We must unite to spread the word of our real revolutionaries for freedom. We must assiduously avoid this tendency towards self-publicity. Netaji, Rash Behari Bose, Bagha Jatin, Masterda Surjya Sen and a host of other martyrs, leaders and foot-soldiers, lived and died for the nation so that we may breathe the air of freedom. But our Government has not duly recognised their seminal contributions to our freedom.
So, what do we do about it? Why? We can do self-publicity, post selfies to gain cheap popularity, squabble with each other to gain preferential leadership and remain academically ignorant, intellectually impoverished even as we pose to be researchers who have the divine right to pulling down better-versed historians of repute who disagree with our preferred narrative of history.
We care not to counter them on a civilised basis for we evidently lack civility owing to our monumental intellectual failings. We are then left to cast aspersions and hurl abuses on men of letters by way of exhibiting our foiled hopes and our patent frustrations. This sort of an attitude becomes popular somewhat at the base level where such baseness works well but fails to change the dominant narrative of our freedom struggle which is so full of lies and partial truths. Unfortunate it is that the ones who clamour as the protagonists of historical truth, many of them have a poor knowledge of history and a feebler understanding of its complex connotations. But worst of all is that these supposed scholars, mired in intellectual ignorance, must seek public adulation ahead of seeking attention for the cause they espouse. And, hence, they cannot unite.
Sarcasm aside, what then is the way out? Humility, self-abnegation, intellectual honesty and genuine study, deep and sincere, so that our 'researchers' become researchers beyond the articulate apostrophe. After all, the revolutionaries deserve intelligent successors to expound on their life's work and not blaring fools who will foul up their cause further.
Jai Hind !
Written by Sugata Bose
No comments:
Post a Comment