CHANGE MARTYR'S DAY FROM 30 JANUARY TO 11 AUGUST

CHANGE MARTYR'S DAY FROM 30 JANUARY TO 11 AUGUST 

11th August, the date of Khudiram Bose's hanging, should be declared as MARTYR'S DAY by changing it from the current 30th January which is the day of assassination of Gandhiji by Nathuram Godse who was an Indian and not a British. This will set history right, rightfully honour India's first martyr for freedom at the scaffold -- the Chapekar brothers died for a different cause, that of redressing the insult to Marathi women folk by the British police during the plague outbreak in Maharashtra, remember -- and duly pay homage to India's countless revolutionaries who gave up their lives to British bayonet or bullet or the hangman's noose. Martyrdom was not Gandhi's lot to be glorified with. His was a perishing for his principles no doubt at the hands of a fellow Indian with radically opposed views to his. Hence, to call Gandhi a martyr to India's freedom after freedom had already been won is to be untrue to the spirit of martyrdom as experienced by our revolutionaries such as Khudiram Bose, Kanailal Datta, Satyen Basu, Madanlal Dhingra, Basanta Kumar Biswas, Kartar Singh Sarabha, Ramprasad Bismil, Rajendranath Lahiri, Ashfaqulla Khan, Thakur Roshan Singh, Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev Thapar, Sivaram Rajguru, Masterda Surjya Sen, Udham Singh and countless others whose death by the noose was true martyrdom for freedom. Let the Government of India exhibit character enough to rectify this falsification of history and this aberration in terminology otherwise to redeem itself and the nation's credo of 'Satyameva jayatey'. Vande Mataram !

Written by Sugata Bose