HE FOOLED THE JOHN BULLS EVER
A revolutionary died just before the end of the Second World War. Otherwise, along with Netaji, he would also have been listed as a War Criminal of international significance. But he had ever eluded arrest at the hands of the British despite multiple seditious activities bordering often on the verge of destabilising the British Empire. Yet, he was smarter than the smartest John Bulls hot on his trail and never courted His Majesty's hospitality. And he did, indeed, with the help of his younger dynamic colleague, bring about the downfall of the British Empire.
I am sure you know by now who I am talking of. His wife's contribution to preserving his person must not be forgotten, too. Her memory must remain ever etched in our minds along with her two children, one of whom died in the concluding phase of the war that decimated Japan and the other who lived on with the last lingering hopes of seeing her father honoured in the motherland at whose altar of freedom he had sacrificed his all, but, alas, who would never see her dreams fulfil due to the perfidious character of us Indians and our vaunted leadership with its tortuous tale of 'truth and non-violence' practised in quite the reverse way.
Is it not time to honour the memory of this redoubtable revolutionary? Must we allow our indifference to help bury the very vestiges that are still left of our revolutionary movement for freedom? If so, then we are, indeed, an intermediary species between the biped and the quadruped, as Swami Vivekananda had sarcastically called the then debilitated mass of educated Indians, begging their dole at the feet of the dastardly British and considering themselves, in imitation of the West, much civilised in the norms of modernity.
Now consider what you yourself will do by way of remembrance of this heroic revolutionary who rocked the British at home and then spiced the curries up in distant Japan to lock horns with the demon yet again and drive it out of the motherland. He spanned the whole of the first half of the twentieth century and twice attempted to overthrow the British in the two world wars, then passed into oblivion. Shall we allow his memory to be lost for good, his daring deeds to be forgotten such that posterity may ask in its ignorance, who, after all, was this Rash Behari Bose?
Written by Sugata Bose
A revolutionary died just before the end of the Second World War. Otherwise, along with Netaji, he would also have been listed as a War Criminal of international significance. But he had ever eluded arrest at the hands of the British despite multiple seditious activities bordering often on the verge of destabilising the British Empire. Yet, he was smarter than the smartest John Bulls hot on his trail and never courted His Majesty's hospitality. And he did, indeed, with the help of his younger dynamic colleague, bring about the downfall of the British Empire.
I am sure you know by now who I am talking of. His wife's contribution to preserving his person must not be forgotten, too. Her memory must remain ever etched in our minds along with her two children, one of whom died in the concluding phase of the war that decimated Japan and the other who lived on with the last lingering hopes of seeing her father honoured in the motherland at whose altar of freedom he had sacrificed his all, but, alas, who would never see her dreams fulfil due to the perfidious character of us Indians and our vaunted leadership with its tortuous tale of 'truth and non-violence' practised in quite the reverse way.
Is it not time to honour the memory of this redoubtable revolutionary? Must we allow our indifference to help bury the very vestiges that are still left of our revolutionary movement for freedom? If so, then we are, indeed, an intermediary species between the biped and the quadruped, as Swami Vivekananda had sarcastically called the then debilitated mass of educated Indians, begging their dole at the feet of the dastardly British and considering themselves, in imitation of the West, much civilised in the norms of modernity.
Now consider what you yourself will do by way of remembrance of this heroic revolutionary who rocked the British at home and then spiced the curries up in distant Japan to lock horns with the demon yet again and drive it out of the motherland. He spanned the whole of the first half of the twentieth century and twice attempted to overthrow the British in the two world wars, then passed into oblivion. Shall we allow his memory to be lost for good, his daring deeds to be forgotten such that posterity may ask in its ignorance, who, after all, was this Rash Behari Bose?
Written by Sugata Bose
No comments:
Post a Comment