PERSONALITY, PRIVILEGE AND PRINCIPLE
There are people who always speak of the overlapping elements and seldom, if ever, of the disjoint elements of an event. But historical recording must include both, else, it will be historical heresy.
The overlapping elements often are harmonic while the disjoint ones are conflicting, and often again the overlapping elements in close proximity collide and conflict while the disjoint elements stay in harmonic mutual isolation. All these play out in the dynamics of space-time, shaping history through a complex resolution of multitudinous forces. And to eliminate any of these participants in the chronicling of the history of the times is to be untrue to the events as and how they had panned out. Thus, the recording of history has to be entirely factual and not fabricated, neither may it make allowances for pious privilege of preeminent personalities whose image in strictest historical chronicling would take a beating. This I would term genuine historical satyagraha (enthusiasm for truth) and this ought to be our national status in regard to the recording of history.
However, this, sadly, is not the case as decadent inertia continues to throttle objective thinking in India where personality prevails over principle and a feudal mental servitude of the masses continues. Thus, there are personalities sacrosanct who you may not dare criticise even objectively, even though, such exalted ones reserve the right to castigate perceived adversaries meanly. If you dare defend such victims of mean verbal molestation, devotees galore of such venerable offenders rise up in desperate defence of their infallible human gods throwing caution to the winds. Thus, it is perfectly acceptable to these servile beings Aurobindo's denunciation of Netaji as one who had committed an act of treason and crime against the motherland in forging wartime alliance with the Japanese while conveniently absolving his own self of revolutionary commitment under the cover of supposed divine injunction during incarceration, but impossible for them to take counter-criticism of their preferred god-man, prophet, saviour, Avatar, call him what you will.
Then there is the other class of so-called devotees of all who cannot brook criticism of any of their heroes but must ever seek terrible compromise with truth to make all ends meet. But all ends never quite meet for all and this leads to the collapse of their fragile world view in the face of factual criticism, when these self-deluded bigots of an alternate order seek to conflate issues and, so, deflect discourse from mainstream understanding of the pertinent points. This, curiously, is the tendency of a section of self-deluded literate people much more than that of the ignorant multitude, for while the latter's simplicity saves them from such heresy, the former, clothed in the vanity of learning or pretentious piety, succumb to the temptations of a toxic compromise with truth.
A sense of history remains, thus, as yet embedded in the seeds of time and to germinate to fruition will require a massive overhauling of this feudal mindset of the Indians who prefer personality to principle and cannot quite come to terms with a rational understanding of things. And all this in the name of adherence to the national credo, 'Satyameva jayatey'! (Victory unto truth!)
Written by Sugata Bose
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