NATIONALISM ABOVE RELIGIOUS AFFILIATION
At this hour of national tension when the forces are arrayed against national integration, when fissiparous tendencies are raising their ugly heads and threatening to break our nation, let us recall the sacrifices of our freedom fighters, the untold suffering our revolutionaries endured at the hands of the British to free the motherland from their colonial clutches, and the seminal message of the greatest hero of our final war of liberation, the leader himself, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, so that we may successfully tide over these crises that affect our national health and render millions sick with no imported virus but with the virus of mass disaffection against the order of the day.
Let us recall Netaji's message of separation of the Church from the State, to put it in European Enlightenment parlance, and rise above our respective religious affiliations to the call of genuine nationalism where we are all Indians through and through and not adherents of sectarian orders which harbour antinational feelings and spread the vicious virus of communal division in the polity thereof.
It is not good enough to be philosophically sound and attuned to national integration but it is more important to exhibit such patriotism in tangible terms, in one's attitudes and aspirations, acknowledgements and actions, acceptance and assimilation. Only then can real progress be with the nation advancing as an organic whole. The country comes first -- this ought to be the dharma over and above all else.
Written by Sugata Bose
At this hour of national tension when the forces are arrayed against national integration, when fissiparous tendencies are raising their ugly heads and threatening to break our nation, let us recall the sacrifices of our freedom fighters, the untold suffering our revolutionaries endured at the hands of the British to free the motherland from their colonial clutches, and the seminal message of the greatest hero of our final war of liberation, the leader himself, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, so that we may successfully tide over these crises that affect our national health and render millions sick with no imported virus but with the virus of mass disaffection against the order of the day.
Let us recall Netaji's message of separation of the Church from the State, to put it in European Enlightenment parlance, and rise above our respective religious affiliations to the call of genuine nationalism where we are all Indians through and through and not adherents of sectarian orders which harbour antinational feelings and spread the vicious virus of communal division in the polity thereof.
It is not good enough to be philosophically sound and attuned to national integration but it is more important to exhibit such patriotism in tangible terms, in one's attitudes and aspirations, acknowledgements and actions, acceptance and assimilation. Only then can real progress be with the nation advancing as an organic whole. The country comes first -- this ought to be the dharma over and above all else.
Written by Sugata Bose
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