VANDE MATARAM ... 9

VANDE MATARAM ... 9

Brutality of man against man continues under the cover of nationalism. Nationalism requires humanity for its basis. Whither humanity? Where is justice, fairplay? Is power thus to be corrupted? Is power so corrupting? Are men at the helm of affairs so corrupt, so power-drunk? Is this the independence we have won? Is this Indian civilisation? Are words enough to bolster Indian hopes, to preserve Indian culture? Did not Swamiji lay down character as the basis of all worthwhile nation-building action in whose absence action becomes engagement in self-serving? Whither character among the leaders, the politicians, the ministers, the legislators and the keepers of the law? How can nationalism survive in its absence? How can patriotism be anything better than so much of a parody of it while the masses suffer a despicable life, fit only for the lower animals, perhaps?

Our freedom was soft-lost but hard-gained. We were cheated into submission. Our own men by the millions had betrayed us and, having sold our freedom, helped the British maintain their stranglehold on us. That octopus-hold our boys, our girls, our men and women by the millions had to unlock and force the beast home whence it had come from its island habitat across the seas. The depredation of India by the British to the tune of forty-five trillion US dollars in two centuries of colonisation, the inflicting of periodic famine which cost approximately twenty million Indian lives in the same period, the abuse of our dignity, the inhuman torture of anybody who resisted British rule, the use of Indians to kill, torture and rule Indians by brutal force, all these had to be overcome by the blood if our martyrs to freedom. Was it to see this day when our own men turn against our own men using power invested in them by a believing polity? This is the death of democracy but is, perhaps, the way it ought to go, considering the fact that our freedom was won by the bourgeoisie and, so, necessarily, it must gradually slide into the hands of regressive bourgeois forces whose repressive organ is the government of popular mandate. 

The question arises -- whither now?

Written by Sugata Bose