SHAHEED, SWARAJ AND NETAJI

The dreaded Cellular Jail in Shaheed (Andamans) where the most dangerous revolutionaries in British eyes were incarcerated, tortured and executed whose horrors send shivers down one's spine and fill one with pathos at the plight of the prisoners who lived and died to set us free from the hands of the barbarous British. It has been my privilege to intimately know one such prisoner as a child, our Jogi Dadu, who used to tell us stories from his days of internment in the Cellular Jail, how iron nails used to be driven into the fingernails of the prisoners to extract information from them and how the fingernails would then be taken out from the fingers. I remember I could not quite fathom then the import of the stories but I used to watch with rapt wonderment at the stoic face of Jogi Dadu as he recounted those days of old. This was in the mid-sixties of the last century when I heard these stories. I still can recall the wistful look in his eyes as he beheld his comrades in his mind's eye suffering torture and death so many years ago in the island of hell where blood flowed in equal stream with the waves of the surrounding waters and the tears of mothers and wives and daughters from the far-off mainland sent emissaries of empathy across the black waters (kalapani) to sustain the valorous ones in their hour of terrible torment.

On 29 December, 1943, Netaji visited the Andamans and headed straight for the Cellular Jail where he paid glowing tributes to the martyrs that had fallen there and the prisoners that had suffered persecution. The following day he hoisted the National Flag on this, the first territorial tract of India to be liberated form British occupancy. In the spring of the following year, Netaji, now the official administrative head of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands by agreement with Imperial Japan who had handed over the islands to the Provisional Government of Free India, renamed Andaman as Shaheed in honour of the incarcerated heroes and martyrs of the freedom struggle at the Cellular Jail and Nicobar as Swaraj in celebration of the installation of the Provisional Government of Free India in the islands, the official handing over of charge taking place on 17 February, 1944.

Shaheed and Swaraj being the first territory of dependent India to be liberated from the British, became symbolic of the revolutionary fervour that now drove the INA to the mountainous terrain of Northeast India, and the fall of the Cellular Jail became likened to the fall of the Bastille in Paris, 1789, that had sparked off the French Revolution. In the days to come half of Assam, a slice of Imphal (Manipur) and a portion of Bengal were liberated and held by the INA for nearly three months but sudden reverses in the Second World War suffered by Japan and early heavy precipitation that year forced a retreat for the INA from the liberated lands leading to their re-annexation by the British.

However, Shaheed and Swaraj have passed into folklore and so has the Cellular Jail but the British restored the earlier names of the islands and the Government of free India later exhibited scant interest in upholding the legacy of Netaji there out of loyalty to the alien masters who had entered the nervous system of the Anglophile Nehru and his comrades in non-violent cooperation with the divisive British who surgically partitioned the motherland before beating a hasty retreat out of sheer fear of a violent reprisal at the hands of their Indian Armed Forces whose loyalty, now significantly eroded by the INA's wartime activities, they could no longer rely on. Netaji never showed up again since his reported air crash at Taihoku airfield on 18 August, 1945.

And what followed was heresy of an order unmatched in the annals of history when a freshly freed India, at the behest of Nehru and later his successors in the corrupt Congress, conspired with Britain, USA and USSR to suppress all information on the missing Netaji and, instead, perpetuated the myth of his death in the air crash that had been first floated by Imperial Japan on 23 August, 1945, to provide a smoke screen for Netaji to escape to the Soviet Union. This inference is being based on evidence emerging from recently declassified files on Netaji. Furthermore, the INA was disbanded, the pensions of the soldiers who freed India were denied and the soldiers themselves were refused recruitment in the Indian Armed Forces. Netaji was written off the history books, the INA Treasure was appropriated by sinister forces with a non-committal silence by the Nehru Government on the issue of an official enquiry into it and files on Netaji were kept classified for close to seventy years and two crucial ones even destroyed by Indira Gandhi's Government. Netaji has remained a 'War Criminal' in the eyes of the world even after seven decades of Indian independence which we owe principally to him, and the Government of India is still reticent to get his name cleared of all such scurrilous charge.

This much for gratitude from a benighted nation for a soul sublime, the like of whom has not visited us in recent memory barring the warrior monk, Vivekananda. Between the prophet and the patriot, Swamiji and Netaji have apportioned the burden of resurrection of the motherland and none has even remotely matched their absolute commitment to the cause, not even the Mahatma of malicious manipulation for magnificent intent. The rest pale into insignificance, despite their seminal contribution, before the splendour of the soul of the Netaji whose superb sacrifice and indomitable will saw to the eventual eviction of the British from the landmass of India as his shadow stalked the ramparts of the Red Fort during the INA Trials that set ablaze a nation long suppressed of its right to respire free of colonial roguish restraint. May Netaji be reborn in our hearts and minds as an undying source of inspiration to rebuild our motherland and career her back to her pristine glory and way beyond unto the zenith of her future progression! May the martyrs of Shaheed and Swaraj inspire in us courage of conviction to combat the corruptions in our consciousness that we may consider it our calling to correct our course! Jai Hind!

BRILLIANCE OF BOSE

Subhas Chandra Bose was a brilliant student throughout his academic life. This is why he was able to see through the cunning schemes of the British and could expose them before the world like none other among the Indian freedom fighters. It is a pity that the Congressmen, weak and cowardly, attacked the hero from all sides and virtually saw to his expulsion from the country which eventually brought about India's partitioned doom.

INA WORTH ONLY A PAGE AND A HALF IN BIPAN CHANDRA'S 538-PAGE BOOK 'INDIA'S STRUGGLE FOR INDEPENDENCE'?

I am appalled to discover that in the 538-page book, 'India's Struggle for Independence 1857-1947' by Bipan Chandra, the INA has received coverage of only a page and a half. Why this apathy, nay, sheer antipathy towards our army of liberation? The entire INA saga has been brushed over, a mere clause or a sentence at times has been deemed sufficient elaboration on a vital episode and the narrative truncated beyond any reasonable recognition of the events that accompanied it. One hazards to construe this sinister obliteration of history as part of a larger conspiracy to erase the memory of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose from the public imagination and one may only rationally attribute this act of perfidy to the Congress Party which has over seven decades since independence stood to benefit the most from the exclusion of Netaji from the public discourse. If history books are written in such a truncated, partial manner, where are we headed as a nation in terms of understanding our roots, our culture and our heritage, be they political or otherwise? The antidote to this must be the right representation of historical facts without bias by right-minded historians who are true to their trade and not self-serving accomplices of political parties in whose hire-purchase they are with the express purpose of perpetrating lies to poison the minds of the masses. It is time now to be a trifle literate about Netaji and his great army of liberation instead of wastefully whiling away time expressing frothy emotion on the hero and his allies while remaining blissfully ignorant about the details of their march through the dense forests of Burma en route to India. Netaji's cause is the national cause and it needs the service of countless dedicated souls determined to unravelling the truth and disseminating such information among the masses. If a Bipan Chandra proves traitorous to the cause of our motherland and propagates historical heresies, then it is our duty to democratically counter him and his book by writing our version of Netaji and the role of the INA in India's struggle for freedom as well. Let such an endeavour consume our best efforts, then let the people of this nation judge for themselves and sift the grain from the chaff. Jai Hind!  

DESTROYERS OF THE RAJ ... 1

The barbarous British mutilated the dead bodies of Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru, packed them in sacks, then broke the rear wall of the jail, carried the cut corpses several kilometres away before semi-burning them and casting them into the Sutlej river. Such was their fear of the possible public uprising on the morrow (24 March, 1931) when the trio were scheduled to be hanged that they preponed the execution by several hours to the previous evening, 7.33 p.m., 23 March, 1931, so that their dastardly act would be over before anyone got an inkling of it. But the fire spread still and eventually evicted the British from Indian soil when the INA led by Netaji avenged the death of all the martyrs and destroyed the fabric of the British Empire, first in India, and then, as a sequel, in the rest of the British-colonised world. The contribution of revolutionaries like Bhagat Singh must be seen in this larger light and it must be understood that these immortal soldiers of the soul were liberators of the whole of shackled mankind suffering the yoke of colonial rule, the worst form of human oppression.

WAS GANDHI EVER INCARCERATED BY THE BRITISH IN THE CELLULAR JAIL? WHY NOT?

Gandhiji was a convenient candidate for the British to bank on to filter out violent revolutionary fervour and thus avoid a bloody conflict with India's revolutionaries. The British found in Gandhi a God-sent helpmate in their bid to maintain the Raj for they knew that his brand of passive non-violent resistance would never become a force potent enough to end their imperial hegemony over India. The British Indian Army, comprising mainly Indian soldiers, they could bank on to control Gandhian resistance. So, they touched not Gandhi as he was their buffer against the real threat of the violent revolutionaries among whom ranked Bose as their 'enemy number one'.

The British were delighted to find in Gandhi such a self-deluded ally of the Raj, unwittingly though for Gandhi it must be said, and took all possible measures to prop him up as the face of freedom-seeking India while waiting patiently to let the self-styled Mahatma wither away of old age and senility when his movement would die a natural death. They were, however, highly wary of Bose who they thought was the real danger and so, they could not even rest while imprisoning him within the Indian subcontinent and chose to banish him to Europe to gain health, imagining that it would cut him off from the mainstream of the Congress' movement and isolate him into insignificance. But such a sweet outcome was not to be as Bose used his hiatus in Europe to establish links with European powers for future revolution against the British when times would be propitious.

So far as the other revolutionaries who had been deported to the Andamans to be incarcerated in the notorious Cellular Jail where the most inhuman third degree torture was inflicted upon them, Gandhi, Nehru, Patel, Azad and the softies were not party to it. And why would they, after all, be banished there? Were they not unwitting allies to the British with their toothless emasculate movement which rightfully earned the scorn of Hitler as testified by Bose post his meeting with the German Fuhrer and which the British, whenever they liked, could at will smash to smithereens?

Yes, it must be admitted that the satyagrahis of Gandhi never had to endure the horrendous torture in prison cells the violent revolutionaries had to bear nor did they ever sacrifice so much of blood and body as the extremists did. They troubled the British Government but never truly threatened their existence in India. The British, in turn, thought it best not to repress them as brutally as they did the armed revolutionaries. Consequently, Gandhi and his brigade never had the privilege to taste true third degree torture under the British in the island of hell, and failed in the process, thereby, to graduate to the realm of real revolution and a like estimation in the public imagination. Would it were otherwise!

There the revolutionaries were living hell across the black waters in the Cellular Jail and here the Mahatma and his men were parleying with the predators for a peaceful transfer of power! Robben Island was there, for sure, but there was no Nelson Mandela inhabiting it. The Mahatma was adorning the Aga Khan Palace instead. No wonder he was so popular among the masses, for how many can muster such courage and strength of character to endure the assaults to human dignity in a colonial British jail that the armed revolutionaries laughingly did for the motherland?

Now, I hope, my friend, you have been reasonably responded to in your query by this writer and I thank you for having raised this contentious issue whose clarification rendered to you has in effect helped clear some of the cobwebs in my mind too.

May the martyrs' blood reddening the waters of the southern sea never dilute to oblivion! May their sacrifices and sacrileges suffered under duress at the hands of the barbarous British never fail to inspire kindred souls with the fire of real revolution and not its caricature that supposedly brought us freedom, a fact not testified adequately by historical evidence, rather negated by contrary narratives of the armed assault of the INA which in sooth liberated us but whose saga remains a tale untold for untold reasons! Bande Mataram! Jai Hind!

P.S. :
Comments :
Maj Gen Gagandeep Bakshi This is a very accurate analysis of how the British made use of the non-violent movement which they found very convenient and non-threatening.

NO MORE BEGGING, NO MORE SELLING SELF-RESPECT, NOW RETURN TO ROOTS

Our Prime minister should not go about begging for foreign investment from a country that has been the single biggest enemy of our best interests in the past. I mean England. They colonised us, destroyed the fabric of our economy and reduced us to ruin. We were the richest country in the world prior to British occupation with a share of 23% of the world GDP. The British took away all our wealth and built their blood-stained empire. In the process they reduced us to one of the poorest nations in the world with a defaced population broken in body and in mind and sullied to the soul with a foreign tongue and strange manners which have emasculated our city-bred populace and rendered them sterile. The Anglophile Nehru, who accepted Partition and Commonwealth status for a supposedly free country, did what he did in his times but to perpetuate his legacy even now is to invite self-destruction. If this nation has to live, it has to retrace its roots and alter its course to align itself with its age-old trajectory. Else, destruction lies in wait for it ere long and we will be sacrifices unto the death of the motherland. Such a thing can never be for India has been thus far preserved to fulfil her spiritual mission in the world.

Knowing this to be our national destiny, to be the spiritual preceptor of the world, let us start rebuilding our motherland on the basis of self-help and not on the basis of alms received from our historical destroyers. Let the Prime Minister look to the resources within to revamp our economy and not go about begging for money in England which has been built on Indian money at any rate. Let self-respect come to India with self-help and so shall we rise as a nation.

Culturally, it is time, indeed, to shake off the British yoke which still holds us. Half of the urban population is busy anglicising themselves and feels proud to do so. A country whose flower of youth is busy boring British and American modes and manners into its life and soul can scarce feel patriotic in the way it would had it been groomed the Indian way, taught the national heritage language of Sanskrit and been steeped in the culture of its glorious forefathers who had made the grandest discoveries of the Spirit ages ago which keep the western world even today in thrall, the very world our benighted people hold as the model for their upkeep and well-being. It is, thus, imperative that the governmental thrust be on nationalising education the right way and not in a jingoistic way at that. Only when our children learn about India's true heritage and not the Gandhian narrative based on test-torturing and fact-distortion will true national pride return to the land. Then we shall not feel shy of speaking in our mother tongue, not corrupt our vernaculars with unnecessary interspersing of English, learn to address our parents in our age-old ways and not as 'mummy-papa', their siblings in our mother tongue as well and not as 'auntie-uncle', and, in this way, we shall free ourselves at last of Macaulay's cultural contamination which has debilitated us as a nation.

But the leadership must come from the Prime Minister. He must no longer sell our self-respect as a nation by pleading for British help when his time will be better spent if he solicits assistance from elsewhere, namely, Japan and other Asiatic countries which have cultural solidarity with India, and it must be admitted that he is sparing no means for doing so as well. Let Britain pay for its perfidies perpetrated in India and not be allowed the luxury of easy atonement for its sins by offering a helping hand to us. In this lies our self-respect, in this lies nationalism, patriotism, call it by whatever name you will. Jai Hind!

HOW LONG YET MUST WE SLEEP?

In the name of satyameva jayate (truth triumphs) as the national ideal, the Congress Party has for nearly seven decades since independence attempted to perpetuate the lie of Netaji's death by air-crash and has undermined his seminal role in the freedom movement to corner all glory for Gandhi, Nehru and the like. But truth, for sure, triumphs and the day has arrived when facts will come to the fore to expose the traitors to the motherland. Friends, let us work with all our might to bring to light facts of freedom and not let fiction pervert history in our minds. I wonder in which other country in recent memory such a lie has grown overtime with such Machiavellian machination of the powers that be and such abject submission of an entire people been to gullible acceptance of everything that goes in the name of historical heresy, data distortion and diabolic destruction of all that was glorious in the sacrifice of blood and toil for the sake of the liberation of the motherland.