A STUDY IN CONTRAST, INDEED !

 A STUDY IN CONTRAST, INDEED !

First reduce his Presidential status, throw him out of the Congress, isolate and make a futile bid to deactivate him, then callously call him a modern-day Robin Hood who has caught the imagination of a section of the women and the youth and finally pay your tribute to the disappeared hero as a patriot among patriots. Hyper-hypocrisy of a Mahatma !

And consider the betrayal by the Pandit. He says he will meet the hero, sword in hand, at the borders of India should the latter arrive there with the fascist forces of Japan to liberate India. And then when the hero disappears, he laments the loss of the leader, appears in court to defend the convicted INA officers to derive the maximum political mileage out of it, gain public sympathy and ride the wave to his portfolio of Prime Minister of a partitioned India. Then he saw to it that the brave soldiers of the INA were deemed traitors and held ineligible for recruitment in the Indian Army after Independence despite having fought for them in the Red Fort Trials seeking to prove the reverse. And what about the INA Treasure Chest? What about the suppression of information on Netaji from the nation? What would you call all this? Patriotism? Fraternal love? Affection for a younger one?

And how had the hero treated the Mahatma and the Pandit? He smilingly resigned his Presidential post after the treachery at Tripuri. He named brigades in his INA after the Mahatma and the Pandit. And, in a final act of surpassing sublimity, he called the Mahatma the 'Father of the Nation' and sought his blessings in the upcoming war against the British on the eastern frontier of India.

A study in contrast, indeed !

Written by Sugata Bose