in quickening at least a single soul into taking up this study in real earnest.
May the spirit of our motherland bless us with courage of conviction to pursue our study and propagate the same in our bid to removing misconceptions and misrepresentations thereof about the story of our freedom struggle !
Vande Mataram !
Written by Sugata Bose
The narrative must change. Enough of lies about our freedom movement. Now we must search for the true causes of our freedom and not believe in concocted stories thus far propagated with impunity. This continuous lie in the name of the one who seldom lied, I mean Mahatma Gandhi, is a shame and must stop in this, his 150th birth anniversary. Let the nation know about the contributions of our armed revolutionaries, their untold sacrifices, the torture they bore at the hands of the British who spared them no barbaric third degree method to extract information once they had apprehended them somehow. And then, of course, the dreadful saga of hanging.
We very well know that had it not been for Netaji and his INA, we would never have been free in 1947. But the credit for winning freedom has been almost entirely given to Gandhiji and his non-violent method of agitation which is a blatant lie. And we accept this lie, too, for we have neither manhood nor spine to resist this false narrative. We are so lazy that we do not find time or energy enough to dive deep into our history and find out the truth for ourselves. Everything has to be brought right before our eyes for us to see it.
We are apt to doing two things --- one, lazing in pleasurable self-consciousness and, two, blaming the government for everything that ought to have been our civic duty to have done. Thus, when it comes to learning about the history of our freedom movement, we are apt to laying the blame on the government's incapacity to have furnished us with all the details and for its role in propagating a false narrative about it. But we conveniently shirk all our responsibility towards discovering historical facts for ourselves, so unconcerned are we about our motherland. No wonder we suffered a thousand years of political servitude at the hands of the Mohammedans and the Europeans whose ill effects are still on us for our character has not changed much from the one Macaulay induced in us and continues to be colonised by western culture of a debilitated kind.
As I pen these lines, a fond hope arises in my mind that they will inspire my countrymen to take up the task of studying the history of our freedom movement but immediately arises the despair that this is not going to be my lot to see as I know full well that all that this piece of writing will receive is a few causal exclamations of 'Jai Hind' or 'Jayatu Netaji' that will not be followed up by any substantive work on the freedom movement. This scepticism has a rational basis and it is founded in past experience. Hope I will be proved wrong this time and will actually succeed in quickening at least a single soul into taking up this study in real earnest.
May the spirit of our motherland bless us with courage of conviction to pursue our study and propagate the same in our bid to removing misconceptions and misrepresentations thereof about the story of our freedom struggle !
Vande Mataram !
Written by Sugata Bose
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