THE LEADER AND THE MASSES

THE LEADER AND THE MASSES

The life of a nation is in its masses and it is mass movement alone that made Gandhiji great. Netaji also mobilised mass support in East Asia and became the epic hero that he became by launching a seemingly impossible armed struggle for freedom almost unparalleled in the annals of world history. Three million East Asians of Indian origin followed him and gave him, men, money and materials which he had given the clarion call for in his bid for total mobilisation of resources for freedom.

This then is the secret -- mass mobilisation, for it is in combination that lies strength, human society with all its good and all its ills being the ordered arrangement of men for mutual advantage. All great leaders of the world from the Buddha to Gandhi have successfully mobilised this mass support as they launched their crusade against the evils of the times. The power that accrued to them was the power of the masses who followed them. Their collective might, ordered and made to flow in a specific direction under the guidance of the leader, gave the movement the impetus that made it potent. So are mass leaders made. They lead a few men from the front and more men gather around them and the circle expands till it engulfs a whole society in the whirl of its energetic impulse and becomes a movement that alters the course of history.

Written by Sugata Bose