LET US START TELLING THE PLAIN FACTS AS THEY ARE AND NO MORE AS THE GOVERNMENT WISHES THEM TO BE

LET US START TELLING THE PLAIN FACTS AS THEY ARE AND NO MORE AS THE GOVERNMENT WISHES THEM TO BE

India won her freedom through armed action and not through non-violence. The British would never have left the shores of India had it not been for sustained revolutionary armed action beginning with the First War of Indian Independence in 1857 and ending in the final freedom thrust of the Indian National Army in 1943-45 that led to the nationwide rebellion in 1946 spearheaded by the Royal Indian Navy Mutiny and forced the eventual eviction of the British.

So many martyrs to freedom, so many fallen heroes on the battlefields of Burma, Imphal and Kohima, so many dying at the scaffold and from bullets and the bayonet, hanged from trees and blown off the mouths of cannons -- do their deaths not count? How on earth can this lie in the name of non-violence winning us freedom be told in this nation that has pledged itself to the credo 'Satyameva jayatey' (truth alone triumphs)? Isn't it a shame that our leaders can so blatantly lie? Would this have been the case or has it ever been the case in any other nation? Has any other nation disbanded its revolutionary army like India did post-Partition when she rejected the claims of the INA officers and soldiers to reinstatement in their due positions in the Indian Army? Did Soviet Russia or China do so with their revolutionary armies? Did even perfidious Pakistan deal such a death-blow to the INA soldiers who opted for seeking employment with her army?

Shame, indeed, for a country that talks big about idealism and spirituality but in essence has, with respect to Netaji and his INA, proved to be a cowardly and ungrateful country that refused to acknowledge even her debt to these valorous soldiers who won her freedom. I cannot, thus, use the word 'Satyameva jayatey' with respect to my motherland anymore till I see her leaders and her governments, her people and her citizenry practise this grand principle instead of merely preaching it. Vande Mataram !

Written by Sugata Bose