THE LEADER AND HIS FORTHRIGHTNESS IN DECISION-MAKING -- A RESPONSE TO SUBHAS CHANDA'S [Subhas Chanda] APT COMMENT ON MY EARLIER POST ON SELF-DISAGREEMENT IN AGREEMENT WITH ALL
You have hit the hammer on the head of the nail, indeed. Alas, it is this lack of leadership that often spells the doom of civilisation. No wonder the Lord has in His unbounded grace promised us leadership each time we significantly stray from the upward curve of evolution when He prophesied His appearance to redeem us each time, from the war-field of the Kurukshetra. And so has He fulfilled His word every time we sank almost into oblivion from where He has pulled us through and placed us again on the advancing avenue of high civilisation where the traffic moves onward even as the avenue itself evolves unto the destiny ahead.
Even Karl Marx has underscored the emphatic role of the leader in whom the aspirations of the age in revolutionary terms is embodied and expressed, whose cognition of the constraining conditions of the exploitation of the masses helps organise the popular discontent into the mighty movement of revolution to redeem the soul of sinking man. It is this leadership that arises from the ranks of the literate middle class and ignites the powder of revolution among the minds of the proletariat to uproot and overthrow the forces of age-old exploitation that has reduced human beings to beasts of burden.
Yes, the leader of men does listen to his discerning mind's call even as he measures the variables of the times in which his movement operates, and lends the motion of the masses the due direction that can achieve the revolutionary ends. In the absence of the leader revolution is rendered sterile even if conditions otherwise are ripe for the uprising. Hence, by some queer law of history where necessity gives birth to invention, the leader arises from the ranks of the middle class to lead the pulverised proletariat class into active confrontation with the privileged class, a titanic struggle which is termed revolution. Then the wheel revolves through half a cycle and the high are rendered low and the low raised high till class distinctions disappear and equality, that wonderful principle of the French Revolution, prevails.
And the leader cannot agree with all. He must agree with the call of revolution and all that it demands. His allegiance is not to the fortunes of the few who have sat in exploitative sovereignty over the teeming millions for ages but to those who have been thus reduced to beastly status.
Finally, it is the decisive call from within that must, though, be the rational resolution of all opinions and viewpoints weighed with an end in view to be achieved, that impels the leader on to his path of effective action which may differ in intensity as per the requirements of the times and the situational demands.
But forthright the leader must be. Else, he is one of the multitude that blindly moves on to it ruinous end. Such a one a real leader can never be and never is as history in repeated terms so articulately chronicles despite its unpardonable heresies in hiding facts and narrating the concocted tale of the victor in war.
Written by Sugata Bose
You have hit the hammer on the head of the nail, indeed. Alas, it is this lack of leadership that often spells the doom of civilisation. No wonder the Lord has in His unbounded grace promised us leadership each time we significantly stray from the upward curve of evolution when He prophesied His appearance to redeem us each time, from the war-field of the Kurukshetra. And so has He fulfilled His word every time we sank almost into oblivion from where He has pulled us through and placed us again on the advancing avenue of high civilisation where the traffic moves onward even as the avenue itself evolves unto the destiny ahead.
Even Karl Marx has underscored the emphatic role of the leader in whom the aspirations of the age in revolutionary terms is embodied and expressed, whose cognition of the constraining conditions of the exploitation of the masses helps organise the popular discontent into the mighty movement of revolution to redeem the soul of sinking man. It is this leadership that arises from the ranks of the literate middle class and ignites the powder of revolution among the minds of the proletariat to uproot and overthrow the forces of age-old exploitation that has reduced human beings to beasts of burden.
Yes, the leader of men does listen to his discerning mind's call even as he measures the variables of the times in which his movement operates, and lends the motion of the masses the due direction that can achieve the revolutionary ends. In the absence of the leader revolution is rendered sterile even if conditions otherwise are ripe for the uprising. Hence, by some queer law of history where necessity gives birth to invention, the leader arises from the ranks of the middle class to lead the pulverised proletariat class into active confrontation with the privileged class, a titanic struggle which is termed revolution. Then the wheel revolves through half a cycle and the high are rendered low and the low raised high till class distinctions disappear and equality, that wonderful principle of the French Revolution, prevails.
And the leader cannot agree with all. He must agree with the call of revolution and all that it demands. His allegiance is not to the fortunes of the few who have sat in exploitative sovereignty over the teeming millions for ages but to those who have been thus reduced to beastly status.
Finally, it is the decisive call from within that must, though, be the rational resolution of all opinions and viewpoints weighed with an end in view to be achieved, that impels the leader on to his path of effective action which may differ in intensity as per the requirements of the times and the situational demands.
But forthright the leader must be. Else, he is one of the multitude that blindly moves on to it ruinous end. Such a one a real leader can never be and never is as history in repeated terms so articulately chronicles despite its unpardonable heresies in hiding facts and narrating the concocted tale of the victor in war.
Written by Sugata Bose
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