HAIL KANGANA, THOU HAST SAID IT RIGHT!

HAIL KANGANA, THOU HAST SAID IT RIGHT!

Strange it is that Kangana Ranaut's true statement that Netaji was India's first Prime Minister, albeit of her Provisional Government, is being contradicted by kith and kin and by next of kin in the lineage of the INA! What ought to have been celebrated as the reassertion of a scant known truth which every admirer of Netaji ought to be proud of has been derided in print and visual medium by persons who have earlier been themselves vocal in the same vein as Ranaut. 

Jawaharlal Nehru became the first Prime Minister of the British Dominion of India on 15 August, 1947. But much earlier on 21 October, 1943 Subhas Chandra Bose had become Prime Minister of the Provisional Government of Free India in Singapore which in effect meant that he was undivided India's Prime Minister, a fact legally recognised by nine nations of the world on the Axis side of the political spectrum then. As Prime Minister he led the war on the Anglo-Americans and on entering British Indian territory set up government in Manipur. He was also in political charge of the Andaman and the Nicobar Islands handed out to him as per prior pledge by the Japanese which he renamed Shaheed Dveep and Svaraaj Dveep. 

Netaji had set up a most modern and efficient governing machinery with its own currency, bank, police, bureaucratic bodies, council of ministers and, of course, a 60,000 strong armed force of men, women and even a contingent of young adults called the Bal Sena. His government ruled over the freed territory of India for 90 days before altered conditions of war precipitated an unfortunate retreat. 

Till the very end when Netaji mysteriously disappeared on 18 August, 1945, he held the portfolios of Prime Minister and Minister of War and Foreign Affairs in a most meaningful manner at the most perilous period of world history and certainly the most crucial couple of years in this nation's history which places his ministerial premiership on a peerless pedestal, a fact which can neither be denied nor downplayed as critics have unfortunately done. Kangana Ranaut thus stands absolved of all puerile charges levelled against her of distorting history by motivated individuals who now seemingly feel ashamed of admitting the grandest historical happening in our much molested freedom struggle when a few years earlier these very ones were feeding this very fact of Netaji being India's first Prime Minister into the national consciousness by their consistent avowal of it. Strange are the ways of self-interest which can even trade history for petty personal and political gains! 

Meanwhile Netaji witnesses it all in dismay. Or, perhaps, I am much mistaken. Netaji must have long recognised the lack of moral fibre in some of his treasonous countrymen who had then let him down and have not evolved much to morality since in all these nine decades (1939--2024). But a cat has nine lives and supercats have ninety. And such a seminal soul as Netaji who is the master of all such animate beings, who is Pashupati, lives on forever in shining memory as not only first Prime Minister but the perennial governor of peoples' destiny. 

Kangana, Manikarnika on celluloid, must have absorbed some of the lessons of history from her brilliant portrayal of the redoubtable Rani, and translated them to real life in bold affirmation of a forgotten fact, one that needs constant averment for it to be driven home into the hearts and minds of her countrymen so that they emerge from their stupor unto reclamation of their rightful history at the helm of which  stands the luminous form of their leader Subhas Chandra Bose, their beloved Netaji. Hail Kangana, thou hast said it right! Jai Hind!

Written by Sugata Bose