WHITHER BENGAL? WHITHER RESISTANCE?

WHITHER BENGAL? WHITHER RESISTANCE?

I am amazed not merely at the apathy but at the cowardice of the common man. When rustic women are on the march, how can the city-bred sleep to it? Where are the protest marches now by so-called Bengali intellectuals and liberals, whither the candle light vigils on the streets of the capital city? Have they lost their steam in absorbing the benefits from the current dispensation? Go back to Vivekananda, not the sage of devotion and dance as his devotees have reduced him into but the prophet of spirit and fire, the harbinger of revolution. 'Arise! Awake! And stop not till the goal is reached.' And for heaven's sake, for the sake of whatever residual manhood be there alive in you even now, stop making feeble remarks in his name who was the embodiment of manhood and strength, the incarnation of energy in all its ennobling dimensions, and represent him as he truly was, the 'spirit and fire' brought by his Master to transform the brute unto man and man unto god. And brutes there are many. Only gods they can be if you who are the followers of the Prophet of the Age take to becoming gods yourselves and dare the dispensations that stand in the way of the rightful evolution of man. And brutes they are as well who reduce Vivekananda to a messiah of song and dance. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. Now, arise unto manhood and act.

Written by Sugata Bose